Podcast: Is Your Grain Set-Up Degrading Grain Quality & Costing You Money?

00:00:00 What's the quality of your grain in your grain storage right now? Do you know we're gonna talk about maintaining grain quality 00:00:06 so you can get the most for your harvest. That's what we're covering in this edition of extreme Ag, cutting the Curve. 00:00:11 Welcome to extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast where real farmers share real insights and real results to help you improve your farming operation. 00:00:22 This episode is brought to you by Simon Innovation, protect your crops and maximize yield with a full lineup 00:00:27 of innovative precision tools engineered to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of your sprayer. Visit simon innovations.com 00:00:34 and start getting more ROI out of your sprayer. And now here's your host, Damien Mason. Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic 00:00:43 episode of Extreme Ag Karen. The curve. I got Johnny Rell from Jackson, Tennessee. He's an extreme ag guy. 00:00:47 He's joined by Superior Grains, Rodie Gerberg and Dave Welander. Um, we're talking about maintaining the grain quality. 00:00:55 You work really hard. You, you talk, you tune into all the stuff we're doing extreme at you. Listen to guys like Johnny talk about getting three more 00:01:01 bushels of soybeans. You know how to maximize your harvest agronomics. You do all of that work to get all the bushels you can 00:01:08 that you store them in your grain facility. And I don't care if it's a brand new bin or if it's 40 years old 00:01:13 and your grandfather built, the point is you need to be monitoring it. You need to be doing certain things to make sure 00:01:19 that grain quality is there, all your humidity, temperature, uh, you know, foreign matter, all that kind of stuff. 00:01:26 We're talking about grain quality and maintaining it. So I'm gonna lead off with Johnny Rell. I don't know how big of a deal this is. 00:01:32 I came up with this topic, so I wanted to hear about it. We're gonna cover it in a, in a, uh, webinar 00:01:37 also about grain quality, about grain maintenance and all that stuff. You're gonna be one of the guests on the webinar. 00:01:44 So is this a big deal? It seems to me that I think grain sometimes is losing quality in the bins and people don't even realize it. 00:01:51 Yeah, man, once you make that crop, you don't wanna lose the money you got invested in it and, you know, simple things you do throughout the year. 00:01:59 Once that grains in them bins can really help maintain that, you know, that superior quality, so to say 00:02:04 that high end yield test weight that we've, that we've obtained throughout the year. You know, a lot of times people put grain in the bin 00:02:11 and kind of forget about it to a certain extent. Yeah. Until they smell something or start seeing something going on 00:02:16 and by then it's too late. You got a lot of issues if you, if you start seeing, uh, water come out the bins 00:02:21 or something like that, you got some major issues on your way. So, Alright, so you could be, you could be dealing 00:02:26 with a leak, which would be precipitation, moisture getting in, which is obviously gonna degrade the quality of the grain rot. 00:02:32 It um, there could be humidity in there, which seems to me would degrade quality. But, um, test weight. 00:02:39 Can you lose test weight Dave and Rodie? Somebody take that one. Can I put 62 pound test weight corn in the grain bin, all of a sudden I'm pulling out 56 00:02:47 or 58 pound can. Is that possible? I don't know. I mean, you guys are the experts. I think if you over dry it, if you're, it's possible 00:02:55 that if you're a lot of guys, you know, the, the theory was always, you know, when it gets to be a certain time of the year, especially up here 00:03:02 where it's, you know, you, they talk about freezing it down. If you just turn your fans on 00:03:07 and let 'em run, technically if you have, um, a drying condition you could, you know, dry it down till it's way, way too dry. 00:03:16 You'd lose test weight that way. I do remember in northern Indiana that on those high pressure January days 00:03:23 where it was like 18 degrees outside and sunny, you'd hear grain, you'd take grain fans running on every 00:03:30 grain bin in the countryside. Is it, what was the purpose of that? Basically they freeze it what they call freezing it down 00:03:37 and take the moisture down to, you know, a lot of guys will do natural, natural air drying, which you're, you