grain dryer operating cost

been thinking about a grain dryer after looking at
what the elevator charges me (12 cents per % point
per bushel). what would be the operating cost for
an older small dryer unit (i've priced a used Farm
Fans AB 500 and an AB350) propane in my area is
1.79/gal right now. I don't know much about grain
dryers and am just researching at the moment.

thanks, paul

Batch dry or continuous flow? Ambient air temp at 70, 40, or 25 degrees F?

ambient air temps are usually 30-40 degrees and don't know what type of dryer i will end up with batch or cf ...cf sounds better but open to suggestions opinions.

How many acres are you talking?

not that many right now i'm trying to figure at what point it pencils out to get one.

I have a John Deere 550 batch dryer that holds 550 bu per batch.Our corn moistures were all over the place,from 19 to 32%.We did 6000 bu and my cost for lp ran 34 cents per bu.I guess that I should add something for diesel for the tractor that provided the pto power.

Consider that moisture dock includes the weight of the extra water in the grain. Bins work better as a harvest tool----no waiting, open 24 hours and weekends. Air flow alone will take out 4 t0 5 points of moisture if you don't have to rush.

about how long does it take to remove those 4-5 points just using air??

Look closely at what it costs to set up a holding bin of some sort and the extra grain handling equipment it takes to keep a dryer fed with corn, and the equipment it takes to get the corn from the dryer to the bin. You don't need to have new stuff by any means, but sit down and add everything up, including extension cords for electricity, gas line, gas tank, cost of running the fan whether it's tractor PTO or electric and the coinciding tractor fuel bill or electric bill. What happens when a bearing goes out in the dryer in the middle of the night? Limit switches fail, thermostats go bad, motors burn out, gas regulator starts leaking, auger bottom wears through? I assume you plan to home store the dried grain. Figure in the cost of hauling it from the bin to the elevator whenever you decide to sell.

If it goes to the elevator wet from the field and they dry it, you've handled it one time only. The rest is up to them. That's part of what you're paying them for with the $.12. If you dry your own you're running it through several operations before it goes to market. The drying cost in town includes the handling equipment too and you only pay for drying shrink, not the handling shrink you will have at home but you don't notice. After all these comparisons, if you can do it cheaper at home, go for it.

I'm NOT trying to discourage you from drying and storing your own grain at all. You just need to know what your end cost is. What do you plan to do with the corn if you store it at home? Grind it for feed? Or make a cash sale sometime down the road. Home storage does give you flexibility if you have more than one market to sell to. Storing in town takes away that flexibility. I home store corn but I have three different markets within seven miles and another higher paying market 17 miles away. Some is stored in town and the drying bill is probably in the mail. Jim

As some of the other posters have pointed out, there are plenty of little costs...

But I am a big proponent of drying at home. I have a 20 year old MC 670, 3 phase, natural gas. While it is impossible to know for sure, as I don't moisture test and weigh every load, my gas and electric seems to average about 1.25 cents per point... less with cheap natural gas the past few years.

I can usually figure on spending $250-500 in repairs a year. This year it was a circuit board for the igniter- was around $230.

Getting set up is the biggest cost, as new auger widgets are expensive. It can be done, though.

Also keep in mind the hidden costs at the elevator... while there is some shrink in drying, it is not what the elevator charges. I have no 15 cent fee to put corn in storage, nor do I pay a load-out fee. As of today, the cash bid at the elevator is 30 cents less than the ethanol plant, and they are 10 miles apart. Kind of a no-brainer where to take things.

A well known ag marketing guru has said that you either pay for your own bin or someone else's. The choice is yours. Drying grain will take some management, but it sure beats waiting in line at the elevator.

Zeb, an easy way to get into grain drying is to buy a portable PTO batch dryer. Electric is fine if you have a heavy enough service. I have two GT 500 bushel dryers I use (They use the name Tox-o-wick also). They still make them. New ones run well over $20,000. Popularity depended on the dealer network. I know one community where there are still 30 GT driers running according the dealer in the area. I have one at each farm of which both have inadequate electric service presently. I was moving the drier from farm to farm, but find it easier to just set them up in the fall before harvest. I run roughly a 60 horsepower tractor on it. I run a plenem temperature just under 200 degrees and typically bring the grain up to 100 degrees. Wetter grain might have to be dried 1 1/2 hours while drier grain might take 15 - 30 minutes. It really doesn't take much PTO power so some batches loading/heating/cooling/unloading takes less than 4 gallon of diesel. I haven't looked at my lp tank since I was done, otherwise I could give you a better idea of cost. My lp this summer was $1.25 a gallon. It is pretty efficient. This nice thing about drying outside of a bin is that you know what is in the bin because you put it in there in that condition. Dryer/tractor run when I am in the field getting next batch. Shuts the heat off automatically when it is dry. Loads in 15 minutes/unloads in 15 minutes. Nothing is automatic, but it is very very cost effective. Have put 20,000 + bushel through them in a year. I know a guy that was running 30,000 bushel a year using a PTO batch dryer. Another guy I knew had three of them running at the sametime - they might have had over 1000 acres of corn. If you would like to talk we could figure that out someway.

