Farming Podcast | Reduce Harvest Loss With Better Concaves | XtremeAg

00:00:00 How to maximize harvest in tough conditions. That's what we're talking about in this episode of extreme Ag, cutting the curve. 00:00:07 It's extreme ag cutting the curve podcast, cutting your learning curve, and improving your farming operation every week. 00:00:14 This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is brought to you by BASF, creating innovation 00:00:19 to help farmers do the biggest job honor. And now let's get ready to learn with your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:27 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode, oft extreme ice. Cutting the curve. You know what, 00:00:31 sometimes you have great big yields. Sometimes you have disease pressure, sometimes you have a lot of fodder to work through. 00:00:36 There's always these new challenges that present themselves when you farm for a living. Well, guess what? I've got a guy here that's gonna help you, 00:00:46 uh, maximize your harvest in tough conditions. We're talking about saving time, increasing the quality of your crop, and most importantly, 00:00:54 reducing loss at harvest. Something you can't afford when things are so skinny as we are in a situation right now of low commodity prices, 00:01:02 you need to maximize your harvest. I'm talking to Todd Dale, he's with Estes Concaves. Todd, you talked about this before we hit the record button. 00:01:09 Really what it comes down to is there's always these challenges. You talk about, you know, Southern Rust disease. 00:01:15 Uh, we've got big yields now. Of course, we're finding out right now as the combines are rolling, 00:01:19 we're recording this in the fall. Uh, some of the yields aren't quite what they thought they were going to be, 00:01:23 but still there's a lot of challenges out there in the field. You need your equipment to help you 00:01:28 maximize every nickel you can. And you said, you know what, this is a couple things we're gonna talk about 00:01:32 here on how to do that. So, um, which one is it yield, size, disease, field conditions, weather? 00:01:39 Which one presents the biggest problem, uh, it causes you to lose time, lose quality, or lose crop? 00:01:46 Yeah, I'd say that's a great question. It's always, it's gonna be one or the other, or, or in the worst of conditions. 00:01:53 A little bit of all, uh, a little bit of all of them. Um, this year we're just up, um, around home here. We're just getting started with our soybean harvest and, 00:02:03 and it's variability, uh, variability of the crop, um, yield and moisture, and I'm talking sit, uh, dryness 00:02:12 of the beans down to seven point half or 8% in some spots of the fields. Pods are already shattered open 00:02:18 before you can get there with a combine. And then same field, they're so green, you can't even cut 'em yet. 00:02:23 So, um, you know, the, the variability is another one. And each time you change from, from moisture, you know, your moisture goes from seven to 10 to 12 to 15, 00:02:34 theoretically, you're always looking to change a setting on the combine. That's what you're always kind 00:02:39 of been forced to do in the past. And so with our, you know, with our product, we like to think that we can mend that gap a little bit 00:02:46 with these X xpr, three concaves to where you're not constantly changing and chasing your tail just 00:02:53 because the conditions change a little bit. And then you add the difference of yield, where you go from, yeah, unfortunately 25 bushel beans in some cases all the 00:03:02 way up to 75 or 80 bushel beans, right, right, right field. So it's always changing. 00:03:08 And, and, and, you know, the end of the day, the, the combine is, is your main check writer on the farm. If you're, if you're a crop farmer, 00:03:15 that's what's writing your checks at the end of the year. So whatever you can do to optimize that piece 00:03:20 of equipment is what we're, we're, we're all about here at Estes. So, uh, for those that don't know that maybe you're like, 00:03:28 Hey, I, I like listening to this show, but I'm, uh, I'm in a cranberry business. The con caves are the, uh, 00:03:36 a combine gets its name, derives its name because it does the cutting, threshing and separation of the crop. 00:03:42 The concave is the threshing part of It, correct? Yeah. So the rotor, the rotor's always going to kind of be the main thresher. 00:03:50 And then the concave is basically, uh, the segment of the combine that's wrapped around the rotor. So that's what's assisting the rotor, if you will, 00:04:00 to get the crop off its natural form of, of corn on the cob, beans in the pods, wheat in the heads sep, 00:04:07 getting it threshed from that, and then separated down into the cleaning system, ultimately up into the hopper 00:04:14 and in your truck off to market or grain bins, wherever you're going with it. Understood. So the problem on, uh, like I said, 00:04:21 on conditions, let's go about conditions first. It's, it's, you and I are in both, we're only about 50 miles apart from 00:04:27 right now, each other 60 miles apart from each other. Um, it's, it's dry, but it's, there's not one thing you can complain about, uh, 00:04:35 here in the third week of September. Uh, not one thing you can complain about in terms of the fall that we have had other than it's dry. 00:04:43 Um, I don't, I, I don't know what the disease situation is like. Usually disease is worse when it's wet. 00:04:48 So I don't know, like right now where we are, I can make the excuse the justification, I don't need any extra help 00:04:56 because I'll be filing this crop. But then you'd say, yeah, but what if you have a big bang up yield? 