know, you put it in the bin at 16% for corn 00:03:46 and you want to bring it down to 15 or 14 point a half. Okay. So guys would basically try to freeze it down so that they could get that last 00:03:53 point, point and a half out of it. Is that still something that is being done? Not as much. They also freeze it down, um, when it's wet. 00:04:02 So it doesn't so it doesn't spoil. Yeah. Right. You know, if, if you were to, you know, if you were to fill your bin with 20% corn, um, 00:04:12 you know, going, you know, going into the winter and you didn't run your fans, you, you get a hotspot, you, you would get a 00:04:18 Hotpot. Wouldn't, wouldn't that happen If I harvest in 1st of November, wouldn't that happen before January? Wouldn't I have already had a problem? 00:04:24 Or can it hang around that long without developing a problem? I, I've seen, I've seen some years, uh, monitoring, 00:04:31 you know, certain, uh, temperature cables and moisture cable systems. Um, I've seen grain, I've seen corn heat up to 50 degrees, 00:04:40 um, in the center of a bin in the middle of December when it's bin below zero for weeks. So that the, the reason guys want to do that, they want to, 00:04:54 you know, freeze it down is just to, to, to, well to freeze it, to, to keep it cold. Sure. So that it won't, so that it won't spoil. Um, 00:05:02 But back to back to talking about maintaining grain quality, you told me that I might put grain in at 20% like at harvest time 00:05:07 and you're in North Dakota, which could be like say early November, you're saying I can let that sit in there at 20% for a month 00:05:14 and a half, two months and not have a problem. Well you're gonna wanna run your fans right away. You're, you know, you're gonna want, you're gonna wanna try 00:05:21 to capture, you know, if you go in at guys go in at 20% that if they didn't have a dryer, they just had natural air, you're gonna wanna get those fans going as soon as you get 00:05:29 that floor hovered with grain and try to capture any good drying weather that you can um, up here, it can turn, you know, I don't know, you know, 00:05:40 any listeners spend much time in North Dakota, but if you don't like the weather, just wait, wait five minutes 'cause it changes so it can, 00:05:47 it can winter can come, you know, within a day and then all of a sudden you're sitting there and you have wet corn in your bin yet 00:05:54 and no good drawing weather. And if you don't, if it doesn't get frozen down, that's when guys will, will get hotspots, you know, 00:06:03 in anywhere, anywhere through the winter, December, January, February. Um, a lot of guys have dealt with stuff like that. Johnny 00:06:09 Was getting ready to say something, by the way, you don't get down to negative 20, like 30 40 like they do up there. 00:06:15 And also you do harvest wet corn, but it's not an option for you to let it hang around in, in west central Tennessee, you can't put 25% corn in the bin 00:06:24 and then just use natural drying. It has to go through your dryer, right? Yeah. So like, just like you said, a lot 00:06:30 of times we're harvesting corn, it's coming outta the field at a hundred, 110 degrees 00:06:34 with ambient temperature outta the field. When you put that in a grain bin, it doesn't take long to start having issues. 00:06:40 The flip side is if we run the corn through a dryer and put it in the bin, say it's 16%, 15%, whatever, we select our temperature. 00:06:48 Inversions are so big throughout the fall and throughout the winter it could be 70 degrees here, you know, on Christmas day 00:06:55 and on New Year's Day it could be 20 degrees. And so we had to really watch our temperatures 'cause it's just like a glass of a tea or a glass of water. 00:07:03 Our bins will start sweating if we don't constantly regulate the inside of that corn temperature 00:07:08 or grain temperature inside that bin. Because you know, if you got corn in the bin, it's at 70 degrees and it drops off cold overnight, 00:07:14 it'll sweat and vice versa. You could have that corn, we could run them fans down there when it's in the thirties at night 00:07:20 and then it warm right back up and that grain will just literally start sweating inside that bench. 