Ginning Wet Cotton Is No Fun

In the past several days, parts of our region have gotten a substantial amount of rain on wide open cotton. This is over and above what happened in the Carolinas with Florence. With temperatures where they are, damp cloudy weather  can lead to some instances (more rare than you may thing) where the ginner needs to take a bit more precaution when ginning.

Wet cotton can lead to wet seed. Wet seed can be tough to gin. Sprouted seed can be tough to gin. The best advice is to let the cotton dry thoroughly if possible. Soft seed will firm up enough to gin. Sprouted seed will drop the sprout a lot of the time and if it doesn’t, the gin and lint cleaners will get it out.

Sometimes producers need to go ahead an pick it before the next storm or front makes a bad situation worse. This is when you really need to communicate with your producers. Round modules can complicate things further.

Please read the paper below. It was developed several years ago and doesn’t take round modules into account but it has a lot of good information.

Recommendations Excess Moisture Prepared by WSAnthony

DSF