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Pros Provide Tips for Preventing Grain Quality Issues and What to Do if They Arise

Reprinted from GRAIN JOURNAL March/April 2020 Issue

This article is based on a panel discussion on grain quality, given in February at the Grain and Feed Association of Illinois’ annual convention in Springfield. The panelists were: Drew Partain, manager, Ladd Elevator Co., Ladd, IL (815-894-2321); Russ Seegers, plant superintendent, The DeLong Co. Inc., Harvard, IL (815-943-7424); and the late Kevin Miles, president, Rolfes@Boone, Boone, IA.

Signs of Out-of-Condition Grain

Russ Seegers: For commercial bins equipped with temperature cables, a variance of 5 to 7 degrees F or more should get your attention. There likely is a condition in your bin upon which you need to act.

At my facility, our employees check the bin temperatures each Friday. If there is a problem, we typically can rectify it by running the aeration through the weekend.

Temperature cables also allow you to monitor the headspace. If the headspace temperature is abnormal compared to your ambient temperature, that’s another indicator of a grain quality issue.

So after making these observations, it’s time to look inside the bin. Frost or condensation on the underside of the bin roof, as well as drip marks on the surface of the grain, indicate a moisture issue. A sweet smell inside the bin is an early indication of wet grain. If the smell is sour, the grain has been wet for quite some time already, and it’s going out of condition.

Dark spots at the peak in the center of the grain mass and moisture inside the fill conveyor to the bin are additional signs of out-of-condition grain.

Coring a Bin

Drew Partain: When you fill a bin in the fall, the clock starts ticking on grain quality. As time goes on, fines will condense and harden in the center of the bin, preventing you from aerating. That’s why coring your bin is a necessity. The ultimate goal with coring is to get a bin coned out all the way to the wall, but that’s not something you can do easily or quickly. However, even coring as little as 10,000 bushels out of a 500,000-bushel bin will make a tremendous difference down the road.

There isn’t much you can do about the quality of grain coming into your facility, but if you have a customer with consistently high quality, ask to share his or her combine settings your other customers to help them improve.


The ultimate goal with coring is to get a bin coned out all the way to the wall, but that’s not something you can do easily or quickly. However, even coring as little as 10,000 bushels out of a 500,000-bushel bin will make a tremendous difference down the road.

-Drew Partain, Ladd Elevator Co.


Aeration Basics

Kevin Miles: Elevator operators need to know the level of airflow their aeration systems are providing. If you don’t know your airflow, then you also don’t know how long to run your fans to achieve a particular moisture level; you’re just guessing.

The best type of aeration comes from a positive system, where air flows from the bottom up through the grain and out the top. It is recommended to have a combination of power roof exhausters and free-air vents on the bin roof to help remove the heavier, high-moisture air from the headspace. Without power exhausters, the moisture from the air can condense on the roof deck, then drip on the surface of the grain and create a quality problem.

Negative aeration systems, on the other hand, pull down all of your fines to the bottom of the grain mass, which will plug up your perforations. If your perforations are not clean, you will not get proper air distribution through the grain mass. Remember that air takes the path of least resistance.

In addition, some people do not realize that bins are designed for particular aeration levels. For example, if a bin is designed for 5-hp fans but you use 10-hp fans, you’re not getting better or more efficient airflow. You’ve created a situation where your aeration system is pushing air into the bin quicker than it can handle. This results in the air looking for the easiest path to dissipate, rather than traveling through the entire grain mass.

Checking Aeration Fans

Partain: Ideally, you’re checking the temperature of stored grain once a week. That is easy to do if you have a grain temperature monitoring system connected to a computer. If you don’t have that technology, and someone has to check grain temperatures manually, it’s much more difficult to stay on top of a diligent monitoring schedule.

In addition to weekly temperature checks, you also should visually inspect the top of the grain mass once per month to verify that there isn’t a sweet or sour smell.

Seegers: One of the reasons that diligent monitoring and aeration plans are so important is that grain quality problems snowball so quickly. If you don’t catch a grain quality problem before it develops, it can be too late to stop a disastrous situation. And as you probably know, out-of-condition grain also creates a big safety hazard.

Handling Out-of-Condition Grain

Partain: When you discover out-of-condition grain in storage, the first thing you do is aerate it, regardless of the weather. Next, you need to transfer the out-of-condition grain to another bin or ship it.

If the sumps become plugged, we like to enter the tunnels beneath the bin and use compressed air to dislodge crusted grain. It’s not comfortable down there, but it is much safer than entering the bin.

Seegers: One of the most important qualities of a good grain facility manager is knowing how to react swiftly to out-of-condition grain. If you detect hot grain in a bin, there’s one word you should remember, “ACT,” which stands for:


A sweet smell inside the bin is an early indication of wet grain. If the smell is sour, the grain has been wet for quite some time already, and it’s going out of condition.

-Russ Seegers, The DeLong Co. Inc.


A – Avoid entering the bin. Out-of-condition grain is extremely unsafe. Use openings in the bin to look inside rather than enter.

C – Cool the grain. You can do this by running the aeration system in the bin. If there is too much moisture in the bin, you may need to transfer the out-of-condition grain to another bin to aerate it.

T – Take samples and inventory. You need to determine the severity of the situation by checking how deep the problem is and the moisture and temperature. You need to sample the grain for valuable information about the problem, such as how much damage has been done.

I recommend using these situations as opportunities to show your employees what out-of-condition grain looks and smells like. Explain what has happened to the grain, so they gain firsthand knowledge about the scenario.

Tucker Scharfenberg, managing editor