Morning everyone. Welcome to VC AG Today this Thursday morning, August sixth, 20-20. Hope everyone is doing well and faired with the Tropical Storm earlier this week. Today we're pleased to be joined by Dr. Bobbitt, Brissot, professor, An engineer within necess AS systemic biological systems have engineering school at Virginia Tech. So thank you for joining us this morning. We really appreciate you being here. The flow is yours. Thank you, Dr. MRSA. Thank you so much, Rob. I appreciate the opportunity. Let me just say that from the beginning that it was an honor for me to serve as your Associate Director for seven or eight years. And I had moved into an interim department head role, which I am so grateful that I was able to get a replacement by the urge to January. I'm not sure I can handle the stress of Coba. And so matter of fact, I think about when I started in 1985. Yes. I know that some of your guys weren't even born that it extension that I would've never thought I would see a day like we have today. But let me commend the leadership of this this particular activity of BC up day. I really appreciate what you guys have been doing. I've been following along and really have enjoyed it. Again. Everybody calls me Bobby and I'm in the Biological Systems Engineering Department, one of the eight or nine engineering departments on campus. I also teach the senior design component within our curriculum. This year. I'm looking forward to having about 77 students coming back on campus here in two or three weeks. And when I asked me to do this, I said this is really the only thing that I have open with that upcoming class. So our department is celebrating a 100 years of activity. Of course, it started off being Agricultural Engineering. I have two degrees from the program as well. The other item that celebrating 100 years that I was involved with was the Nebraska tracker tests than I had hoped to go out in Nebraska and celebrate with them. Just like our celebration that's been canceled it in fact, we're not even sure we can get hours off in October. I did have the opportunity when when we went into phase three to be able to get back on the blue Ridge Parkway and visit the MAY breeze meal, which is probably about 16 miles as the crow flies to my grandfather's home place. So what Maggie and Molly and my wife really enjoyed that trip. Today, I'm going to talk about three different items. Of course, we wanted to talk about harvesting, but since it's going to be a little bit warm in August, I thought it would be helpful to talk to you about a new tool that's on health stress or heat stress. And then I'd like to follow up at the end with a couple slides talking about yield monitors. Getting our combines prepared for the ball. If you're in matter of fact, this is a new tool. A matter of fact, I just came out in the middle of July. It's really been used by the military and athletics. But I can really see this being a useful tool for ag workers. Matter of fact, I talk a little bit about heat stress and how to watch or et cetera. And one of our publications on lawn care with Pru management, lawn care creams. But this new item referred to as the wet bulb, global temperature, incorporates several other things that heat index does not. And so I thought this might be a useful tool for you. And so it's located on a website called convergence. This is a Climate Center. And it's so far this particular tool is only available for Virginia, North Carolina. And that's the reason I think we ought to take a look at it. So what I'm going to do is to go to that particular tool and see if I can get it to work. If not, I've got a couple slides to county boundaries. So this is the website in so you have a you have several different items on this page will describe in more detail about the items. But what I want to show is basically you can find ET location on the map. And so what I'm going to type in today is the airfield or eight center type that in. It will go directly there and you can see it there and sprain. And you can go anywhere on that sprain and then it gives you an opportunity to be able to to several different days. I'm going to choose the most racist because I know we're going to have a heat wave coming up here by the end of the week. Submit that. And what this shows is a, is a heat index, if you will, or this is G, WG, WB GET item. And what you can see is that basically today, now we're not going to get up into a high index, but by Sunday noon you'll start to see that there's a fairly high index where it's going to be a good opportunity to have a lot of heat stress. And so this tool can be utilized for looking at plans or 4H events all the way to field days and et cetera. And you can kind of watch where, where those go through horse, the athletic departments, primarily for football while they're practicing, they're looking at certainly items as well as far as morning and afternoon practice. And so basically what what I'm showing you here is that there's a way to be able to utilize that particular tool in order to look at very high indexes. The color-coding is important. And if you look at that website at the bottom, they have this particular little item about the the indexes, of course, black, black areas supposed to end all types of activity as far as working in that particular