Find out how many dry bushels you will have after drying wet grain down to a target moisture, including the handling shrink many elevators charge.
Wet bushels → dry bushels after moisture + handling shrink
Drying grain loses weight in two ways. The first is water loss, or moisture shrink: the dry matter stays the same while the water comes out.
dry bushels = wet bushels × (100 − wet moisture %) ÷ (100 − target moisture %)
The second is handling shrink, an extra deduction many elevators take for dust, fines and dry matter lost in handling. It is usually quoted as a percentage per point of moisture removed; 0.5% per point is a common figure, but check your elevator’s schedule.
handling shrink = wet bushels × handling % per point × points removed
Example: 1,000 bushels of corn at 20% moisture dried to 15% leaves 1,000 × 80 ÷ 85 ≈ 941.2 bushels. Handling shrink of 0.5% per point over 5 points removes another 25 bushels, for about 916.2 dry bushels: a total shrink of 8.38%.