00:05:01 Then you start to have that issue. So go through, go through the reasons why I need better concaves in my combine. 00:05:11 Well, so I mean, any, any combine from, from its original manufacturer does a pretty good job at, at typical crops, typical situations. 00:05:20 So be that, you know, dry grain, which I think there will be some of, um, or, or a typical yield. 00:05:27 But anytime that you get to a, a lesser yielding crop or a exceedingly high yielding crop that adds its own challenges just 00:05:37 because it's either extremely, it's more bushels to handle and more fodder to handle or less. 00:05:43 And so these combines can be pretty particular in, in the sweet spot of getting things set. Right. And a lot of that is just the design 00:05:51 of the threshing mechanisms that you got. So with ours, um, you know, threshing surface area is a huge deal for, for a concave. 00:06:01 The, the rotor, like I said, is always the biggest proponent component of it. But with the threshing surface area, think 00:06:08 of it like you're just providing a larger backboard or a larger something to that the rotor can whip the material off of. 00:06:15 So the more threshing surface area you have, the easier the combine's job is to do. Um, combined with spacing, like spacing between the bars or, 00:06:26 or whatever device you've got as a concave, um, the larger gaps you have, the easier the grain it is for the grain to get out of that rotor cage down into the, 00:06:37 into the cleaning grain system. And that's where your quality comes from. So you want threshing surface area for easier threshing, 00:06:43 getting the co getting the plants seeds out of their carrier. And then you want separation to get the seeds out of the wad 00:06:51 of, of crop crop mat and fodder and everything that comes in there. Um, and so, 00:06:57 but as you, as you go, as you're moving through the field, you know, you're sitting in the combine, 00:07:01 you always wish it was a little better. You always wish you could go a little faster. You always wish you could go get a little bit better result 00:07:10 for, for quality or, or cleanliness of the hopper or, or just drive or have less loss. And, and our system kind of checks all three of those boxes 00:07:19 because we have the maximum amount of threshing surface area kind of in the industry. So that's gonna ease the job of the rotor. 00:07:27 And we got the largest gaps between the bars and to aid in a separation process that's going to get the grain out of the rotor cage out of dam, that's 00:07:36 where all the damage happens. Like the longer it stays in the cage and twists around the tube, the, the grain gets beat up. 00:07:42 So the quicker you can get it out of there, the better you are. Yeah. Then there's the quality. 00:07:46 So you just talked about time. You always wish you can go a little faster. You just talked about the longer something hangs 00:07:50 around in the concave, remember mechanical damage is what we're talking about. We're not talking about quality, 00:07:54 obviously could be conditions, you know, fungus, whatever. But you're talking about quality 00:08:00 that you can control mechanically. Yes. That's what we need do. Given your current, aside from the, the, the damage 00:08:09 that may already be done to the kernels, I mean, it may be rotten kernels at the eart tips. 00:08:13 It may be, um, you know, extremely like shriveled soybeans, but what, what can we do to help still capture 00:08:23 that crop e even in the current state it's in, correct? Yeah. Just minimizing the mechanical damage. That's a, that's a good way to put it. 00:08:30 All right, so the loss, then when you talk about that, that being a factor, um, I think of, uh, you know, grain blown out the back. 00:08:39 That's been a story for a long time. You know, uh, and then you always make the joke, well, you're, you're reseeding your cover crop 00:08:45 by blowing it out the back and all that kind of stuff. Um, why do concaves matter on loss? Um, I would think that that's, uh, an issue post concave. 00:08:54 I'd think that in the back of the machine, So there's basically two main parts of it. The concave and the rotor is the main, if it can't get out 00:09:03 of the, the, basically the rotor two runs nearly the extent of the machine. Um, the concaves and separation grates surround the rotor, 00:09:12 and, and that's what, um, you have to get the threshing and separation done. And then it drops into the cleaning system, 00:09:18 which is your chaffer, sieves, DD different vocabulary depending on which model of combine you have. 00:09:25 Um, and, and that cleaning system is where it's trying to blow and separate the, the little bit of trash from the grain. 