Henry Guenter was a service manager for Massey Ferguson for years.
Crop germination was good this year and many farmers felt they had a bumper crop in the making. Then it turned hot and dry, producing an abundance of small kernels.
Farmers may be thinking, “How will I ever save that canola? I had a hard enough time last year to cut my air down enough to keep it from blowing out the back of the combine.”
They may have reduced their speed, but then it took forever to harvest their canola. Let’s see if there is a better way.
Read Also
VIDEO: Green Lightning and Nytro Ag win sustainability innovation award
Nytro Ag Corp and Green Lightning recieved an innovation award at Ag in Motion 2025 for the Green Lightning Nitrogen Machine, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form.
First of all, canola isn’t blown out; it’s carried out, riding in the mats of trash that producers have created.
The canola plant breaks into small pieces and it all ends up on the shoe. Farmers will close the cleaning sieve down so that the cleaned canola can just fall through, as they have been taught for other crops.
Now they have the condition that practically no air is coming through a large part of the shoe and all this trash is coming down onto the shoe.
The trash is going right out the back, carrying the canola with it. How can farmers break up this pile of material? Blow air through it.
Farmers may worry that they will blow out the kernels with the trash, but they won’t. The kernels are round and they weigh the same as wheat, so they should have less of a tendency to blow out than wheat.
The bottom sieve is opened up so air can flow through it to get at the top sieve.
The first time a farmer tries this, he will probably plug the return system. The solution is to give it more air.
The more material he puts through the combine, the more air he will need.
Remember, you have to be able to lift up the whole mat of material and break it up. You will probably end up with the bottom sieve open one quarter of an inch and the top one open three quarters of an inch.
I am familiar with two brands of combines more than the others.
On the Gleaner with the accelerator rolls, the rolls have to be in good shape because the whole cleaning system depends on blasting the grain-chaff mixture spast the air so that the grain is already three quarters cleaned before it hits the shoe. This is more true of canola than any other crop.
On the conventional Massey you should use the fan dividers installed in 1983 as standard equipment. They will retrofit all other models from about 1973.
