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Leroy: Back when I did the ground ear corn in the 1970s, I harvested the first 3 years using a NH 890 forage harvester equiped with recutter screens fine enough to break all kernels. The harvester was also equiped with a 2 row snapper or combine - picker type head. The problems I encountered with this unit were; couldn't feed enough cobs fast enough to utilize horse power. Also found I was loosing a lot of fines from ground material to the wind. I then went to a combine with 4 row head. By using cylinder speeds similar to wheat or barley and setting concave at about 3/8", combine would break cob enough that most all went down through seives with grain. We then used the 890 harvester as a stationary grinder, feeding the material to it with self unloading silage wagons. This made far better use of 1066 hp and cut down on the field losses. Had a cleaner product as well. When it came to selling high moisture ear corn, my customer and I went to the local county Ag people, looking for a fair formula in pricing this product. the formula is actually quite simple . Lbs of actual product X % dry matter divided by .845. .845 being the accepted dry matter content of grain traded on open market. For example a ten ton load, 20,000 lbs, having a moisture content of 25% or 75 % dry matter. gives you 15,000 lbs dry matter divided by .845 equals 17,751.48 lbs of market grain. I mentioned the benefits for both parties in this deal in my previous post. The Ag people advised at the time corn cob meal was equal to corn grain as cattle feed. My customer got a ground product ready for feeding, he also provided the storage and got a harvest time price on corn. I had a market for corn I did not have room to store, did not have to pay any elevator or drying charges. I know some folks that still do this, one example involves several hundred ton. They divide the tonnage into 12 and customer pays by the month, but he also pays each months current market price. In my case it never involved a lot of tonnage, just a case of marketing a surplus. It worked well for a lot of years and we remained friends after the deal.
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