RED DEER Ñ When Ray Dreger started working at Agricore United’s Crop Protection Centre in Red Deer, he was treating seed out of a barrel with a pump and nozzle.
“We’d fasten it to an auger off the bin and it would mix up as it went up through it,” he said.
“That was fine as long as we were only using one product. But when we started using other products for different cereals Ñ they were water-based and other ones were petroleum-based Ñ you couldn’t use the same pump.”
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.
About that time, AU inherited an elevator near Sylvan Lake, Alta., that included machinery and equipment taken from a fertilizer blending plant.
“A co-worker, Bob Layton, and I went out and there was an electronic scale there,” Dreger said.
“We thought a seed treater with a scale would be an ideal thing.”
Dreger and Layton dismantled an old spin spreader to get the wheels and axles. The frame around the scale had a digital readout that they raised and mounted on the wheels. An auger they found in the grass at the old elevator was placed under the unit and a G3 treater from Bob Graham was installed.
They bought channel iron to make the frame and the old spin spreader provided part of the hitch, axle and wheels.
“We bought some expanded metal, channel iron, angle iron, then basically time,” he said.
“We didn’t have to do too much tweaking to it, once we decided what we wanted to do. We can actually treat five different products, or carry five different chemicals with us while we go around the yard treating the grain.”
The final product is a two-wheeled trailer with a 125 bushel hopper.
“We have two 240 litre containers on there for chemical, plus two 30 L containers,” Dreger said.
“The fifth one, we use out of the shuttle it comes in. It has an A hitch on the front; I use a forklift to move it around.”
The seed bins at the AU facility are serviced with 480 volt electricity but the seed treater has a transformer that also provides Dreger with 110 volts. The auger’s electric motor is 480, while the scale, chemical pumps and air compressor run at 110.
“We have a flow-controlling cone from the hopper into the G3 treater. It comes out about 21 bu. a minute and that’s pretty accurate, whether it’s wheat or barley.”
Grain from the treater drops into a seven-inch auger powered by a five horsepower electric motor at the bottom of the auger.
“The reason we put it at the bottom was because of the extra weight,” Dreger said.
“I’ve got a boat winch so I can raise or lower the auger. Sometimes we fill those drill-fill boxes they put in the backs of the trucks. I can fill those just by raising it up. Then I need to lower it so I can get it indoors where we store it.”
Forward and reverse on the motor allows cleanouts through a trap in the bottom. An air compressor, plumbed to make air easily accessible on the top of the treater, allows Dreger to blow it down when he switches grain varieties.
“When we’re changing products, I have to blow out the hopper at the bottom where it goes into the auger, as well as the G3 treater. And there’s always a little hangup in the hopper, so I’ve got a wand up there to blow that down.”
A control panel on the side adjusts seed treatment flow rates.
“The way it’s set up is all of our pumps are at a pre-set pressure, so I don’t have to adjust the pumps at all, other than when I start up in the spring,” he said.
“The panel pressure is the only one I adjust. The only reason I have to adjust that is there’s a different rate of application for wheat or barley. Once this thing is started, all I have to do is stand there and watch it.”
Dreger mounted a shelf above the control panel, on which he keeps grain samples to show customers how their grain will look when it is treated.
“When we treated with the pump, out of the barrel and into the bin auger, I didn’t want to brag to too many people that I did that job. But I’m not afraid to brag about it now. I feel good about doing it for these guys.”
The scale is a real advantage, he said.
“We don’t use the scale for trade, but in a lot of cases, a guy comes in and wants 80 bu. There’s a lot of treaters in the country where they guess at 80 bu., then weigh the guy and he’s over or under. With this one, I can weigh out 80 bu., treat it, weigh it over the yard scale and it’s dead on.”
Dreger said when treating grain, the product must be shut off before the last of the grain leaves the hopper to make sure chemical doesn’t go through the auger.
“With the scale, you can watch it read down to 30 lb. You shut your product off while there’s still enough grain to mix out the last little bit. So it’s really handy.
“We’ve had it happen where a customer comes in and has booked 100 bu., but he’d like 120. Then you give the next guy 105 and the next guy 115. Finally, when the last guy shows up, there’s no grain left. So it’s nice that way. If you’re short, you know everybody still gets their fair share.”
Dreger said the scale is especially helpful at the end of seeding, when a farmer might be short a few bushels to finish a field.
“If he needs 42 bu. to finish, he comes in, I weigh out 42, treat it and he’s gone. He doesn’t have any left over then. What do they do with leftover treated seed? I’m more comfortable doing it for them so they don’t have to bag 20 bu. of treated seed.
“A fellow came in and was short a little bit. He didn’t want to bring the truck in, so he pulled in with his air seeder and I put in however many bushels he needed in the hopper on my treater. I can move that treater loaded with grain with the forklift. So I moved it to the cart on his seeder and treated right into it. Then out to the field he went.”
Last spring Dreger treated a 2,005 bu. load, the biggest of the season. For loads bigger than 125 bu., he sets the bin augers at 25 to 30 bu. a minute, which is faster than the treater.
“Normally what I do there is I pull up under the bin, shut my hopper gate, start the auger up and run it for three minutes into my hopper. I’ll know how many lb. I’ve got in there and convert that to bu. Then I’ll divide how many bu. the customer wants, so I know how many minutes I have to run the bin auger.”
He said running the bin auger faster than the treater auger means he never has to shut off the treater.
“Another thing I’ve noticed is other treaters might have trouble with certain chemicals. They would have to dilute them, then put more on to get the same coverage. My theory is they run their auger too slow.”
With this in mind, he sets the output auger on the mobile seed treater to run faster than a typical auger. Different sprockets on the drive end give it a little extra speed.
Dreger said this speed provides extra mixing, eliminates plugging and allows him to use the seed treatment chemicals straight out of the drum as recommended rather than diluting them.
“All the bins we have seed grains in are hopper bottom and each has an auger of its own,” he said.
“I move the treater from bin to bin with a forklift. The closer you are to having the scale centre underneath the auger, the more grain I can get in it. So I go out with a can of spray paint and directly below where it comes out of the auger I painted a round circle on the ground. Where the bottom of the auger and the little trap door is, I can see that. As long as the trap door is over that spot, it works out pretty good.”
By using the mobile treater rather than treating through the bin auger, Dreger doesn’t have to worry about contaminating the auger system. He can run grain through the bins and back out with no treated grain in the system.
“We do have customers who come in and don’t want their grain treated. In the past, when we treated through the bin augers, there was always treated seed to clean out.”
Dreger doesn’t think he spent more than $1,000 on materials, but much of the treater came from salvaged parts. He said two men spent two or three months putting it together.
The facility treats only wheat and barley and doesn’t apply inoculant.
