Find the dry bushels left after wet grain is dried to a target moisture — plus optional handling shrink and the value of what was lost.
Use this when you deliver or dry grain above market moisture and want to check an elevator's shrink, or decide whether to dry at home.
The water-shrink math works on weight, so enter wet bushels as weight-basis bushels (scale weight ÷ standard test weight, such as 56 lb for corn), not volume in the bin.
Drying removes water but not dry matter, so the dry matter stays constant. Dry weight equals wet weight times the ratio of dry-matter shares before and after drying. Handling shrink then covers dust, fines, and invisible loss as a flat percentage.
dry = wet × (100 − M_wet) ÷ (100 − M_target)
net = dry × (1 − handling% ÷ 100)
shrink% = (wet − net) ÷ wet × 100
1,000 bu of corn at 20% moisture dried to 15.5%:
Dry = 1,000 × 80 ÷ 84.5 = 946.7 bu (water shrink 5.33%). With 0.5% handling shrink → 946.7 × 0.995 = 942.0 bu, total shrink 5.80%.
At $4.00/bu the 58.0 bu lost is worth about $231.95 — before any drying charge per point.
Assumptions: wet-basis moisture; dry matter is unchanged by drying; handling shrink is one flat percent.
Limits: elevators often use their own shrink tables (for example a fixed % per point) that differ from pure water shrink. Drying fuel and per-point charges are not included.
Responsibility: compare against your elevator's published discount schedule before you deliver.
Many use a shrink factor per moisture point that adds handling and drying loss on top of water loss. Enter a handling % to compare their figure with the water-only number.
Grain trade moisture is wet basis — water as a percent of total weight. That is what this formula uses.
Yes. The water math is the same; use that crop's market moisture as the target.