Every harvest has its share of challenges, and the 2021 harvest is no exception.
Ken Ferrie says heavy disease pressure that occurred in parts of Illinois this summer caused corn to die prematurely – up to 45 days before the finish line.That contributed to more hybrids with poor standability. In addition, many of those hybrids now have rubbery cobs, making it tough on combines and drivers to get the corn shelled.
“I’ve seen some fields with 20-bu. per acre corn that wasn’t getting picked up. We’re leaving too much corn on the cob,” says Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist and owner of Crop-Tech Consulting, Heyworth, Ill.
Make Adjustments For Every Field, Hybrid
As you change hybrids and move from one field to the next, Ferrie says to stop and make some adjustments to your combine to counter those losses. You don’t want that corn going out the back of the combine and onto the ground.
“It’s lost yield and will also cause volunteer corn problems next spring,” he says.
In this brief video, Ferrie addresses some practical things you can do to identify what’s causing the losses and the changes you can make to alleviate them.
Additional Tips to Consider
The best way to optimize combine performance is to start with the settings recommended by the manufacturer for a specific crop, then make small adjustments. Keep specific goals in mind:
1. Minimize the amount of trash taken into the combine at the cornhead by adjusting ground speed and deck plate width.
2. Adjust concave clearance to produce half- or whole-length cobs. Any split cobs suggest concave settings are too tight.
3. Increase rotor speed until grain damage is evident, then back it down till damage is acceptable.
4. Set upper sieves only slightly wider than lower sieves. If an upper sieve is open twice as wide as the lower sieve, it would be good to re-think things.
5. Run cleaning fans nearly wide open unless harvesting chaffy, drought-damaged or flood-damaged corn. Upper and lower sieves work best when there’s enough air blasting through them to “float” crop material across them, allowing grain to filter down through the residue.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with various settings, but you’ll often be surprised to find that the optimum settings are somewhere in the ranges suggested by the combine manufacturer in the owner’s manual.
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