00:07:24 And we have to really watch what we're doing 'cause of the big swings and temperature throughout the year. 00:07:29 But you know, especially this time of year we can, we can have some big, you know, 50 degrees swings, you know, and from, you know, one day 00:07:36 to a few days later it could be 50 at night. So. Alright, So I want everybody to take this one on. 00:07:41 So when I asked about grain quality, um, okay, we got, the easy one is obviously if you've got leaks and you're getting water in it, 00:07:48 but then you guys went straight to temperature, it seems to me that temperature 00:07:52 and then humidity, which corresponds to temperature is the biggest thing. Roddy's nodding his head and, and Johnny's nodding his head. 00:08:00 So Johnny, you, you already brought that topic up. Temperature, temperature, temperature, is that the key aside from if you've got augers 00:08:07 that are grinding up your grain and you know, making it so that it's, it gets docked because it's not, you know, in good shape. 00:08:13 Is it temperature and humidity the thing? Yeah, I mean you just gotta be very careful what you're blowing in there on that grain. 00:08:19 'cause we have such high humidity nights, dew points are real high and stuff like that that, you know, we could actually blow moisture into the grain 00:08:25 and actually reverse the drying process. We can actually rehydrate, we actually are able to ri rehydrate and uh, soybeans 00:08:33 and wheat just by adding the moisture back in by the, you know, the humidity's there. You know, that's one of the biggest things I say we all 00:08:39 fight, you know, here in the south for sure is just really watching what we're doing to the grain. 00:08:43 'cause just 'cause it's sunny outside might not be a good day for us to be dry, you know, or something like that too. So. 00:08:49 Well how do you know, how, what do you, how do you, how do you know? Well we got, uh, we got controllers on our bins 00:08:55 that are constantly monitoring systems that are on there and we actually have little chi town heaters put on our fans 00:09:00 that actually are kicking off and on, not to heat the grain up but to dry the air out. So we're trying to blow a consistent, you know, 00:09:07 15% moisture onto that corn going into that through that fan by just running that, that heater off 00:09:13 and on that heater cycling to maintain a moisture level You're displaced displacing humidity. Yeah. And that's a big deal for us. 00:09:20 We have Chi town heaters on everything. It's not to dry the grain, it's to dry the air itself. Are You calling it Chi Town heaters like Chicago? 00:09:29 Yeah, Chi Town. I mean I that's what we call, you know what they're really called, but that's what everybody down here calls 'em. So, and and 00:09:35 That's what they're called. How Do they work? How do they work, Dave? 00:09:40 Oh, uh, it's been, it's been a minute with those, they may be a little more popular down there, um, than Is it Part, is it connect to your fan? 00:09:49 Yeah, yeah. Bolts, bolts steer fan. Yeah. And it runs off propane or natural gas and ours is controlled by the monitoring system we have. 00:09:57 That's what's actually turning the heater off and on. And they only come all when the fans run. They, they gotta be in sync. So it's a real that, that 00:10:05 Used to be before modern dryers when there was a dryer in the upstairs of your bin. That's how you dried it. 00:10:12 Yeah. And, and, and a lot of people used to get a chart from the university said when the temperature this and humidity this, you need to run the heater. 00:10:19 And basically just with the technology we have nowadays that, you know, everybody's able to put on bins to really help monitor you really taking the science 00:10:26 and actually using it and it automates things a lot better and it takes all that, uh, guesswork out. 00:10:32 'cause he was saying he's had hot spots at 50 degrees, you know, I've had hot spots at over a hundred degrees in grain too, and it doesn't take long at all for that grain 00:10:40 to start going back. That can really mess your test weight up. You can lose the quality of your test weight 00:10:45 with it being in the bin. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. That, that's, that's the biggie. So. All right Gerald, you haven't 00:10:50 been said anything for a while. First off, did he just describe how, 'cause he's younger, can he just 00:10:56 describe how isn't that used? How used to dry period? The bin was in the, the dryer was in the top and it was a fan with a big propane heater 00:11:02 and it just blew in there and it went up and then came out through some, uh, some vent apparatus. Am I right? 00:11:08 Well, that's the top dry systems and they're still around in a certain, certain areas. They're more popular in certain areas. 