Drying wheat

[Charlie M]

Just wondering if anyone can me an idea how long after a rain it takes standing wheat to dry out enough to cut. I have a couple of acres ready to cut and we had some rain yesterday/this morning. Not enough to make the field impassible - just need the grain to get dry again. Is 24 hours of good drying weather enough? I can test for moisture but hate to thrash some just to get a sample and find out its still too wet. I'm using my AC66 to cut it.

 

[jon f mn]

Bite the seeds, they should snap. If theymush it's too wet. Once it's hard you can test some for more accuracy. How long that takes depends on temp, humidity and wind, could be anywhere from a few hours to a couple days.

 

[rustred]

yep, that's the way it was done before grain testers. plus make sure the ground is not wet also when ready to swath it.

 

[Bob Bancroft]

Just wondering if anyone can me an idea how long after a rain it takes standing wheat to dry out enough to cut. I have a couple of acres ready to cut and we had some rain yesterday/this morning. Not enough to make the field impassible - just need the grain to get dry again. Is 24 hours of good drying weather enough? I can test for moisture but hate to thrash some just to get a sample and find out its still too wet. I'm using my AC66 to cut it.

I cut wheat July 1. I think that's record early for me. This was just after 1.25 inches of rain over the weekend. The wheat cut and handled well, but tested 18-19%! I spent Tuesday dealing with it and the dryer. Wed the wheat I cut was dry at 13.6%. Thurs when I finished it was 12.6%. But you remember how hot it was!
Depends on the weather. Maybe Sat it will be close to dry. They're talking fog here tonight. That really slows things down.