Low temp corn drying

[burnt]

Anybody doing it? At what moisture levels?

Corn is off and in the bin. Got an empty bin this year so I'm moving it from one to the other in stages to air dry it a bit more quickly than other years.

We've taken some nice corn out by air drying.

And at times, some not so nice . . . :? But we've never had it go bad. Yet.

All depends on the year.

 

[katrina]

Yes.... we are... Just stay vigil...

 

[Jake]

How wet was it going in?

 

[burnt]

How wet was it going in?

24% about like last year.

Trouble starts when you get a week or two of wet weather.

Which is what we're getting.

3" yesterday and over night.

I'm going to split it between two bins with full floor which will make 10' in each bin.

Great link here - shows that it is very doable -

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/cropsystems/dc6577.html

 

[katrina]

over 22%...And we split it up in three bins with air... There is no propane to be had to dry around here they say... It's as of this morning 17%. We will just keep the air on with the warm days and off with the rainy days... So much fell off last year around the country, we didn't want to take that chance of loosing it in the field.. Plus we want to wean and go to corn stalks...

 

[burnt]

We very rarely get corn down below 22 - 24% in the field. But on the odd year that we do get it drier, there's no problem at all with 19 -22 % moisture and air drying. But 24 % is challenging with our cooler temps.

Air drying gives terrific test weights as well. Not to mention that it takes about half as much energy even with the fans running for a month.

 

[3 M L & C]

The only problem you will have is if you always run during the day then you have a lengthy time of cool wet weather where you can't run the fans. Corn regardless of moisture will "sweat" when it's in the bin at say 65 degrees and outside temps are low like in the 40s. When you check the moisture on the corn in the bin we always check the temp as well.

 

[Jake]

We very rarely get corn down below 22 - 24% in the field. But on the odd year that we do get it drier, there's no problem at all with 19 -22 % moisture and air drying. But 24 % is challenging with our cooler temps.

Air drying gives terrific test weights as well. Not to mention that it takes about half as much energy even with the fans running for a month.

What do you guys run for TW up there? I know a lot of the guys I do business with in Northern North Dakota are struggling with TW this year. Seems like there is a lot of light stuff out there.

 

[burnt]

We very rarely get corn down below 22 - 24% in the field. But on the odd year that we do get it drier, there's no problem at all with 19 -22 % moisture and air drying. But 24 % is challenging with our cooler temps.

Air drying gives terrific test weights as well. Not to mention that it takes about half as much energy even with the fans running for a month.

What do you guys run for TW up there? I know a lot of the guys I do business with in Northern North Dakota are struggling with TW this year. Seems like there is a lot of light stuff out there.

Way off from the past couple of years, ours weighed 52/lbs which makes it a grade 4 or 5, they tell me.

Seems to be par for the course this year. Our summer was very cool and the corn did little through August. Yields turned out really well though with numbers from 160 - 200 bu/ac.

 

[burnt]

And here's another interesting tidbit from the plot this year. I wonder if we don't give enough credit to the "N" that the previous crop of alfalfa fixes in the soil. I have tried it before and it worked again this year.

I ran an 8 row (one planter width) strip the full length of the field with no additional nitrogen other than the 28 units applied with the 19-19-19 starter.

The rest of the field got the same starter plus an additional 110 units of N as 28%, side dressed with the planter.

The yield difference was 15 bu/ac. advantage to the full N rate. At $4.00/bu. for $60 total benefit, it was not enough to cover the $100/ac. cost of the full rate of N.

In other words, it appears to have cost me $40 an acre to apply the full rate of N on my corn this year! :shock:

Next year I'll try to shave the N rate over the entire field after an alfalfa crop.

So there you go, there's another credit to keeping my cows around the place!!

 

[mwj]

And here's another interesting tidbit from the plot this year. I wonder if we don't give enough credit to the "N" that the previous crop of alfalfa fixes in the soil. I have tried it before and it worked again this year.

I ran an 8 row (one planter width) strip the full length of the field with no additional nitrogen other than the 28 units applied with the 19-19-19 starter.

The rest of the field got the same starter plus an additional 110 units of N as 28%, side dressed with the planter.

The yield difference was 15 bu/ac. advantage to the full N rate. At $4.00/bu. for $60 total benefit, it was not enough to cover the $100/ac. cost of the full rate of N.

In other words, it appears to have cost me $40 an acre to apply the full rate of N on my corn this year! :shock:

Next year I'll try to shave the N rate over the entire field after an alfalfa crop.

So there you go, there's another credit to keeping my cows around the place!!

Make your test strip 3 planter widths wide and check the yield on the center strip! I think you will find a much wider yield gap. The N will move laterally in the soil much farther than you think and so will the corn roots.

 

[burnt]

And here's another interesting tidbit from the plot this year. I wonder if we don't give enough credit to the "N" that the previous crop of alfalfa fixes in the soil. I have tried it before and it worked again this year.

I ran an 8 row (one planter width) strip the full length of the field with no additional nitrogen other than the 28 units applied with the 19-19-19 starter.