environment. And you could see the other ones that are here. Of course, I can't refused to talk about, you know, if you're working with a variety of people are, people are actually in a current of some sort. It's nice to be able to you know what the symptoms are and some of the things that might be going on with them. So always being alert. And on the sides, it's useful. When trent asked me to do this, I had to remember that basically, we re really go about 20 some days, 21 days, I think it is. And we can be in a pretty severe drought. And what I've got here is two different maps from the climate climate centers scheme. One dating back to July, and one just recently on Friday. And we've moved into a moderate, almost like new secondary D2 drought situations in some portions of our state. Now this is probably going to change by the time that we incorporate the hurricane into the mix or this that we occurred this week, but at the same time, the damage is probably already been done. In so just on the third of August, a couple days ago, the nest egg statistics reporting which you agents really contribute to show the card and Barry condition. If the percent 18% vary or condition twenty-four percent rated as or. So, almost 40% of our corn crop browse to stay probably in pretty critical condition. And so the grape asked me to take a look at, or there's some tips that we can do about combining, getting ready for that, that wouldn't be useable for our farmers. I had the opportunity while working at University of Nebraska to work with several different groups of individuals of one of those groups are accustomed combiners. And what I've learned a lot from these individuals. And so one of the things that I would ask you to do is that kind of keep in mind some of the recommendations that unbinding go right against what some people might think is the right way to make some adjustments. The reason I point that out is that a lot of the a lot of times we don't have a lot of hours in a combine. So a lot of the custom craves, it started in Texas and go up through the Dakotas, make it an even by 500 to 750 hours and combine over the course of that that travel. And so the opportunity to be able to work with these individuals. And I would say the other source of information that you need to take a look at is your local dealers. As you start to look at this, it might be a good advice to go out and talk to your dealers about maybe hosting and letting them go through some tips about harvesting drought. Colon. Now is I take a look at drought related type corn. There are several things that you have to remember as far as looking at, at this is that number one, the yields are very low. Number two, they're probably susceptible to a lot more stress from insects and diseases. So the Stop and et cetera as a lot weaker than what we would typically have ten. So one of the issues is, is getting that corn cob actually into the combine or the work. So I'm going to go through. Different items. I'm going to show you several different insides become by, and then talk about the adjustment. Or one of the first things that you learned about from the customer combiners is that basically what you always want to do is have the combined completely loaded that goes automatically against the grain of what we're talking about here as far as a situation where we have low yields and so we're not getting as much material to come by. Of course, when we're talking about porn. We want, we don't want to bring the whole plant into the combine, but at same time Some will come through. But what we're trying to do with the corn picker hit is the pull that stop through so that the only thing we're getting is the, the ears going through to combine. So real quickly, I'm going to focus a little bit about the corn head, if you will hear in a few minutes, but we're looking at that position above the beater house, which is late labels number one, the corn cob and the material goes through a concave and cylinder, which you see here. The beater keeps it from wrapping around the concave in this point. And a lot of the action as far as the shelling of the corn is, happens at this stage. The material that is heavier, lighter goes out the straw walkers and then goes out as distribution. The grain actually falls down to heavier items. You see a fan here and I'll see a number on it. But the, the grain will fall down into this section, corpus six auger, which basically is taking it to a cleaning sieve and Shaffer. These items are moving back and over. The claim graying. Well, actually, it's easily clean grain will actually go through a sieve and then drop into an auger that's taken up into the grain tang. There's another item back in the back that does not pass through the screen, but his heavy enough that is not blown out. And so that material will be taken and transferred back into the cylinder and recycled again. And so most combines have a court that you didn't take a look at as far as looking at the tailings elevator, which is this one at the very end back here behind seven blog sieves. Well, I have a couple comments about that in the future. So there's several different types of combines that we're looking at. All of them have the same principles on it. I think that's one reason we call them AECOM by John Deere and their most recent