00:11:17 Um, you know, I think obviously with, with advances in mechanical drawing, um, yeah, you know, they're kind of becoming less and less, 00:11:25 Well I'm going back in the, I'm going back 40 plus years ago too, so Yeah, I I'm talking about the great man I helped. 00:11:31 I'm talking about the Greenman I helped build when I in fifth grade, so maybe even more than 40 years ago. So anyway, go ahead. 00:11:36 Uh, the other thing too with, you know, temperature and humidity, uh, test weight is one thing that you're concerned about, 00:11:42 but the other thing too is um, uh, like, uh, contaminants, mold, you know, you get a lot of, lot of vomit toxins and you know, mito and, 00:11:52 and cytotoxins that, that you get in the grain because it's a perfect, uh, petri dish for, for those molds and all that stuff to grow. 00:12:06 You can't keep that, that stuff's blowing around in the air. How do you keep that out? 00:12:12 Uh, biggest thing is you don't, don't give it a, an environment to thrive. Okay. And that's your humidity. It's it, yep. 00:12:20 So really in the old days we didn't have the ability, now you really need a monitoring system. Can you put a monitoring system in your grain bin? 00:12:28 If my grain bin's 40 years old, can I put a monitoring system inside of it to let me know what the temperature and humidity is? 00:12:34 Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And you'd be silly not to, right? Everybody's nodding their head. 00:12:38 You'd be silly if you didn't have that. Yeah, definitely. Um, you know, especially when corn gets up to $7 a bushel, that that's, 00:12:48 uh, that's when guys are really, really, uh, after 'em. So, okay. So I think, I think Dana too, you take into that piece there, 00:12:56 you're taking the guesswork out so you're not being wasteful with your utilities either. 00:13:00 So the fans are only running when they need to, not when you think they do. Or you turn 'em on and you go home 00:13:05 and you forget to turn 'em off for three or four days. It really takes that guesswork out. And what I love about it, 00:13:11 it sends me a text when I have an issue and telephone which bin has a hotspot and it already kicked the fans on to address it, 00:13:16 but it's at least letting me know what's going on. So, And you're part of the world where you, your bins are, the grain is, it's worse when it's, it, the grain's hot 00:13:26 and it's cold outside or worse than the grain's cold and the hot outside, which one's worse? We seem to have the biggest issues is when we have the 00:13:35 grain at a cool temperature in the winter and then we, if we don't run the fans to, to warm that grain back up, it sweats more for it seems like 00:13:42 for us is how we see it. And The sweat stays inside or the sweat comes on the outside. If it stays in the inside, then it degrades quality. 00:13:49 I've seen water running out of the bins that they're sweating so much. Yeah, you turn the fans on, it's like a steam, like a sauna. 00:13:55 Yeah. So you gotta be real careful, like Roddy said, you do that, you start inviting all kinds 00:14:00 of toxins and stuff to grow. So roddy's A steam to say to, to Johnny, by the time you got steam boiling out 00:14:06 and water flown down, you have lost quality. Like you are now, you are now probably making, making the corn or the, the grain less valuable. 00:14:14 Yep. And a lot of the, and I don't know, you know, if Johnny's got some of this stuff on his, you know, we talk about a lot 00:14:20 of times when we're looking in a new project or an old project, whatever it may be, you know, you want to have whatever your air going in, you need 00:14:27 to have the same amount of air exit or exhaust, you know, a lot of guys will just put, you know, match, okay, I've got, you know, X amount of CFM, 00:14:37 so I need X amount of roof fence. You know, a lot of times, um, let's, a lot of guys don't like to spend the extra money, 00:14:45 but if you've got a lot of issues with sweating and pulling high moisture out of your bin, um, a power exhaustor on a roof vent is probably a good idea 00:14:57 because then you're actually not just, I've seen it where you'll push that hot air, that moisture and it hits the roof vent 00:15:03 or it hits the roof on the bottom side and it basically will start to almost rain because there's so much moisture, uh, condensating on 00:15:12 that roof and it just dropping right back down. But if you've got a power exhaustor, you're actually sucking and pushing that moisture out as you're pushing it 00:15:21 through the, through the, uh, grain as well. And then what happens after that when it condensates on the roof 00:15:27 and drops back down on the top, it spoils that grain on the top and then when you go to unload the bin, it stays in chunks and it comes down. 00:15:36 And that's how guys will plug their, plug their sumps on their power sweeps 'cause of those, those, um, raw 00:15:43 Big chunks of moldy, big chunks of moldy corn. And by the way, uh, I haven't been inside of a grain bin for a while, but uh, last time I was there was moldy corner. 