WINNIPEG – The unusual growing season is making a mess in combine hoppers.
Good crop is mixed with frozen and late maturing plants and spraying problems caused millions of acres to be infested with weeds.
While many producers are looking at the prospect of eventually running their crop through cleaners later this winter to improve grade, the big push now is to get the damp weed seeds out before they cause heating problems in the bin.
The biggest challenge is with kochia, millet and ragweed. Pockets of fine, wet seeds hold their moisture and heat up to spoil the entire bin. The wet pockets are so dense that the aeration fans cannot push air through the clumps.
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“We’re seeing everything imaginable this year,” said Don Flaman of Flaman Sales in Saskatoon. “There’s really top quality grain in some areas and in other areas, it’s nothing but junk and feed.
“What we’re hearing the most is there’s a whole bunch of grain that’s in between. The problem is that each truck might hold the whole range of grain.”
Tom Bocheck of Hodgeville Sask., bought a 572 Kwik Kleen cleaner three years ago. He will clean about 1,000 acres worth of peas and lentils before renting it out to other producers in the area. Later, he will use the cleaner again to take wheat out of canola and canaryseed, and try to upgrade some cereals.
“We have a lot of kochia in this area,” said Bocheck. “The crop coming in right now isn’t bad. It’s not No. 1, but it’s pretty good. But we absolutely must run it through the cleaner to get rid of the kochia before it’s binned. At the same time, we’re getting rid of the splits, so it’s doing two jobs. I’m not sure if we’ll pick up a whole grade, but we want to get those splits out anyway.”
The Hennenfent farm at Caronport, Sask., has only had its cleaner for a week, but Myrtle Hennenfent said it’s doing everything needed.
“We bought it because our flax had so much green kochia this year,” Hennenfent said. “Our bins were starting to heat, so we had to get that green stuff out. The bin temperatures dropped as soon as we got the kochia out. We still have a little dry kochia seed sneaking through, and we’d like to get that also, but at least that dry seed won’t heat.”
Gary Pratt at Bengough, Sask., is another new owner. In the few days since he bought his 572 in partnership with a neighbour, he has run through 5,000 bushels of peas.
“The only thing that escaped into the bin were some pods that wouldn’t fit through the smaller screen,” Pratt said. “All the small stuff is cleaned out 100 percent with the No. 10 screen. It took all the kochia and ragweed.
“If I can figure out how to get some air on it, I could clean to seed standards. I’ve got the air on in my bin and you can see a lot of stuff blowing out. But it’s not just a matter of adding air. It’s got to have somewhere to go. I’ve seen a setup where the air doesn’t really blow through. Instead, it sucks through or draws away from the grain. That might work better.”
Pratt said he will also use the cleaner to remove wild oats from his chickpeas and frozen wheat kernels from the spring wheat crop.
“My spring wheat is 80-90 percent good. Once I can figure out what screen to buy, I can get rid of all those shrunken kernels and get my grade up.
“On my coarse grains that were planted later, I’ve got about 50 percent good grain. If I can run the coarse grains to sort things out, I can get the weight I need to sell to the hog barn here. They need a certain weight. The only way I can do that this year is with the cleaner. We’ll earn the price of this machine back this winter for sure.”
Mike Greenstein at Richmound, Sask., has had his cleaner for two weeks. Like most other new owners, kochia is his main concern now. But there is one difference. Greenstein is getting the dry kochia along with the green stuff.
“So far, we’ve only run mustard and peas, but we’re getting everything out, even the dry kochia seed.”