conversions. And we're looking at axial flow type. Calm a cylinder and concave. Again. I think it has always been at this gives a lot more opportunity for the Cubs and the corn to be able to be a shield as we're going back through there instead of this small space that you see here in previous designs. Again, a lot of the different items that you see in the newer combined are all bear as far as looking at areas for walking out the stroll or the, or the residue, the, the leaves and et cetera. A section about sieving. And then basically separation. Trying to separate defines a small material that can be blown out the back along with the, with the, the leaves and et cetera. Probably the thing that I want to read to remind us about is that there's lots of adjustment all the way through this particular combine. If you remember, these items can be used from everything, from rice all way down, soy beans, everything but maybe cotton. And so a lot of the, the grains are looking at no matter what the size is and et cetera, could be put through a combine. And there's different settings for each one of those crops. And so the operator's manual is critical within a current situation. Again, like I mentioned, we're trying to reduce the amount of biomass that goes through the combine, but at the same time frame, make sure that we get the ears falling through. If you'll notice where this gentleman is standing, this is the corner yet looking back into it, going into the beater house, or this gentlemen and standing basically weren't the horns and out will come down onto that particular item. But it's a good way to be able to identify several different items. These little chain looks right here, all gathering chains and they basically are pulling this thought back into the onBind. Underneath. There is what they refer to as roller corn rollers. And that's these are stop rollers and that's pulling the stock's down through that little opening right here. That's adjustable. The chains are adjustable as far as speed going back through here, that opening is adjustable. That will become a radical in some of our conversation because in grout type, corn stalks of probably be smaller in diameter, diameter and maybe in a little less brittle. And so this opening becomes critical and what we might make some adjustments. But there are several different to YouTube's available to go through the adjustment of corn here. And the only reason I am showing the upper one, basically that the, a lot of times you can lose a corn ear, if you will, in this particular area by bouncing around, bouncing out the colon here. But most of the time when you get to this stage, it'll actually vacancy that Peter house. And then in theory, you combine. Said, I don't get abused about having one color, several different bound by arrangements here, again, an axial flow combine. Again several of the same items that we talked about in the combine area. Differences being with small brains, soy beans, we typically have a plant ORM header. Basically in that particular arrangement, you're bringing that whole, anything that's cut above, the second bar is being brought into that combine to be separated. And likewise for some of the older red machines, again, several different components we've already talked about. Again, if we're looking at, at drought, eat soy beans, probably the only thing I can make a comment, this is critical that the header, the platform header is critical as far as being able to bring that in law to shatter loss is going to occur here in the US. And then, of course, since we have drought conditions, the beans are going to be smaller. That means that some of the things that we're talking about in the concave pensive Arial or need to be adjusted. So here are some tips as far as adjustments within looking at, especially on corn. Praise scouting is critical and also being able to make a wise decision about whether we really need to be out there combining this particular crop. And I've got some other slides talking a little bit more about details about that. Again, there probably will be a section in the operator's manual that talks about conditions that we have as far as looking at drought E-type crop. Again, typically the years going to be smaller in diameter. There's going to be places muddy, bounce boards by can. There's going to be areas on the coordinates not feel doubt. That means that there's Carl's that aren't as solid as, as typically. It again, we're talking about if this is a typical irrigated or will develop corn ear. It may have been probably around three quarters of it may take two years to to be equivalent to that. So it'll come into play when we're talking about some of the issues as bars, harvest loss. As we've already mentioned, that the principles of effective combining, we'd like to keep that combine loaded. What I typically experience when where there's a low amount of material going through it, you hear a lot of bouncing around. That's where carbs are coming up and and just deflecting off of the concave and hitting different sections. And so I really think that crop feeding may be an issue if we can get it in the combine and get enough load into it, I think we have a lot of opportunities to shell effectively and get some, some good grain. During that free scouting, if we have a lot of