00:15:52 I can still, I can just close my eyes and the smell comes right back to me. Uh, yep. Um, answer me this, you said 00:16:00 before we hit record fm, that was one of the things notes you had about maintaining grain quality. So a key to maintaining green quality 00:16:07 in your storage facility. Uh, what's that fem mean? Poor material. And that's Gonna be anything from cobs to chaff 00:16:19 to anything that made it past the combine that's in there. Also broken, broken product, you know, it's all in how you, 00:16:26 you treat it, whether it right as soon as it comes out of the combine goes into your systems. If you can treat it more gentle with say, 00:16:35 a conveyor versus an auger versus a screw auger, you know, the, the more gentle that you can be on it, the less 00:16:41 stress you're putting on it. If you're using high temp drying, um, mechanical drying, if you're dropping it hot, you wanna make sure that you, uh, 00:16:52 are as gentle as possible so you're not causing those stress cracks. You're not breaking off part of the kernel 00:16:57 and you have all that form material when you dump it in the bin. First thing it's gonna do is it's gonna go right towards the 00:17:04 center when you start emptying it. And back to what Dave was saying, whether it's if you've got crusted stuff 00:17:11 or even, you know, if you have enough FM in there, you can plug your sump just with, you know, all that, all that garbage in there. Yeah. And 00:17:19 That, that starts way before the bin that starts at the combine. Mm-Hmm. And then obviously starts at the offloading facility 00:17:25 and, and those kinds of things. Johnny, it seems like we mostly are talking about corn, we're talking about moisture, 00:17:31 we're talking about putting in high moisture stuff. We're not really talking about soybeans. You don't put them in at 25% moisture. 00:17:36 We're not talking about wheat. You grow soybeans, you grow wheat, you grow corn, you, you don't grow cotton anymore. 00:17:41 So how come we're not talking about the other two grains? Are they not an issue? This the, is soy 00:17:46 and uh, wheat not an issue? Are they, can we just do whatever we want with them? Is it only corn that's high maintenance? 00:17:52 No, I would say all of 'em are soybeans for sure. If you get a lot of pods and FM and those, they can really cause you some major issues when 00:17:59 you're trying to unload those bins as far as big plumps coming down through. So the same thing goes away, 00:18:04 but I think farmers really push the limits on corn more than they do beans and wheat, you know, so it's, it's one 00:18:10 of those deals I really think farmers sometimes put wetter corn and they do Anything else in there? 00:18:14 Dave, you agree with that, that, um, soybean, the biggest issue is soy storage, that's a quality issue is foreign matter versus, uh, 00:18:22 temperature, humidity, et cetera? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean it's uh, when those pods, um, get in the bin 00:18:31 and they get, if they can, if, you know, they get wet. If the beans, you know, when you're removing moisture, if you do go in a little wet 00:18:37 and you're removing moisture, um, you know, you, you really have to, you really have to be careful there. 'cause you can have a lot of problems then with, 00:18:44 well not only quality, but then also when un unloading your bin as well. Roddy, you're up there in North Dakota, uh, wheat, 00:18:51 is there anything about wheat that, uh, guy that farm operators do that degrades grain quality that's, uh, fixed they should look at? 00:19:00 Well, and if we talk about the difference between corn and wheat, the biggest differentiator between the two is your product density. 