Coffee Row: Chatting preseason combine preparation 

A big part of successful farming is maintaining your equipment, and farmers know that the key to smooth operations during harvest is calibrating your combine. Today’s combines are high-tech, with several components that farmers fine-tune to achieve the best possible results. When your combine is in top working condition, you can optimize yield and minimize loss at harvest time. 

We spoke with growers and industry experts from Saskatchewan and Manitoba about preparing for harvest along with the technology available to help through this busy season. 

 Christina Jones, C&E Farms, Wadena, SK 

“This time of year is about making sure that all our settings and calibrations are still aligned to what they were last fall. We go through our fleet of multiple combines, checking each to ensure the settings are still accurate. There should be consistency in adjustments across all units where limits are true, and everything is functioning as it should be. Every farm has their set of magic numbers that they use. 

A big focus is the calibration of the yield monitor. A lot of guys aren’t willing to spend the time to get a yield monitor properly calibrated. However, without a proper yield number at the end of the season, you don’t really have a metric to measure your performance and see if any of those specialty chemicals or fertilizers or things that you’ve tried and tweaked this year paid off for you.” 

Donald Holod, Aberhart Farms, Langenburg, SK 

“The combines all go through the shop to make sure they’re ready to go. Prior to the meeting, Hent works on all the guidance lines and profiles for the combines. Once Adrian and I create a schedule, we have a meeting with all of our team to plan positions, hours, schedules, logistics and what each person’s role will be.  

Then, we bring in industry experts like Claas to conduct a combine training clinic on the farm to share learnings about the new headers. We’re going to have MacDon come out for our planning day with all the carts set up. Everyone will be trained, making sure everything is working. 

We run drop pans. Last year before the drop pan, we figured out we were throwing about a bushel and a half an acre in the canola over until the drop pan. At 20 bucks to 30 bucks an acre in canola alone on 8,000 acres, just running the drop pan and knowing what our losses were, we probably saved $200,000 based off digging in the dirt and looking versus what the drop pan was showing us. There was a huge return on that.” 

Marcel Kringe, Bushel Plus Ltd. – The Harvest Optimization Company, Brandon, MB 

“A lot of combines are not dialed into spec – and it’s not always to the blame of the user or driver. It’s not always user error. There’s a lot of parts inside that require proper setup.  

First of all, you need the right tools that of course, we have available. It goes beyond the equipment though. Our focus is also on education about how to use these tools as well as how to set up the combine properly and where your measurements should be. 

Before even getting into the field, there’s a lot of things we can calibrate and set up. 

During harvest, we’re considering how to reduce the losses. That has a lot to do with the ground speed and sieve settings as well as the wind openings and concave clearance. What is often forgotten is the importance of the header settings 

Farmers are now able to push combines harder and cover more acreage per hour when equipped with the right tools, technology and knowledge. The investment in your combine is cents to acres and most farmers see that this preemptive training and Bushel Plus’ harvest optimization products pay off within the first days in the field.” 

Trevor Millsap, Redekop Manufacturing, Saskatoon, SK 

“Our company originally started with the MAV chopper, which helped spread a wider and finer cut, optimizing residue management and significantly reducing toxic chaff and improving seeding performance. We started to see farmers experiencing weed management and herbicide resistance issues, and we naturally evolved into creating our Seed Control Unit (SCU) for mechanical harvest weed seed control, which eliminates the throw-over and reseeding of weeds within the crops. 

With our SCU, if volunteer canola or weeds go through the back end of the combine, they drop into two side-by-side impact mills that spin in opposite directions. The weed seeds are destroyed by the velocity and impact, which prevents them from being viable and reseeded within the crop the following year.  

We recently hosted a presentation with Dr. Breanne Tidemann at Ag in Motion in July, who spoke to all the herbicide and resistant weeds we’re now seeing in Western Canada that appeared five years earlier in Australia. We first introduced our SCU to Australia, and our results have been a 97 to 98 per cent kill rate on those resistant weeds. 

Essentially, this combine technology is creating opportunity for farmers to do away with resistant weeds as well as reduce chemical usage on their land. They are already making these passes in the fields at harvest, why not make it a seedbed preparation tool, weed reduction tool and help the environment – all in one pass. It is extremely efficient and makes great agronomic sense.”  

We wish you all a safe and abundant harvest! If you are thinking ahead about what happens post-harvest, make Bio-Sul application part of your plans. Contact your local GFL Ag representative to learn more.