Y at large stocks, it might be useful to use a drone to be able to look at the directions of how the, the crop is fall. And they'll give the operator a good idea about how to approach it. In basically when you're looking at launched items, you'd like to have the stock's going into the combine so that the ears closest to combine. So let's talk a little bit about the corn had the gap needs to be adjusted. Typically it needs to come together so that the stock is as narrow enough so that the stock is and go through it, but at the same time snaps off that smaller ir. The gather gathering chain needs to be matched with the forward speed of the combine. And just as a rule of thumb, or an example, two miles an hour, the change speed needs to be about 27 rpm. So that will give you a little bit of a feel how to match that up. You'll have to embrace the gathering chain if the stock is leading away from the Columbine. One of the items that I keep hearing about is if you use snouts are adaptions or being able lit up lodged corn, you probably would want to check into a automatic haired adjustment so that you're not bringing your, you're actually running. And a lot closer to the ground. And you typically would and this would a boy, baby, some rock pick up and et cetera, that could happen. The other item on record here is that typically the corn head is attached to the beat her house and it's typically angled down at an angle of about 25 to 30 degrees. And kind of talking about this week and use that. My old model here is that we're talking about this Flex within the corn head and height. But what it's running in a drought, these type situation is going to be running a little bit closer to the ground. But you want to angle that such that the header is about 20 degrees. Moving into the combine the concave area. Because the ears are smaller, you're going to have to collapse or are declared so will be narrower. Ink AND cylinder area decrease the speed a little bit, especially for spongy five Cobb's. You'll need to look at the tailings and etcetera and see you're tearing them up too bad, but you don't want to very aggressive thrashing area. And so you want to keep the material and the road are a little bit longer. But at the same time, the reason you're slowing it down a little bit as try doing to decrease the excessive kernel damage that might occur. As you move back to the sieve area because the kernels are probably going to be a little bit smaller. You'll need to reduce the sieve openings and then adjust like I was talking about with tailings. I think I've got another slide on that. Well, biter, again, that band speed needs to be reduced because the kernel sizes have been reduced. Now think about everything that I've talked about here on these adjustments at what you've done is basically you've opened yourself up to a lot of fines in other material coming into the clean grain elevator area. Doesn't we're not blowing them away or as aggressively. And so that needs to be thought about in the total scheme of things is that you're probably going to end up with a with a brain mass that's more dirty. You're probably going to be harder to dry in store. When you're running through. The field. Suggests to run it at your fullest capacity that you can shut down after a 100 feet and do some checking of how things are working. The corn cobs are accepted as silly. Chopped especially cross ways are cross-sectional from the ear. Some adjustments need to be made because it must be somewhat aggressive items in that concave barrier that's chop and that calm. Or if there's excess of grain on the ends of the Krakow, we may need to make some narrowing. The adjustment in the concave area. Stocks being cut off in that corn header and then drawn through the combine. We don't want that. So this is a good time to check how that's working. Whether we need some adjustment zombie, the speed row are the snap rollers to BL all that through. We'll look at some harvests laws tables. And then of course look at the residue distribution behind so that you're not creating a problem for next year. I really think that when we're looking at drought, corn, that we're looking at grain quality issues. Again, I mentioned the 5S, the moisture. Again, it's going to be a little bit more in a dusty type situations of onBind buyers are possible. You may need to set up a special operation of doing a cleaning process and a and a drying, I would highly recommend that that is an option. Make sure that you're taking that or material after it drops through and moving it away from the storage area. Again, you need to make considerations. Is this material worthy to try to store? It's going to be more difficult. And remember that when you're looking at this material, do not allow it to stay in a band or a brand card overnight. You've got you've got kernels and are probably going to be a little bit less than TAC than usual. And so trying to move it and get it a little bit as, as you take a grey mass like this out of the field, it has a lot of heat that needs to be taken out. So it needs to get into some kind of aeration process to help it remove that heat and mass. So the question is, is to take it directly to storage, start drying that down. Remember that our bands are set up or two different ways. Aeration. That's just to be able to