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He Dries His Crops In A Gravity Wagon
If you're a smaller farmer with more wet grain than you have places to dry it, you'll be interested in how one farmer solved the same problem.
"I was putting my empty gravity wagons in the pole barn and decided I should try to find a way to use them to dry my crops," says Rudy Layher, Saline, Mich., who has no bi
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He Dries His Crops In A Gravity Wagon GRAIN DRYERS Grain Dryers (29E) 19-1-9 If you're a smaller farmer with more wet grain than you have places to dry it, you'll be interested in how one farmer solved the same problem.
"I was putting my empty gravity wagons in the pole barn and decided I should try to find a way to use them to dry my crops," says Rudy Layher, Saline, Mich., who has no bins for on-farm storage.
Now Layher dries all his wet corn, soy-beans, wheat and oats in his grain wagons.
"In the 1970's, some wagons were manufactured with false floors for this purpose," he says, "but the idea never caught on."
To make his natural air drying wagons, Layher first bolts 2 by 4's lengthwise every 14 in. along the bottom of his wagons. Then he alternates 12-in. wide boards with 19-in. wide sections of grain bin flooring across the top of the 2 by 4's.
Next, Layher cuts a hole about a foot in dia. in the side of the wagon opposite the unloading door and about a foot from the top of the wagon. A 1 /2 or 3/4 hp electric fan inserted into the hole bolts to the out-side of the wagon and the joint is sealed with felt and plastic.
On the same side of the wagon, inside, Layher builds a false wall using 2 by 4's covered by wood that forces air from the fan down into the wagon's false floor to aerate grain.
Layher has installed the system on his 300 bu. wooden gravity box and on his 250 bu., 185 bu. and 125 bu. metal gravity wagons, which he uses to aerate wet corn, wheat and oats.
Drying time ranges from 10 days for wet, 20 or 21% moisture, corn to as little as a day and a half for wet oats, he says.
Layher covers the wagons with a tarp when he's aerating grain and can tell if the fans are operating properly simply by noting whether the tarp's billowed up.
Since Layher developed the system, he's never had a load of spoiled grain, he says.
Layher has about $130 invested in his system, including $67 for the roll of flooring.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Rudy Layher, 6675 N. Maple Rd., Saline, Mich. 48176-9504 (ph 313 429-9634).
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