00:09:32 And so usually, uh, you know that that will be a culprit of loss. You've got two potential aspects of 00:09:38 where you can lose grain in a combine. Uh, three three if you don't dump on time, I guess. 'cause it'll spill right out the top. Well, I 00:09:45 Four four if you, uh, get off the road or driving over your road. Yeah. But yeah, we, we hope, we hope that for God's sakes, 00:09:50 these things steer themselves at this point, so we should hope that's not an issue. Correct. Yeah, I agree with you. 00:09:55 Um, so, so the cleaning system is kind of, you know, we're, we're not modifying anything in that area of the combat. 00:10:01 And that's just, that's the same thing that, that it's been, um, through the years. What we can control or help control 00:10:09 and minimize is, is what gets lost through the rotor. And, and that's where a lot of things happen because, you know, you take, um, this time 00:10:18 of the year, it's pretty early, right? In our area, you know, in our neighborhood. So, so a lot of the plants, 00:10:23 even though they may have some like leaf blight or, or tar spot, a lot of green left on the top half of the corn plants yet. 00:10:30 Um, and, and in the soybean soybeans too, for that matter. So anytime it's green, that's, 00:10:36 that's gonna be a little bit more clingy. So as it's moving through from the head all the way back, that additional fodder, mog we would call it, 00:10:46 is in the rotor cage. And that's, that's basically obstructing the path that any of these seeds have to get out of the rotor cage 00:10:53 and into the cleaning system. So, so our system's kind of designed to be able to handle those high residue matters, 00:11:00 those high residue situations where you're bringing in a lot of extra material. Um, and then what we, ideally, what we want is we want 00:11:10 that MOG to stay in the rotor cage 'cause it's going from there to the chopper and then being spread out throughout the back 00:11:17 of the combine, you know, the, the residue system. So if we can keep the trash in there and get the grain out, that just simplifies the job 00:11:25 of the cleaning system that the combine has to do. So hopefully, you know, when things are really clicking and working right, which seems to be less and less just 00:11:34 because of the conditions that we have to harvest in lately. Um, you know, we're, 00:11:38 we're keeping the MOG in the rotor cage, we're separating the grains and making the th the cleaning system job by much easier. 00:11:47 So, so we're hoping, I mean, our system's designed to minimize the rotor loss to just virtually eliminate grain going 00:11:54 out the back of the rotor. Um, but a consequences of a consequence of that is, is to also minimize the trash that gets down on the chaffer 00:12:03 and sieve so that its job is easier. It's just separating maybe a little bit of cob or a few stem pieces and, 00:12:11 and the grain is staying clean and, and staying, you know, getting into the hopper for storage purpose 00:12:17 or sales purpose without all the extra material that, that, so oftentimes farmers just become numb to 00:12:24 because that's, that's the way it's always been, right? That's what they're used to. But, um, the, the thing you talked about with, uh, 00:12:31 southern rust and things like that, uh, that's not on my radar of why I need, you know, like I said, you're, you are in the business 00:12:41 of selling aftermarket concaves. There's the ones that come on my machine, particularly John Deere, 00:12:46 and then you make an aftermarket that fits a John Deere combine and you can make the case, uh, I can go faster, 00:12:54 I can harvest faster, which is money. Um, and also if I'm fighting, uh, potential weather threats, whatever, you can make the case quality 00:13:02 that we just talked about, mechanical damage. We're alleviating mechanical damage, which means I don't get docked on, uh, you know, 00:13:08 uh, bad grain. I take it to market. But then you talk about disease, I'm not sure I explain that one to me. 00:13:17 Okay, why would, if I have southern rust, why does a concave matter to me? I've, I've, I'm already losing, 00:13:22 if I've got all these diseases in my field, what the hell difference does it make? What's inside of my combine? 00:13:27 Yeah. And so I guess You probably get that question from more people than just me, Todd. 00:13:31 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and the best, um, I'll, I'll just give you an example. So it was probably, I don't remember if it was 19 00:13:40 or 20, I was working for our local John Deere dealership up here, and we had, um, O one, a couple farmers that 00:13:48 irrigated irrigated farms tar spot hit us bad. So not southern rust, but tar spot, and it, it pretty much decimated their crop. 00:13:57 I mean, they, these are irrigated farms in our neck of the country that are typically 2 50, 2 80 type yield fields on average just year after year. 00:14:06 Um, and, and, and late, you know, late harvest, like the, the, the Halloween time 00:14:13 of the year is typically when we're getting there. And so we, it was a week after labor day, um, corn was down to 14%. 