Farm Information: Equipment: Harvesting
Back to Farm Information page
After 15 years of reliable service with JD 9600 combines, we finally upgraded this past year to JD 9760 STS machines. The 9600 was a true "farmers" combine and like the Gleaner L2 of the past, the 9600's will be running on farms for another 20 years. The 9760 is a larger capacity combine and is a rotor based machine as opposed to the 9600's which were walker based.
We put on our first yield monitor (with GPS) in 1998 and every combine since has had a yield monitor on it giving us 10 years of spatial yield history on many of our fields. Yield monitors have become like air conditioning in the cab in that after a couple of years with them, a person would never not have one because they stimulate so much thought in the cab during harvest.
1997 John Deere 9600 with 32' Shelbourne Reynolds stripper on it (2007). Our first 9600 came on the farm in the early 1990's and this was a main combine until 2008. The last two years (2006 and 2008) we ran two 9600's and one 9610.
2005 Case IH 2388 with 32' Shelbourne Reynolds stripper on it (2005). We leased this machine to see how we might like running Case IH combines. Our biggest complaint was with the unloading capacity.
A 9600 and 9610 waiting for trucks to get back to the field in 2007. We ran one stripper (and 2 straight-cut rigid heads) from 2005-2007 to evaluate machine efficiency gains and yield impacts on the following crops. In 2008 we moved 100% of our wheat harvest to stripper heads.
9600 harvesting milo in 2007. With our rigid 30' wheat head we are able to cut 12 rows of milo each pass. We used 8-row corn heads with the 9600's.
For the 2008 season, we purchased two 2007 John Deere 9760 STS combines. We run 32' strippers on them for wheat, 12-row cornheads in corn and 30' rigid sickle heads for milo. These machines have feederhouse tilt and lots of other bells and whistles that the 9600's did not.
With the stripper heads, only chaff and dust comes through the machine as the straw is left standing in place.
The stripper head uses a rotor with teeth to get the grain out of the heads without taking the whole head or any straw into the machine. The rotor turns clockwise bringing the wheat into the hood area and then back into the auger which feeds the shelled grain into the feederhouse.
Zach Kastens standing in a tire track after the stripper has gone through. Notice that the heads are still intact on the top of the straw yet all of the grain has been removed. We often leave 30+" standing wheat stubble in the field after harvest.
The strippers really shine on down wheat. You can't really go a lot faster than with a well set up draper, but you get 95% of the bushels there and don't remove any residue. With the draper, the wheat plants would be cut close to the ground leaving only 3-6" of stubble.
Picking corn in 2008 with the 9760's.
Picking corn in 2008. The automatic adjusting feederhouses were a big advantage this year as they allowed for the automatic adjustment of header height and pitch in the field. For 2009, we are discussing putting Auto-Trac on the combines along with row-sense so that the operator can focus on other tasks in the combine rather than driving it.
This was our only major breakdown in 2008 with the new combines. Evidently the previous owner of this machine had let his unloading auger dip into a full truck or grain cart which cracked the auger and it ultimately broke during our corn harvest.
It was actually a quite easy fix but did require removal of the whole unloading auger.
Here was a partial picture of our 2008 corn harvest equipment. We ran two graincarts this year for the first time and that really improved efficiency. Our three trucks are shown in this picture.
Here are the main grain haulers for the farm. Two Freightliners and a Pete. I believe that one of the most important technology adoptions on modern farms has been the Semi truck. It's hard to imagine doing what we do today with a fleet of straight trucks.
Unloading on the go during 2008 corn harvest.We are very happy with our harvest equipment but will need to put another grain cart in place for 2009 (we leased the second cart last year) and will need to figure out the best options for harvesting grain sorghum, soybeans and peas. Perhaps we will get rid of the two 930 rigid sickle heads and get a couple 30' draper heads with crop lifters. The stripper head can be used on the beans and peas but only if they are going to go to cattle feed as the stripper is pretty rough on those types of crops.
|
Contact
Us | Contact Webmaster
| © 2009 Kastens Inc. Farms
|
