How's your grain condition?

[Jim Meade / Iowa City]

I'm getting warnings from one of my buyers that some grain is going out of condition already.  Why would this be?  Is it that we had a moderately dry harvest and no one is dryiing the grain?  I've run my fans for quite a while this fall and especially during the cold days so I don't see any problems when I look in my bins, but it is hard to see what is going on inside.

One may not like to core a bin during the market action, and I guess I will not, but I can see why it might pay if grain is questionable. 

[rawhide]

i have two drying bins and have to haul some to finish harvest.when the first bin was dry the first load to come out was cake-like and really piled up in the truck so i thought i really screwed up but it tested 15 %  i think we here in indiana had really better keep a close eye on it. i am going to take the center out of the other one as soon as the weather straightens up

[nwobcw]

  On a slightly different note, I have heard of some vomitoxin present again in the area.  I never had heard about it before last year and had to return a load of corn to the elevator that the catlle refused to eat.  They tested it and it came back close to 6 ppm.  5 ppm is the limit for cattle and 3 ppm for hogs.  So I was told.

[Nebrfarmr]

From past experience, late planted corn, especially late planted corn that has been 'hurried up' by a frost, needs careful watching.  For some reason, it doen'st 'slick up' as well, and it gets wetter after being in storage for a while.  My dad used to theorize that the frost made the outer part of the kernel 'freeze dry' and after you put it in the bin, moisture from the center of the kernel would 'sweat' its way to the outside, and cause problems.  A couple years ago, when I had corn not quite black layered before the killing frost, it was coming out of the bin at 14.8%, and it was standing like a wall, and actually 'warm' in a couple places.  However, once it went through an auger, it seemed fine.  My other bin was actually a little wetter at 15.3%, and it was fine, as I had a stirring machine in the bin, and ran it overnight every two or three weeks until I emptied the bin.