Hurray, they started harvesting my corn silage today! Into the pit to ferment, then at some later date happy cows will convert it to your milk to drink. It's late, and I'll add more photos later, but here's a start:



The cutter is a Krone Big-X 1000. It is powered by two inline 6 cylinder diesels of 9.6 liters and 510 horsepower each, when both are running that is indeed 1020hp.

Harvester is Rick McCracken of Hereford.

Cool.

Obviously, late season weeds were a HUGE problem.

The header on the silage chopper is a 12 row, 30" setup, 30 feet wide and hydraulically folds for transport. It is a new design, and there are only 3 of them in the United States. The company provided the header for free to our cutter for evaluation purposes. It came with its own German. The guy riding outside on the platform watching is "Alex", the factory tech rep. He's apparently getting a master's degree and his thesis paper will be about this header.

Later in the day, some of the welds started cracking. It was trying to force too much corn past some of the inner sections, bowing them out. I saw him welding some reinforcement onto the header...which will probably make it break somewhere else.

I was estimating that anywhere from 200 to 250 pounds of corn per second is going through the machine. That might explain the stress its under and why it needs 1020 hp.

More later, looks like rain and I have some stuff to do...

[This message has been edited by CanyonAg77 (edited 9/10/2008 7:05a).]

Great pics and thanks for sharing.

The business end of the chopper. The vertical line on the right is part of my center pivot sprinkler.

The German Tech guy takes a picture of the chopper, the McCracken boys, and a couple of trucks to send home to the folks in Spelle.

A passing tarantula is unhappy about being photographed

The business end of the machine. This is the right rear with the hood up. Two 9.6L inline 6 cylinder turbo diesel engines of 510 horsepower each. You can run just one at a time (the front engine) under light loads or while transporting. For heavy loads like corn, crank them both. They feed into a common gearbox at the back that synchronizes them to reduce vibration. I noticed that the engines were canted at a slight angle...almost makes it like a V-12 with both engines running.

The radiator for 1020hp worth of engines plus coolers for the hydraulics that run the chopper, the four wheel drive, the raising and folding of the header, the rotation and angle of the spout...I'm guessing it's about 5 feet wide and 5 feet high.



[This message has been edited by CanyonAg77 (edited 9/10/2008 10:28p).]

How'd the silage turn out? Tons/Ac?

Just a little better than 20 T/A. Because of the weeds, the dairy wanted it cut a little high, so we lost some there. (Changing my herbicide program next year) And I also lost some to earworms. Weird thing, I got an infestation and they chewed the dickens out of the leaves. Just took the leaves down to the midribs in spots.

Never heard of earworms eating leaves before.

Here's the back end of the engines (left rear corner of chopper). The two black things with the octopus of hoses are the hydraulic pumps. Below them is the massive gearbox that connects and syncs the engines. The two black cans on the left are the air filters. They are about 15-18 inches in diameter.



[This message has been edited by CanyonAg77 (edited 9/11/2008 7:00a).]

The back end, you can see one of the diesels and its turbocharger and exhaust/intake tubing.

Front end with header removed. You can see the first two of the six rollers that compress and cut the entire corn stalk/leaves/cob/grain into pieces no longer than 1/2 inch. Anywhere from 5 to 10 tons of corn run through this opening each minute and get blown into the waiting truck. That's why this machine needs 1020hp.

And another load heads for the dairy. Took 84 loads to haul the production from about 116 acres at about 30 tons per load. The trailer has a live bottom floor, chains and slats that drag the silage out and into the pit.



Hope I haven't bored you guys, but some folks seem interested in farming and the mechanics of harvesting, so I thought I'd put it up for your amusement.

thanks for sharing...

did the dairy provide the "combine" or whatever that harvester is called

I think most call it a silage chopper. The cutters are custom operators. Most years I had to pay the custom guys. This year the dairy paid for the chopping. Don't know what they are charging, but is was around $7.00 a ton two years ago, and we all know what diesel prices have done since then.

The chopper itself probably is in the $250,000 and up range.

Found a youtube video of another Knone Big X1000:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf9yv0_LCvM

what does a combine cost these days? probably in the same neighborhood, huh?

That is a step up from the 2 row we used when I was a kid.

I loved the smell of silage.

We had a single row Allis-Chalmer that we towed/powered with a John Deere G. Talk about the dark ages! We thought we were really making progress when we got a Gehl two row. Problem was, a good corn or sorghum crop was too much for it, so we had to tow the John Deere and the cutter with a Ford so we could stop and go without affecting the power from the JD. No live power-takeoff in those days.

My God. With 12 rows you could harvest Iowa in a week!

[This message has been edited by Restco (edited 9/11/2008 9:32p).]

Canyon...I bet you had fall armyworms eating your leaves instead of corn earworms. There is a huge infestation hitting the milo and early wheat. Also there are headworms showing up along with loopers in the soybeans.

Have you ever tried Balance Pro in your herbicide program? Next year there is a product called Balance Flex that is safer on corn but its relatively cheap to add into your herbicide program if you apply pre-emergent herbicides which would have helped with your grass infestation in those pics.

cool pics none the less.

I thought they were armyworms, especially given how they just exploded in a few days. But the scout insisted they were earworms. Thanks for the herbicide recommendation, I'm certainly going to have to do something different.

Hearing the silage around Spearman/Gruver went 25-35.5(this ground was broken out and had a crop on it 1st time ever)

Was really dry silage due to 4.5 inches of rain at optimum time to chop.