get the, the, the differences in the grey mass temperature wise even. Or there's what I call a natural air drying bands that are trying to pollution. Typically, you're looking at a half a CAPM or the aeration and over one cfm or getting some kind of drying process through the band. And of course, if people go after their drought, acorn bursts, I think putting it on the bottom of the band is not a wise decision. Probably the one slide I want to show here, this is one width. They, there's an excellent video out at the University of Nebraska that shows a farmer that's been dealing with drought lodge corn goes through the header process, that's the extra snouts and et cetera. I think you can find that fairly easily on the website. Again, keeping a fire extinguisher ready to go as critical if you need it in a in this type of condition. Typically when we're at harvest losses, we're looking at 100th of an acre going across the width of the row heads. And the rule of thumb is that every three-quarters of a pound ear, which may be either two or three drought years down in that air is equivalent to one bushel per acre. And then on the carnal basis, if if saying if one of the issues you get into sometimes is that the in the corn he had shelling actually starts in the forehead. And so you could find kernels that RNA already bouncing out of that particular area before it gets into combine into clean grain tank. So there's another way to look at those kernels. So 20 girls within a square foot area is equivalent to one bushel per acre. Please take a check on the pre-harvest area to make sure that you account for those items, that there's no way the Combine, catch and other words, ears that I've already dropped off or. Not want to be caught my onBind. So make sure you do that looking at the header. So that means basically you're running into a Nc, the growing crop and in backing up. So you've got a header loss component. And then after they combine, looking at though, these are ideal type conditions. My, my feeling is is that in a drought III type of situation, you're here realistically looking at somewhere between five to 15 bushels per acre of potential walls. And so it combines not going to be able to capture all that. We can only do the best we can. The last two slides that I have are reminding individuals that there's some good materials out there about setting up your yield monitor. The, probably the thing that to remind people about is that if we're operating very low yielding type crops as tension within drowning type of situation that the combined needs to be calibrated for the speed that you're going. And so if you're not filling up combined sufficiently, that getting the up to the mass that you typically have, it has to be calibrated for those areas. And you have to remember that what you're gathering. And the information is the mass indicator of how much mass is coming through the clean elevator in Ukraine today. A very good guide with a lot of good pictures in it is from Clemson. Recommend you take a look about when. I think I have a few items, but they've all been art died recently with the precision ag. But before the yield monitored operation. And one of the reasons I think it's critical it talk about it now is that GPS units, if they had not been used during the summer, take a little bit at a time when you first fire them up and they fall to, to get all of the the data that's needed for uploading. And so up and matter of fact, my understanding is that there's going to be a major upload time period in September. September. And so that could cause farmers to be able to, to pull out their, their units. And all of a sudden go, geez, I got a two or three hour wait ball. This gets downloaded and ready to go. So now's a good opportunity, all that out, clean out the combined, make sure we don't have any existing crop Senate in doing the maintenance as needed. Mine before heading out. Quick reminder that the farm safety week isn't September 21st through the 25th. There are several different organizations that go over different items. I take the grape that has the initiative on working with mental health would be a great one to probably emphasize during this time period as we moved into these kind of conditions and the stresses that are already on on our foreign clientele. And with that, Robbie and I turn it back over to you. I've enjoyed doing it. Most of the publications that I've been involved with over the last. Years I've updated and so plenty materials. I think there's 30 different fact sheets that we've updated. We've taken the one out that was most used because we need to update it and really do some revisions as the planner and thrill setup. And so Dave, old house or not, it will be working on that, trying to get that done before the next planting season. And so just so that you know, the corn crop here at Blackbird looks pretty decent. And you see in the background for my other project isn't 69, Jim, pick up that. My grandad bought brand-new and part of my inheritance going forward. So robert, Robbie, I'll pass it back to you. Thank you so much, Dr. grow, so we really appreciate you joining us this morning and Shanda, excellent presentation on NoSQL really help a lot of folks as, as we move into harvest season, at least here in the eastern part of the state