Two prairie farmers who have used the Shore testers provide detail on their experiences.
Ken Leier
Sedley, Sask.
Leier had had his fill of cheap grain moistures when he found a Shore 920 being tested at the State Fair in Minot, North Dakota.
“We’ve had a number of cheap grain testers over the years, but you use them for a while and then they screw up, so I had already decided I was not going to by another cheapo,” he said.
Leier harvests his 8,000-acre farm with two combines, usually working together in the same field. He moisture tests in the field, which he said is especially important in years when he can truck from the combine directly to the elevator.
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“We had to get a new portable tester, but it had to be a good one this time. The quality testers you see in the elevator are all 110 volt and they must be perfectly level, so that didn’t suit us.
“And calibration was also a big pain. You can build significant errors into your whole test right off the bat if your calibration isn’t perfect. This 920 is always self-calibrated. You never need to touch it. And it eliminates all the conversion tables and papers blowing around in the field.”
He said with the 920, it takes him three minutes to do a sample.
“I open the metal suitcase, take the stuff out and set it up, weigh my sample and run it through. Everything is packed away again before three minutes is up. For us in recent years, it’s been a 40 mile (60 kilometre) one-way trip to the elevator when we needed an accurate test. Now we get the accurate test right in the field. This thing is saving us a lot of time and money.”
So far he has tested peas, lentils, barley, spring wheat, durum, oats and canola. He expects to shortly receive a free upgrade chip that will include the addition of canaryseed.
“We’ve taken some samples into the elevator to compare readings and it’s just like Lisa and Greg (Grengs) told us,” Leier said. “Every one of our samples was within point one of a percent of the elevator test. We can’t ask for anything better than that.”
Bob Mosset
Melita, Man.
Mosset has been using grain testers for 25 years and in that time he said he has used just about every tester on the market. Every load of grain on his 4,000-acre farm is tested before it goes into the bin.
“If you take my grain tester away, it would be like taking a mechanic’s tools away. You just can’t function,” said Mosset.
“It’s a pretty crucial piece of harvest equipment on our farm. Moisture is especially critical in canola.
“If you have canola at 10 percent, but your grain tester tells you it’s nine percent, you’ve got a real heating problem in about a month and you won’t even know it.”
The nearest elevator for Mosset is a 50 km round trip, too far to run in a lot of samples.
“And even if you do want to use their tester, they’re not open weekends or evenings. We can put a lot of grain in the bin while they’re closed. That’s why we absolutely need an accurate tester.”
He has used the meter only on wheat, canola and peas but when checking samples with the elevator, has found that the tester is right on every time.
“It’s always within one-tenth of one percent. And the elevators are calibrated by the government every six months, so you have to believe they aren’t too far off.”