00:19:10 If you have a bin full of wheat versus a bin full of corn, or even in a drying situation with a dryer, 00:19:16 you need more air to push through that massive grain because it's got a higher product density. So it takes more air pressure 00:19:24 and a higher CFM, uh, to push that, that air mass through that product. So, you know, if a lot of guys are sizing their stuff 00:19:33 for corn and all of a sudden they do wheat or if it's something that they didn't plan on for wheat, they might not have enough air. 00:19:41 So you're gonna, it's gonna take longer. You're gonna have to ac uh, account for that, have a longer, uh, drying cycle to push that air through that mass. 00:19:51 Johnny, do you have any struggles with your wheat? Is corn, is corn your number one, uh, maintenance issue, beans your second and wheat's easy? 00:20:00 Yeah, we simply easy, but we don't leave it in there very long term. Few weeks it's coming back out. 00:20:05 'cause we're having to make, you know, June, July, we're gonna get that crop out in July because we're gonna start putting corn in in August. 00:20:10 So wheat's really not a big issue for us. It, it's, most of the time we run it through the dryer, it stays in condition for 00:20:16 no longer we're leaving it in there. It's, it's the big temperature inversion is what always gives us the big problems 00:20:21 in the south with corn. And you're not using a University of Tennessee chart anymore that says if it's 37 degrees 00:20:28 or below, do this. If it's uh, if it is this much humidity, do that. You're not doing that. You're using actual, uh, 00:20:34 inbound in bend monitors. Yeah, we have 'em on every bend. It, it just really takes that, that makes your mind at ease, 00:20:41 so to say, and takes that guesswork out. And, but Sometimes, so if your green's getting, if you're, if you got, if a problem inside of there and the, 00:20:49 and the conditions outside, if it's wet and wet and hot or whatever, humid, you can't fix it by blowing air in there. 00:20:56 Do you have to fire up the heater again? Is that what you're talking about? Well, I mean, I, I've seen it where people had to unload bins 00:21:02 to try to get it back in condition. You just, you gotta kind of move it around and break it up and, you know, you just wanna avoid all that's a lot 00:21:08 of extra work and a lot of time on that. So Yeah, a lot of work and, and money and, and manpower to, 00:21:14 to just maintain versus you're not even making anything off it. That's right. Got it. All right. 00:21:19 Rodie, you're the, you're the star of the show here at Superior. Um, get me outta here. 00:21:23 Keys to maintaining green quality in your bins. Gimme the wrap. Uh, biggest thing is having a way 00:21:29 to tell what your grain is doing. So having a system temp cables, moisture cables, uh, having a system that actually will automate your fans 00:21:37 is, is key. Um, then having the air flow to, to keep that product in condition, make sure you have enough airflow with your fans, fans size correctly. 00:21:48 And then if you can, uh, put the product in there with, with low, low FM so you have less garbage in there if you will, uh, 00:21:58 that's gonna be your best shot of success. Uh, you're the grain facilities person and the dryer person and the fans person. 00:22:06 You're not the monitoring system inside the bins person. Am I wrong? 00:22:12 Um, we are trying to, uh, to incorporate some of the monitoring even in with the drying systems and stuff too, so it all goes hand in hand. 00:22:22 Sure, absolutely it does. All right. If I wanna learn more about this from your standpoint, where do I go? 00:22:28 Superior bins.com. Superior bins.com. Dave Wayland Rodie Berg, thanks for being here, guys, talking about the keys to maintaining grain quality. 00:22:36 You worked hard, you did everything right. You tuned into all the stuff from extreme ag. All these hundreds of videos that guys like Johnny 00:22:43 and I produced to help you maximize your fields and get this huge crop. You put it in your bins. 00:22:48 Why let it go to waste or why let it lose quality that's gonna cost you money. That's what this episode is about. 00:22:53 We hope it was something that we can, uh, you can use on your farm for immediate, uh, benefit to help your farming operation thrive. 00:23:01 Go and look up the videos that hundreds of videos just like this podcast on the Extreme Mag Farm website. 00:23:06 We want you to use them to your benefit. Till next time, thanks for being here Johnny. Uh, Johnny Ral with Extreme Mag Dave Raw Roddy, 00:23:14 and me Damian Mason. Till next time. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm 00:23:22 for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 00:23:26 Cutting the curve is brought to you by Simon Innovations. 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