When we used the old batch driers you could dry corn from 20% to 14% for about 30-35 cents per bushel cost for electric and $1.50 propane. You still will have the shrinkage. That usually figures about 1.1% per point of moisture.

Most continuous flow dryers require a cooling bin and that had better have a good air floor. You will have more drying capacity with them set to continuous but you can have trouble with cooling the corn in a bin.

A batch dryer that drys and cools is the simplest but will be slower than a continuous dryer but your corn is done when it comes out.

A tower dryer is the best drying system but they are not cheap and I do not know of small ones.

When drying corn there is more involved than just the dryer. You need to get the corn into the dryer and out of it an into storage. This takes more equipment. Also how much electric capacity do you have??? A drying system can easily take 200 amps plus. Mine uses every bit of 400 amps.

Good friend uses a PTO driven GT (Gilmore and Tate) brand batch dryer. He drys 500 bushels in about 2 hours. His cost in diesel and propane runs about 40 cents per bushel to take out 6 points. The dryer has a loading auger on the rear and dumps out a spout on the top. He spots a wagon to empty the dryer into and has a electric drive auger to take the grain into his machine shed to store the corn on a concrete pad. He dries the corn to 13.4-14% and does not have aeration. He gets by fine storing until late the following spring or early summer at the latest.

Drying corn does not just involve the cost of electric and propane. It takes time and effort to watch the dryer and keep everything working. So unless you have bins, augers, and good electric service you will find the total cost of drying is more than your think. You need to think about your time management while harvesting to see if a dryer will work for you.

I started out drying with a PTO dryer and then in bin drying with stirators. Then a batch dryer and now a tower dryer. One common issue with them all. LABOR/time. I have spent many nights sleeping a few hours at a time while watching a drying system work.

So the elevator may not be as "high" as you think when you figure all the cost.

Lets figure 5 points moisture, 5.5% shrink, on $4 corn That is 22 cents. Then propane and electric at 30 cents. So you have 52 cents per bushel without any labor. So the elevator at 12 cents per point times 5 equals 60 cents is not much higher, if they do not charge shrinkage as well. Actually if you count labor and maintenance it would be a wash.
GT dryers Gilmore and Tate Clay Center, KS

I like that statement "you either pay for your own bin or someone else's". If only I could convince my dad of that. He likes to pay for the elevator's bin and the elevator pays out about the least when he sells, compared to the ethanol plant or feed mill. If there's a line at the elevator in the fall He just says "well, there's another day". Tell that to my custom harvester! Jim

This came up on the other ag forum, and they pointed out a small tower drier. Its cost is not small, tho, so don't anyone get too interested.....

I hear a lot of good about top dry setups, where there is an inner slanted roof inside the bin, it batch dries up there and dumps the corn into the bin, then blows air through the bin to dry. The heat is kinda reclaimed by the roof panels... It seems a bit spendy to put up, but also sounds efficient (less running cost per bu) but the big knock is you are stuck with whatever size you build. Easy to outgrow on a progressive farm...

You have any experience with them? If I were a little younger, I'd look onto a top dry, but I am less than a mile from the local coop, it is hard to get motivated to put in the money and labor to do all that extra during harvest.....

Paul

How long depends on the size of your fan - horsepower - compared to the size of the bin. I have used air drying on some 4,000 and 5,000 bushel bins with basic 1 horsepower aeration fans. Lets put it this way, it better be 16, 17, or 18% going in. If you can harvest early that helps as you have the heat of the day in September. Neighbors air dry corn in a 20,000 bushel bin. Bin has 4 - 6 big fans. The key is they can feed out of it. With big fans and big motors it can be done. Early planting and varieties that dry down quickly help. Hard to count on everything working every year.

Would need to check with a bin company or ag engineer for an exact answer. For me it varied with grain depth, size of fan [air flow ],air temperature and humidity, how clean the grain was. I always tried to cool the grain down, giving more time to dry.

I have seen a bin in my area where they are burning wood as the heat source, have not stopped to look closely at the set up yet.

