Grain Loss in Harvesting

A week or two ago there was a thread on here about crop loss behind the combine. I had to make a quick trip to east central Illinois over the weekend and I couldn't believe how many green fields I seen as I was traveling. Their were fields that I would have been ashamed for anyone to see they had so much corn in them. I am not talking about a sprout here and there either. I saw some fields that looked like they had been sown with corn. Am I missing something or what. I am pretty certain it was corn and not sudan grass or something. Maybe it is just people that like deere so much they want everything green.LOL JP  

The old E would leave very little in the field. I fired it up and did the last couple of acres of beans as my injection pump went bad on the L2. The L2 is new to me and real nice to operate but my old E is within my comfort range. It's such a nice little bean combine. A little slow in today's yields. Especially after running the L but it was so easy to adjust and get every little bean in the bin except of course the little extra shelling loss at the head vs the 315 on the L. Dad used to run 300 acres with an E and it would do a good job wether it was beans or corn or oats. We always fixed the machine ourselves except once he had a guy come out as Dad didn't own a torch. You know how many bearings I helped remove with a hammer and good chisel over the years! Not so much on the combine but that blasted Gehl 1500 baler was a bearing eater. I bet Dad could count on one hand how many bearings he put in the E but the Gehl baler would take a handful every year. Well, I guess I rambled enough.

You loose corn from stalks falling over, winds make that happen more. But certain varieties (often Pioneer) called race horse varieties cannibalize the stalk to finish filling the kernels and that makes them fall down sooner. Drying the corn in the field and so hoping it stands longer leads to more fallen down stalks. The dryer the ears the easier the heads knock off a few seeds.

The loss probably isn't nearly as bad as it looks, remember it took only about a third of a bushel to plant the field originally but if there were 30,000 plants originally loosing only 3 kernels per ear amounts to a bushel and its easy to knock three ears off the butt end of an ear in the corn head.

The biggest problem in beans is that with most varieties and years, there are pods laying on the ground but still attached to the stems and you just can't pick those up without splitting them and spilling two or three seed per plant. I've seen bean fields sprout from early harvest several times thicker than originally planted. And drying beans in the field (hardly ever dried in a dryer) can get the pods to splitting open from the heat of the sun and those beans hop right out of the pod when the combine gets close. The only good solution would be to follow with a big vacuum with a screen to separate seed from dirt and pebbles. At $2 a bushel it won't happen, at $12, its probably on somebody's drawing board.

Gerald J.

Jack, it's more circumstances than anything. First of all, the corn was dry at harvest which results in more losses, not much you can do about that. Second, those losses are always there but because of the weather those kernals germinated this year. And finally, an acceptable harvest loss is around 3 bushels per acre. That's about 240,000 kernals per acre or about 6 per square foot. If you walked out in the field and took a count you would find most of those losses in the neighborhood of being acceptable.

Maybe I should start work on the vacuum and separator so I can live off that $100,000 per farm that JD leaves behind.

It probably boils down to the fact that back in the 60's and 70's most people farmed a couple hundred acres or so and had time to slow down and do it right.

It is in the setting of the combines.  Deere's seem to leave more grain out there then any other brand.  I have a couple neighbors that just want to brag about how many acres they covered in a day then how many bushels went to town.  You can tell which acres were done with a Deere when you drive thru the country side......

I just got done driving from Washington State to Pennsylvania and Michigan and back and was amazed to see the different speeds that farmers were driving harvesting corn.  I swear the deere drivers were doing between 10 and 15 mph in the fields and the Gleaner and others were driving a reasonable speed.  It just amazed me to see them going so fast.  Could that be the reason for the excessive grain loss? 

Leonard  

   iagree with leonard  too much speed  talke to a fella[worker]   they had some common sense   shown   took the combine [ 8row]  went across the end 5mph    did not change combine  same field next 8 rows   3mph   no corn to speak of     told his father in law that has been happening every year an he would not beleive him  these new combines are tested on enginr torque an the driver is trying to get that pic  an as john says corn is dry    not pulling as hard   an it is going on thru    was also lotld the deeres

In our area there were so many small ears that went through the stripper plates and was shelled with the rollers. Plus the moisture was 12% makeing it shell off easy.   MACK

I haven't seen any sprouting corn this year but it's Minnesota. My experience is over many years. In the spring you can go from one farmer's field to another farmer's field and see a difference in voluntary corn. That tells me harvest loss could be from one or two reasons. Either the two farmers have two very different variety of corn or one is a poor combine operator. There is a third and it's if the farmer with the volunteer corn problem used an inferior harvester. Like an old IH or Oliver picker or a John Deere combine pre 1980's. I'm not kidding. You could pick out the John Deere fields in the spring 25 or 30 years ago back when I first was getting serious about farming. That's when I started paying attention. 

Think modern days.  Way back when, it was colder than a well digger's butt and arond thanksgiving when folks were still puttering in the fields.

All brands are made to do the job.  But it still comes down to setting the machine and using common sense in speed and looking behind the combine for grain left in the fields.  Also stopping and looking between the header and the rear of the combine to see where the grainloss is coming from, header shatter or out the rear of the combine.  It's doesn't take rocket science to figure out where the grain is coming from...

2 years ago my tennant must have left 1/4th of the corn on the ground. It was just like Jack was seeing. A week after harvest, the fields looked like the lawn until we got a hard freeze.

Most people are in such a hurry to get things done today.They just wont take the time to stop the combine and check!!