Dynamic simulation of McLeod Harvesting System for Wheat, Barley and Canola Crops

In this work, the whole crop of wheat, barley and canola were cut and left on the field for drying. The swath was processed with McLeod harvester, where the grains, chaffs and weed seeds were separated from the straw. The mixture of chaff, weed seeds and grains is called graff. The graff was collected in the harvester and unloaded to the truck and transported to the central milling unit for further processing and storage. The graff was processed in the milling machine where the chaff and grain were separated. The clean grain was stored in steel bins and the chaff was stored in open piles for animal feed. The entire harvesting operation for each crop was modeled in the EXTEND simulation platform by incorporating the weather data to select the harvesting day and field drying operation. A cost model was developed for each crop to estimate the harvesting cost. The simulation result showed that the use of 3 swather, 3 McLeod harvester, 6 trucks and 4 milling unit were sufficient for harvesting 8000 ac of crops within the harvest period (Aug. 25 to Oct. 16). The harvesting cost for wheat, barley and canola were $34.8, 37.5 and 33.8 per acre respectively.