WOW! the amount of knowledge on this board never ceases to amaze me. I appreciate all the responses they have generated lots for me to think about. I should have included in my op that i am growing milo not just corn. What are the difference in drying corn vs milo. (I've heard that trying to get air through a bin of milo is more difficult than corn) I have good luck getting it down to 17-19% in the field. The only elevator that will take it above 16% is 25 miles away. If i get it down to 14.99% i have five additional markets to chose from less than 10 miels from the farm.

-paul

In our area it is $.04 per point and if you store it for 90 days is $.12 but has to be dried to 14.5%.They also use a pencil shrink.We have had several different kinds of dryers over the years and it usually costs about 1/2 what it costs in town but it also costs for maintenance of the legs and ,dryers.Honestly the best dryer is shorter season corn which with todays technology seems to yield about the same.Our dryers don't run unless corn is 20+ moisture.

We bought our MC 10 years ago... it replaced an OLD MC. At that time, I looked at top-Dry pretty hard.

In general, Top Dry had about the best energy effiency, followed by continuous flow, and then bin dryer. tower dryers weren't really in the cards then.

I went with what we have because it was the least amount of capital outlay to put into an existing system, and the one we purchased has heat reclaimers, so that helps.

Top dry is a good system, though. One farmer who grew a lot near here put a continuous flow ahead of a top dry to get more capacity. Say the continuous flow gets it down to 20 or 21, and then the top dry gets it down to market moisture. It works!

The charge this year 'here' was $33/tonne for around 18-19 points. The way I figure it, it's 4.4 to 4.6 cents/bushel/point.

got our first batch dryer in 1966. took me until 2001 to figure out that I was just fooling myself thinking I was saving money using it. plant shorter season hybrids or pay the elevator unless you have tons of manpower and equipment just standing around. milo was our grain of choice in those days. We kept thinking longer season yielded better. had to learn that lesson also!

Your best figures will come from a dealer in your area as the costs of Elec,Propane and the weather in the area and how many bu per yr. I know farmers in this area who just use air and stereators for drying.

So much depends on location!!! These responses come from across the US- some areas need little or no drying of crops. You mention milo- you must be mid-country or more South. Here, Ive been drying EVERY year since 1976! Bin dryer with stirator, then after babysitting that all night after harvesting, milking cows,.... bought a used (1979) Farm Fans AB8B, set up a wet bin with auto load, auto shutoff when empty.

I like the security of keeping crop at home, ability to market wherever. Send it to town, pay for their bins, dryers,etc., tied to selling to them? Not for me. They are working for them, not you. I had empty bins when the local guy went belly up, same place I used to store. Took 65 neighbors for a million one. My empty bins looked real cheap that year!

Years ago I did some custom drying for a neighbor, before he had bins. Charged him 2x the gas- we were both satisfied with that.

IDK exact cost now, but I just dried 25 acres of my son"s corn, gas was $1.79 a gallon, he used about $1000 of gas, not sure on final yield, but I think the monitor showed around 140 bpa. I haven"t measured the bin.

Bottom line, I always figure farm drying/storage is better than town, for so many reasons. Little FF dryer was $2800, wet bin wasn"t much, under a buck a bushel capacity. Shuts off by itself in the middle of the night when it runs out of corn.

How many acres?

We do about 200 acres, I doubt it would ever pay back if running dent corn. We run a lot of waxy and the elevator does not support it.

With the continuous you will have to recyle the first number of bushels till you get dry grain out then need something to fill in the end for it to finish drying the last of it. A batch will as said fill dry empty and done. A continuous batch will do just as described fill dry and dump automatically.
We have done both dry and ship wet. If the grain is close to dry it is probably easier /faster to dump at elevator. If wet then drying is the ticket. Handling and how much time you have for it might be your deciding factor.

In Iowa it would freeze first if you just put it in the bin cold. It is easy to take 3-4 points out of corn if you put it in hot and blow cold air in.

It does take many acres to justify a simple drying system. Auto batch or continuos flow they can be had pretty reasonable. I recently seen two Kan Sun continuous flows advertised from $1800 to 4,000. I run an auto batch American dryer that will do 220 bu. per batch dump corn in the holding bin and let it work. We were stuck with late planted corn that just would not dry in the field. Ran 30,000 bushels of 32 percent corn this fall it costs plenty but sure beat the discounts at the elevator. With shrink and drying costs were over $1.10 bu. It took just about 4.2 bu/gal of lp normal is 10-12 bu per gal. Normal electric costs less than 1.5 cents, this year closer to 4 with the greater amount of aeration. Long story short if you are in an area that requires drying on a regular basis you won't regret the investment. Going in though look at your electrical service and see what it will cost to have it upgraded to meet your needs. Often it will cost as much as the equipment