The rest of the field got the same starter plus an additional 110 units of N as 28%, side dressed with the planter.

The yield difference was 15 bu/ac. advantage to the full N rate. At $4.00/bu. for $60 total benefit, it was not enough to cover the $100/ac. cost of the full rate of N.

In other words, it appears to have cost me $40 an acre to apply the full rate of N on my corn this year! :shock:

Next year I'll try to shave the N rate over the entire field after an alfalfa crop.

So there you go, there's another credit to keeping my cows around the place!!

Make your test strip 3 planter widths wide and check the yield on the center strip! I think you will find a much wider yield gap. The N will move laterally in the soil much farther than you think and so will the corn roots.

That is quite a valid observation. I will try that next year. Thanks!

 

[3 M L & C]

And here's another interesting tidbit from the plot this year. I wonder if we don't give enough credit to the "N" that the previous crop of alfalfa fixes in the soil. I have tried it before and it worked again this year.

I ran an 8 row (one planter width) strip the full length of the field with no additional nitrogen other than the 28 units applied with the 19-19-19 starter.

The rest of the field got the same starter plus an additional 110 units of N as 28%, side dressed with the planter.

The yield difference was 15 bu/ac. advantage to the full N rate. At $4.00/bu. for $60 total benefit, it was not enough to cover the $100/ac. cost of the full rate of N.

In other words, it appears to have cost me $40 an acre to apply the full rate of N on my corn this year! :shock:

Next year I'll try to shave the N rate over the entire field after an alfalfa crop.

So there you go, there's another credit to keeping my cows around the place!!

Make your test strip 3 planter widths wide and check the yield on the center strip! I think you will find a much wider yield gap. The N will move laterally in the soil much farther than you think and so will the corn roots.

This is a good point if you were wanting to do a major university study. However it's not going to make that big of difference in real world farming. Before we used to have monitors observing the flow of fertilizer, once in a while a row would get plugged for a while before you would check it. You could spot that row out all year. And it had rows 30 inches away on both sides with full fertilizer, so if the roots move that far and the N moves that far to make much of a difference you wouldn't be able to pick that row out. Also is it wasn't that important where the fertilizer was, you wouldn't see all these precision product add on things for planters to get your fertilizer 2x2. Roots and N do move, but not enough to totally throw his data off on a test like this. If anything the outside two rows would be just a hair better than the center 6. I think your alfalfa is helping you more than you previously thought. Only way to know for sure either way is to test the soil.

 

[tenbach79]

We run them non stop and hope for temps below 32 and freeze the corn. Have two 30,000 bushel bins with pits and big fans. Have a 15,000 bushel bin that we make sure we put the lowest moisture corn in, that bin only has two small fans.

Last year we put some corn in that was pushing 23 and we had water dripping from the eves of the bin. Took a load out a couple days later to break the peak down and never had bad corn when we hauled out about 3 months later.

 

[George]

We have a little over 100,000 bu in bins but as we have acquired the bins with farms we have acquired our largest bin is 15,000 bu.

We try to stay with hybrids that are short enough in growing days ( heat units ) that the wettest we took off was about 18.5% and we will hit it with just a little heat then air dry to about 15%

A couple of bins are only 5,000 bu and with air only so we either move grain into them at about 17% or less and let air do the job or we will dry at the home farm then move to them.

We finished on Wednesday and are not planning on doing any custom work unless it is a good friend needing help so we are already going thru both combines to put them up for the year. The reverser for the 9550 should be here first of the week - - - that gives us a good excuse to turn down custom harvesting.

We don't have any soybeans in bins this year as we harvested them early enough we were getting a good premium to go straight to the processor - - - they were willing to take 16% beans with no dock at first as they were day to day on availability and we were called by both the major processors in the area begging for beans the first of September. We even got a $0.40 premium for dry beans over what we had contracted for and were able to deliver beans we had contracted for January straight in. That fried up bin space for more corn.

Makes me wonder what beans will be going for later - - - but it will not matter to us as ours are all sold and gone!

Another good year for the crops - - - glad it was not like last year! With 2,300 acres we are small for the area but I feel better is more of a goal to strive for than bigger! Our overall soybean yield came in just over 50 bu which was down a little but we went 10 weeks with almost no rain ( we were 9" over prior to it shutting off ) and corn was in the neighbor hood of 200 bu - - - can't tell exactly till it is over the scale. With the shortage of rain we were hoping and praying for 160 bu overall average - - - I guess the good Lord heard us as he gave us a 40 bu bump in what we felt would be all we could get! The best field was a 160 acre river bottom that made 247 at 17.5% the next river bottom north was 90 acres that made 240 at 17.8%

I wish we could pick up more of that ground but it is not on the market and if it does sell it will probably be way more than we want to pay.

 

[Aladar]

It will work if you aren't dealing with a volume issue and/or are in a low humidity area.

Leave the fans run.

If it gets cold ( below 0) run them again.

Better grain quality with air drying, no doubt about that.