Feels really good to have that corn in the pit doesn't it?

[This message has been edited by Doctor51 (edited 9/12/2008 7:53a).]

Would have loved to had those yields. After the worms, the weeds, the dry/hot/windy summer, and the dairy requesting a May 10 plating date rather than April 15, I was happy to get what I did.

To top it off, the diary didn't come calling until late in the year, so I wasn't able to pre-water. I had sorghum there last year and my plan was to fallow and clean up the pivot with Roundup, then go to wheat this fall.

It is always great to finish a harvest. Now I have to worry about income tax avoidance, which is a good problem to have. One I haven't had to lose much sleep over the last few years.

glad to hear it, I don't know how you guys do it. I don't know if I could deal with the uncertainty of making any money for a years (or several years in a row) work

We have friends that love Las Vegas. Most farmers do not. Where's the thrill in gambling a few thousand bucks when you constantly gamble most of your net worth year after year?

EDIT: Oh, and the uncertainty is why I have a wife with a good paying job and health insurance, so our living expenses are covered.

The downside is that the 1st dollar the farm makes is taxed at 40% or so.

[This message has been edited by CanyonAg77 (edited 9/12/2008 5:40p).]

ouch...thanks for sharing

pretty cool promo video here


Also, I love how the Germans have the beer can/bottle opener as their machine's key chain!

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Americans for Fair Taxation!

Awesome pictures, CanyonAg. Thanks for sharing.

Though in the dryland Rolling Plains we have neither corn nor silage, I'm generally fascinated by all heavy machinery and even moreso by harvesting equipment. I'll never forget when I was an 8th grader and we were planning out our course schedules. We were required to put our desired career, and the assistant principal flipped out when I wrote "custom wheat harvester." He didn't seem to understand me at all.

quote:

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We have friends that love Las Vegas. Most farmers do not. Where's the thrill in gambling a few thousand bucks when you constantly gamble most of your net worth year after year?

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No kidding. It's unfortunate that farming and ranching gets a bad rap from those lazy producers who sit around the coffee shop all morning, whine about the world, and depend on insurance and government payments to survive. Because in reality, the farmer/rancher who does it the right way is one of the greatest true American entrepreneurs. Nothing like betting hundreds of thousands of dollars on circumstances (crop prices, weather) that are COMPLETELY out of your own control. It takes a man with guts, grit, and a flair for danger to do that.

I have not heard of Balance Flex. Balance Pro maybe or Radius.

It looks like your problem is grass. You need to try a pre-emerge with a chloroacetamide like s-metolachlor (Dual) in it. Syngenta makes a product called Bicep II Magnum that is a pre-mix of s-metolachlor and atrazine.

Balance Pro is great on pigweed, but I wouldn't count on it for grass control. You will need a chloroacetamide for that.

I use Lumax, which is Bicep II Magnum with Callisto in it. Most of my fields don't see a post-emerge application unless I have johnsongrass spots to touch up.

Sorry about going on. Good luck with $1200/ton 10-34-0. Next years inputs costs are murdering my cash flow with current corn prices.

I kind of got caught with this field. It was sorghum in 2007, and my plans were to fallow it in 2008, clean it up, and go to wheat this fall.

At the last minute, I get a call from the dairy and have to do a complete change of plans. I think if I had not had the worm damage, leading to more sunlight hitting the ground, I would not have had near as bad a problem.

Panhandle,

We mix Balance with G-max lite or Cinch ATZ Lite. Next year we are going to rotate to a seperate pre emerge.

We have harvested 800 of the 900 acres we planted and are averaging 233 dry bushels per acre. Hell of a corn harvest.

Now with 5-6 inches in the last 4 days we still have to get 100 acres of corn, 2000 acres of sorghum and 250 acres of beans out. Very nervous times right now.

Balance Flex will be new next year and is 10X safer than Balance Pro. It is the same balance pro but has a safener in it.

[This message has been edited by Doctor51 (edited 10/15/2008 6:35p).]

Guardsman is chloroacetamide (dimethenamid-p) and a triazine. Cinch and Bicep are chloroacetamides also (s-metolachlor), but far superior to other s-metolachlor products on the market. You have the same mode of action with all of them. They are all what is called seedling shoot inhibitors.

Cinch ATZ Lite is Bicep Lite II Magnum that Syngenta manufactures and Dupont sells under the Cinch brand. They are identical except for the label.

I have not heard of Balance Flex, but I haven't asked Bayer about it. Balance Pro is a isoxazole and is a different mode of action from these other herbicides. It is a bleaching agent, like Callisto. It is great for adding a dab to another tank mix. My experience is that it is great for helping with triazine resistant pigweeds.

Radius from Bayer is Balance and a seedling shoot inhibitor (oxyacetamide). There is no atrazine, so you would have to add that to the mix.

If there is a Balance Flex that has a better safener for the Balance Pro, that is great. Being able to apply a higher rate without fear of damaging the corn would be great. As it is, it can be a very dangerous herbicide because of crop injury concerns.

We got 3-10 inches of rain in Dallam and Hartley counties. There isn't much corn that has been harvested for dry corn. Hopefully things will get rolling in the next few days where they didn't get too much rain. I haven't harvested any of mine.

CanyonAg,

It is hard to stick to a crop rotation plan when someone offers you a nice check for growing a silage crop.