00:14:21 The stalks were so weak and brittle. That's what the disease does to it. It may, you know, so as soon as your rolls, 00:14:27 your snapping rolls on the head, hit that stalk rather than, you know, y yanking the stalk down through the head, 00:14:35 the whole plant comes into combine. So that, that, now, now the combine and concave system has to deal 00:14:41 with not only getting the corn off the cob that's in a very disease struck state where, you know, 45, 44 pound test weight, um, 00:14:52 fragile ears and cobs, you know, that just wanna break right away, but not, so it's gotta get those kernels off those cobs, 00:14:59 which is tough, very adverse. And then add to the fact that all of that plant matter is now in the combine. 00:15:06 So now the threshing part is harder. Mm-hmm. But the separation part is a hundred times harder because you got all the plant, uh, 00:15:16 the entire plant came into combine. So what we saw that day was we had, um, one combine that was just struggling to get to two mile an hour 00:15:24 and a 12 row head, a hundred bushel of the acre corn is all it was. So it wasn't great corn. 00:15:30 Um, but at two mile an hour it was slinging seed everywhere. I mean, it was a literal replant job. 00:15:37 Um, and then, uh, and had another neighbor that had this, had our system at that time, it was the XPR two con case that, hey, you know, 00:15:47 I was, I was a little bit skeptical. I was still working for the dealership at the time, so I was like, eh, concaves kind of where your mind, a lot 00:15:54 of people's mind are now concaves, I, I got a new combine, what do I need new concaves for? 00:15:59 Well, he, he came into the field with the next pr two set of equipped combine. 00:16:04 He went four mile an hour, 4.2 mile, same speed. He'd been going, you couldn't hardly find a kernel of grain on the ground and it was able to thresh 00:16:13 and separate through all of the garbage of the situation that, that that current crop was. 00:16:19 So when you add disease, basically you're gonna add plant matter, you're gonna add additional, um, you know, 00:16:27 mog into the equation. And so if, if last year was a great, and a lot of people in our, especially our area, Damien, 00:16:32 where we had a pretty easy harvest last year. I mean, the, the crop was dry. The grain was dry, not a lot of rain to deal with, 00:16:40 no rain out days to speak up through, you know, not battling mud and all this. So, so it was pretty typical last year, not a lot 00:16:48 of disease, but, but you add a little bit of tar spot or the southern rust and it basically just makes all the leaves react different. 00:16:55 The plant is different. It's not as healthy as it what a healthy plant harvests nice. Um, a diseased plant. 00:17:03 It's just fragile and frail and you don't know what to expect. So if, if last year was a year where harvest was pretty good 00:17:10 and you weren't entirely pleased with the performance of your combine, um, I think it's gonna be worse this year. So, so like, like I said, just 00:17:19 because there's, there are most of the places, there's additional bushels. A lot of people are gonna have a bumper yield. 00:17:25 If you were under a rain in August, you're gonna have a good crop. And, and, and maybe they're, you know, so, so with the, 00:17:33 the bushels and the disease, you just, you just don't know. But, but at the end of the day, if you didn't love what job 00:17:40 that was getting done last year was, it's probably gonna be worse this year just by general observations of the crop and, and, 00:17:49 and the corn belt of the country. Anyway, I ask you a question about economics, um, because I, I, I think this is very important. 00:17:59 You know, we're, first off, we're in an industry where we got, we got sprayers that are so advanced. I mean, there we're talking about Wes, 00:18:06 there's million dollar pieces of equipment out here Yeah. Combines that are, you know, million dollar combines. 00:18:12 Um, a lot of this, you're like, how the hell do I pencil this out? Especially in this kind of a crop environment 00:18:17 and commodity prices, the thing about your product, it's like, it's, it's not comp on a comparative basis. 00:18:29 You're not talking about very much money. Um, that's what I think is neat about this. Yeah, it's an aftermarket thing. They weigh a ton. 00:18:36 Uh, God knows that commodity classic, one of 'em almost fell on me and I thought I was gonna, you know, break a toe. 00:18:40 But, uh, they, the, the return on something like this, because it's not very expensive, seems like you can, you can justify this pretty quickly. 00:18:52 Yeah. And so, you know, our, our, while in the, in the aftermarket world of Concaves, ours is up there for price. 