There are a number of ways to monitor for insect pressure inside of a bin.
The first is sampling during coring.
That’s when you pull the center gate and draw down the grain until you have an inverted cone at the peak.
Then, you take samples either while you’re pulling truckloads or while you’re moving the grain over to another bin.
The advantage with this is that it gives you a vertical snapshot of both your grain quality and your insect population.
The disadvantage is you physically need to move the grain.
So if you have no place to go, or it will tie up your equipment doing so, you can incur an additional expense from electricity to move it, as well as some shrink or damage, especially in the corn and soybean areas of the country.
Another way to test is the Cargill probe method. It’s where you use a portable vac system and a tube or probe that goes down about 20 feet or 5.5 meters into the grain.
It’s great for when you are working in bunkers, flat storage, or ground piles, where you can’t physically move the grain easily to determine your insect presence.
The disadvantages are that you need special equipment and power to move it around.
An old-school method is simply taking a manual truck probe.
I’ve seen them covered in dust in the back closet, now that things are getting more and more automated in the scalehouse, but they’re already paid for.
The disadvantage is that to do it appropriately, you have to enter the grain bin, and that’s currently not a best practice.
Dr. Maier has done good research with companies like The Andersons and CGB on CO2 monitoring with very interesting results.
Insects respire and produce CO2, as well as molds and secondary feeders.
It is a cheap method to look for these types of things around vents, hatches, and exhaust fans and it doesn’t require a confined space permit to actually go into the bin to acquire that information.
Reprinted from Grain Journal July/August 2020 Issue