where we do have some of those drought-stricken feels. Any questions for Dr. verse? So I'm just gonna go ahead and open it up. You should be able to unmute yourself at this time. So if you have any questions, go ahead and ask those and we'll try to address them one at a time. Where I guess you did a perfect job here, and I can hardly believe that per second. We'll do a little bit too much. I guess one question that I've got doctors. So in some of my conversation with producers, you mentioned in your presentation about making that decision as to whether or not there may be enough of a crop that actually justify run into combat through there. And we've certainly got some, some fields in this part of the state that that's probably going to be not an option. It's just not enough there to really justify run the machine through. So I know quite a few people have asked the question, the residue management, what options we got there. The unfortunate side is most of the colon that I've seen that has been severely stricken by drought, had really good growth to it. It had even got up to to the tassel growth stage. So we're talking, you know, 10-12 foot cornstalks and feel any advice or suggestions for for that residue management if the Kanban isn't justified to be put into that crop. Well. And I think that let me just say that from my experience in the West, there was always an option to try to bring in livestock and clean up some of the the items. Eventually you're going to within. And it depends. It depends on the biomass that we're talking about here and how it, how it actually laid down. If, if they start to. And I'm always surprised compared to the Midwest, how quickly our residue degrades width in Virginia. And so with our climate, say port, it may not be a huge issue, but at the same time, if I do have a residency problem that I'm going that I know I'm going to have an issue with planting. Shredding is always an option of being able to, to run any kind of animals ever to pick it up. Of course, it's going to be a conservation Type icon now with deer and et cetera. But you have to think about your rotation process. And the mixed with this is that if you have a field. You're not on a harbors. You have a lot of volunteer corn and so all of a sudden it, it should play into your rotation. If you go back according again, there's good potential that you'll have a lot of competition and very little weed control that you did. Thanks, Dr. cursive. Any other questions or comments this morning? I see one just popped up here from Mike. If he says due to some cross doing poorly this year for insurance, say father, any figures on what it costs now per acre to run a semi new com buy in. If I I'm just going to tell you what I've been seeing this forest custom rates. That's that's usually the only thing that I have. And you'd have your combine is probably going to cost you somewhere between 10, $15 an acre. Lot of custom rates are up to 2020 to $25 an acre. And so those would not be numbers that I think if we take a look, especially when somebody ag economist that would be in line with what I've experienced. That one. Good question, Mike. I in any other questions for Dr. Dre Center this morning? And while I'm waiting a little bit, I want to do those and I seek Doug is on the line here today, super job with the Shenandoah, a rec field day yesterday. Very professional. And so I, you know, I know you guys are having to figure out how to do this in a different way and it looks like you're doing an excellent job on it. Alright, well, not hearing any further questions, just checking the chat. I don't see any other questions at this time. So with that being said, Dr. Brissot, We really appreciate you joining us more and thank you for the presentation. But just a few closing comments for those that are with us. Please join us next week. We're going to be joined by our forage specialist, Dr. Katie pain down from the Blackstone research center down there, we're going to have some discussion on pasture management coming into the fall months talking about weed management, renovation of pasture. So we'll topics related to that. So please join us for that. Also. Just a huge thank you to our summer interns this year. Miss scholar sworn in Westmoreland County and Muschelli Underwood in Hanover County. I think today is going to be the last edition of VCA today that they're gonna be able to join us on. So just thank you both so much for all of your help with this effort. We really appreciate you being here and you don't excellent job. So thank you very much for that and invest wizards in your future endeavors. Also, just like to take a second to thank the production team for this. Mr. Trent Jones. Mr. Mike brought us miss lower maxi nay, and Miss Stephanie Rommel. Check. Thank you all for all your help with this. And finally, please take a few moments to evaluate the program. You'll see a link there on your screen. If you could just take a minute or two to help us provide some feedback and make the program better. Let us know some topics that you may like to see in the future. We greatly appreciate that. So thank you again to everyone for joining us. Thank you again, Dr. verso for all your advice and an excellent presentation. Hope everyone has a great rest of that Thursday and take care. Thank you.