00:18:59 I mean, it's, it's, it's probably the most expensive, but quite frankly, it should be. Um, because the, the benefit that you're gonna get is, 00:19:08 is easily justifiable, but you start talking, um, two bushels of grain. I mean, let, let's say conservatively two bushels of grain 00:19:18 and a corn crop for every acre that you harvest this year's market. Not real appealing, but, 00:19:25 but you know, what's even less appealing is letting it go. You know, I mean, so, so you're going to either this 00:19:33 Is eight bucks, there's four bucks, $4 quarters, eight bucks, uh, once I get over a thousand acres, I've got $8,000. Yeah. 00:19:39 And that's, that's year one, you know, and that's one crop year one. So, so you're talking, you know, that two, 00:19:45 and then a bushel an acre in the, in the beans conservative numbers. So you're, you're it, the loss itself 00:19:53 is the easy is the one everybody jumps to. That's where they start sharpening the pencil, how much can I save on loss? 00:19:58 Yep. And, and, and that's important. But more than that is, you know, you mentioned, you touched on how expensive this equipment is in general. 00:20:08 If, if you're a guy that's, that's trading combines, or even if you're not, but when you go to trade, the one thing they look at is, 00:20:13 is separator hours on your machine. So, um, you know, uh, uh, if you got a 30 foot head, whether it's a corn head, bean head, 00:20:20 and you can gain, we can gain you a half mile an hour of ground speed. And, and again, that's a, I'm gonna say 00:20:26 that's a conservative number of, of an increase in speed. Um, it's gonna be about three acres an hour, so, you know, 00:20:33 um, 30 acres and a 10 hour day. But when you start talking trade values of, and that's based on separator hours, if you can minimize, 00:20:45 you know, minimize your hours in a year's use by 20 hours, 50 hours, something like that, then, 00:20:52 and then you're talking, depending on where you're at in the country you may be and what model you have, you're 300 00:20:58 to $600 per separator hour of a trade value. So if you can, if you can minimize that by 20 Yeah, right? You're, you're, you're adding to the, the value of it. 00:21:10 So I mean, you, you're adding money in your pocket right then just because, yeah. 00:21:14 Now when you go to trade, Because just like a, just like a car, if it's got a hundred thousand miles on it is gonna be worth 00:21:20 less than a car that has 50,000 miles. All things being equal. Same thing on the machine. Uh, it's not just my time 00:21:26 or my hired guy's time, it's also the machine time, and there is a cost to machine time because they rent these machines by the hour. 00:21:33 Incredible cost. Yeah. I mean, that's why I say, like, you're, you may, you may, and you may buy a machine each year, 00:21:39 brand new combine each year, and you're used to putting 370 separator hours on it with a, with a traditional concave that comes with the combine. 00:21:47 Well, if you, you, you, you know, you factor that, you, you upgrade the concaves and all of a sudden you've got 330 hours on it, 00:21:54 you just save 40, 40 hours at 500 bucks an hour. You know, that's what, two grand in itself. Are you allowed to tell me how much I, 00:22:05 how much I wanna spend for a new set of ES Three? Yeah, so it varies. Yeah, we've got different, 00:22:09 um, configurations. Basically our concave only options start at about 7,000, uh, regardless of the maker or model. 00:22:16 And it can go all the way up to, for like an X 9, 15, 16, 17,000. Just depends on how it's configured. 00:22:24 Well, like you said though, uh, on a million dollar machine, if I can just peel off a few hours, uh, here 00:22:29 and there of, uh, use time, it makes it up for it. If I wanna learn more about this, and by the way, what we're talking about is, uh, 00:22:36 reducing time on the machine and you, uh, increasing the quality less mechanical damage and then obviously less grain loss going out the back 00:22:44 or, uh, through any other means. Uh, and maybe the concaves that came in your combine are not doing the job for you. 00:22:50 That's why you should check out these folks. His name's Todd Dale. The company's name is Estes Concaves. If I wanna learn more about it, where do I go? 00:22:57 Yeah, our website's the best place to go. It's just company name, estes performance concaves.com. Any, any Google search, any browser, punch it in. 00:23:07 We'll be happy to help you out. E-S-T-E-S, estes performance concaves.com. Check it out. They are a, uh, business partner here 00:23:15 of our forensic extreme ag and uh, we will see you again. Todd Dale. So he's an Indiana guy and I'm an Indiana guy. 00:23:21 So you know what, it's time for us, Indiana guys to get back to, uh, our other job. 00:23:25 Uh, he's gotta go farm. It's all to you. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme Ag Farm 00:23:33 for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 00:23:38 This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is brought to you by BASF, creating innovation 565 00:23:44.105 --> 00:23:46.365