Salvaging Feed Grain From Damaged Storage Structures

May 17, 2022

By Warren Rusche

The windstorm that hit South Dakota on May 12, 2022 left an extensive damage in its wake, including damage to grain bin structures. Taking prompt action can help minimize value loss in stored grain.

Safety first.

Before beginning any salvage or clean-up operations, managers need to be certain that is safe to do so. Check carefully for any structural damage that could increase risk of bodily injury. Check to make certain that there are no live electrical circuits that could pose an electrocution risk.

Be mindful of foreign material.

With the amount of damage to structures, equipment and trees that occurred, it is anyone’s guess what else might be a pile that is supposed to just be corn, soybeans or wheat. Some feed handling equipment are equipped with magnets, but additional screening might be necessary.

Check with insurance carriers.

As with most issues related to storm damages, checking with insurance carriers and adjustors needs to be one of the initial stages of the process. At the very least, document what damages occurred, retain any laboratory or moisture test results and record what was done to preserve grain value.

Move sound grain to alternative markets or storage.

Much of the grain will be fine, provided it has not been wet. Moving that grain as quickly as possible to another bin site or to market will prevent any additional value loss.

What to do with grain that has become wet?

Some of the grain in damaged structures may have gotten wet because of the rain associated with the storm. Risk of additional damage increases depending on when the next rainfall event occurs. Heat damage and mold growth can occur quickly, so time is critically important. There are options that could be employed, depending on the situation and the moisture content of the grain.

Blend it off.
This might be the best solution if the proportion of the total bin that was exposed to moisture is small. If the moisture content of the final mix is less than safe storage limits, there may not be any additional steps required, although checking for hot spots and/or running aeration fans would be prudent.
Drying grain.
If the grain cannot be blended, artificial or natural-air drying is another option and likely the best one if feeding to livestock quickly is not feasible. This is likely not an option for excessively wet (soaked) grain.
Incorporating into livestock diets.
- Wetter corn incorporated into cattle diets can work well. Keep in mind that wet grain will heat quickly, reducing feed quality and increasing the risk of mold and mycotoxins. For this reason, feeds must be fed quickly to use this option if airtight storage is not available. Finding larger-scaled feedlots is an option because of their ability to use more feed per day.
- This option is less feasible for soybeans or other grains. Soybeans should be fed at less than 7% of the diet dry matter for growing calves and 5% for finishing cattle. Because of these limits, feeding whole, wet soybeans would be impractical except under limited circumstances. Feeding damaged wheat is more feasible; for more information please view Feeding Damaged Wheat to Cattle.
Ensiling wet grain. Wet grain can be stored in bunkers or bags to be fed at a later date. Grain needs to be between 25% to 35% moisture for proper fermentation and must be packed and covered to preserve value.

Source : sdstate.edu

Video: Can Gene Editing Give Seeds a Stronger Start?

Reagan Reed has a way of describing his research that might make a plant breeder pause.

“I’m the sort of person who likes to break things to understand them,” he says.

What he breaks are genes involved in seed germination. Reed, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, is investigating whether changing those genes can help seeds establish healthy plants under a wider range of conditions.

Reed recently attended the National Association for Plant Breeding meeting in College Station, Texas, as an NAPB Borlaug Scholar. His work speaks to a question that matters well beyond a research lab: what does it take for a seed to get a crop off to a strong start?

A seed that germinates quickly, alongside the others planted with it, spends less time vulnerable to stresses before seedlings become established.

“If you’re able to bridge that gap between germination to stand establishment, then that’s going to give you the highest probability of having a solid yield that year,” Reed says. “There’s a bunch that can go wrong after that, but it maximises your yield from the start, at least.”

Reed works in Dr. Imtiyaz Khanday’s lab at UC Davis, where his research focuses on seed quality in tomatoes and potatoes. He brings an unusual academic background to the work: at Skidmore College, he studied both biology and Latin.

Reed believes that combination prepared him for research. Translating an ancient text means studying each word, weighing its possible meanings and using context to reach the best interpretation. There is rarely a way to know with complete certainty what an author intended. Science, he says, requires a similar willingness to work through uncertainty.

“Attention to detail and comfortability working with uncertainty,” is how he sums up what Latin taught him.

In the lab, uncertainty can produce a surprise. Reed describes changing one gene and seeing little effect. Changing a second gene also appears to do little. Put both changes in the same genetic background, though, and the result can be substantial.

“I break this gene, nothing really happens. I break this other gene, nothing really happens. I combine them into the same genetic background, and now there’s a massive effect,” he says.

Those interactions matter as researchers gain the ability to edit multiple genes at once. They also complicate any simple account of how a trait works: improving a seed may depend on understanding what several genes do together.

For Reed, the question is whether that knowledge could help seeds germinate reliably when conditions are difficult. Some of the genes he studies prevent germination under certain conditions. That response may serve a plant well in one setting while limiting its usefulness in agriculture. He wants to learn what happens when those genes are changed, and whether the result improves establishment.

Yet a discovery that works in a lab still has a long way to travel before it reaches a field. Reed argues that agricultural biotechnology faces an economic challenge as well as a scientific one. New tools can create value for farmers, he says, but developing them requires a way to support the work in an industry where margins can be thin.

His fellowship with Flagship Pioneering gave him a view across AI, agriculture-related work and human health research. It also reinforced the importance of bringing people with different expertise into the same conversation—a benefit of gatherings such as the NAPB meeting.

“You need to have a team of people with different backgrounds who are willing to work together and approach the same problem in different perspectives and different ways,” he says.

That thinking connects the different parts of Reed’s path. Latin taught him to examine details without expecting a perfect answer. Gene editing lets him test what individual genes do—and what happens when their effects combine. Working with people beyond his own field helps him ask what those findings could become.

He came to agriculture because of its reach: the possibility that work by a small group of researchers could eventually make a difference on a much larger scale. His immediate focus is smaller and more precise. He wants to understand what helps a seed get through its first days and become a healthy plant.