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Pull type silage chopper

19K views 21 replies 9 participants last post by  farmshop 
#1 ·
So after getting my custom chopper bill last year I have decided enough is enough and going to buy a pull type chopper. Ether a John Deere or New Holland. Somewhere is the mid 2000s range and at lest a 3 row header. As far as header, I want to get a rotory style header. I raise a lot of oats/ barley and peas for feed also, so with that being said should I also look for a hay header? Or just stick with the round baler? I know very very littler about choppers.. What should I look for? What wears out first? With out getting the brand war started, what models JD and NH are the better ones? Can you load trucks with a pull type like the self propelled guys do? Power wise, I have a 7150 Magnum, or a STX440 quadtrac. Planning on having the wife run the cutter, so I want one big enough that it works the tractor rather than tractor overpowers the chopper. Thanks in advanced
 
#2 · (Edited)
A jd 3970 or 3975. New holland fp230 would be similar size and a fp240 would be a bit larger capacity.
Look for worn out metal on the spout and behind the cutterhead. The condition of the feed rolls /knifes/ and shear bar/ cross auger if it has one and the blower paddles and housing. Parts can add up in a hurry so it would be nice to know the history of what has been changed recently on one your looking to buy. Nothing more frustrating then having your chopper break down in the middle of the day.

I would use the 7150 on the chopper too much HP and things will break. I'm not sure the rating on the 7150 but we used a 240 PTO hp tractor on our 3970 without any trouble. It will make the tractor snort if you want it to. Yes you can blow into trucks if it has the right spout on it but it doesn't work as well as a SP chopper for it.
 
#3 ·
How do you feed silage now? If you have a vertical mixer already (that can handle the silage bales) making silage bales may be a very decent option for you.

If chopping is the way to go for sure...
Loading trucks can be done, likely requires a vertical chute extension, we had two separate with ours when we sold it.

I am assuming you are referring to headers for the chopper? Never ran a corn header on our pull type, just a pickup header that we used for barley and alfalfa mostly, sometimes oats or triticale or rye. Often found that a big swath (30+ft) would power things out too much (we ran a JD 3975 pulled by a JD 4640) could have used either a better transmission (power shift would've been great) or more overall power (if the driveline would handle it). Frustrating to try to load trucks on the fly if you are starting and stopping a lot

Regular wear items will be pick up teeth, knives, blower paddles, etc. Can get decent quality from aftermarket like kooima, etc. Higher hours will start seeing wear on cross auger, blower chute. Some bearings here and there. We did buy a complete new chute from kooima for our self propelled last year, and will be paying more attention to the replaceable liners before we wear through the entire body on this one.

All in all, you can absolutely make decent silage if you have the man power. The one fundamental difference between JD and NH pull type vs self propelled is the cross auger. They both have it and it is a drag on the power and efficiency. It's where ours would plug up the easiest (where auger dumps into blower). I honestly don't know if just pouring more horsepower to it can fix it or if it's just a bottleneck, no way around it. Setting the cut length shorter does help to keep it from plugging as much, but longer lengths do pack and feed better in many situations, so it's a bit of a trade off. This is one big benefit of the self propelled, everything is one big line, cutter feeds right into blower. There are one or two manufacturers of pull type choppers that don't use cross augers. jF Stoll is designed where the cutter chops up and throws material straight into the chute (no room for a kernel processor though, so not a great choice in corn) and Dion makes one with cutter, kernel processor and blower all in a line. But they are both pretty small companies with limited dealership coverage.

So yeah, that's what I think I remember. We never put a kernel processor in ours so no idea how that ties in, likely crammed in there somewhere. Take most of the shields off and leave them in the shop, you will need to get in there and grease things more than anything. Aftermarket walking tandems are likely a decent option if you can find it. I liked JD's individual knives vs NH's one piece curved units, but either can get the job done

Good luck, feel free to ask any other questions that float through...
 
#6 ·
Dion makes a nice chopper. Fp240 new holland is probably second as far as capacity. Hay head for chopping grass type crops. We ran a fp240 for years till we went self propelled. 200hp tractor with 3 row corn head. You can load trucks but everything is on the wrong side. You might look into a smaller self propelled machine. Prices aren’t terrible compared to a bigger pull type and wear liners and other parts last longer
 
#7 ·
I can't recall what the weak point was with the 3970, but when I worked at an AGCO dealer, they ended up with a bunch of them(nearly new) on trade on Hesstons. Even the die hard green guys weren't willing to keep running them. And they were unmarketable, sat on the lot for years. Perhaps they have since been updated or upgraded and would be better now. Virtually all NH around here now, and a few JF's.
 
#8 ·
Only trouble we have had with ours (3970 and had a 3960 before it) is keeping the top back feed roll bearings in them. Change them every year and they are good for us for the season. We only chop 1000-1200 ton a year though. The back cross auger can give trouble in grassy conditions also. It will plug up on the support right at the blower entrance. Never had trouble with that doing cereals. I like the smaller knifes on the jd we have a few small rocks and it's a lot easier and cheaper replacing a 6" knife then a full length one.
 
#13 ·
Thanks for the replies. My main reason for not even considering an Agco brand chopper is I would drive past 2 CHN and 2 JD dealers to drive the 200 mile round trip to get parts.

As far as chopping hay goes, that would be only a 3rd of the tons and or acres through it. Mainly for corn or sorghum. I can imagine that more power would just plug that auger faster. Could a guy speed that auger up? Or would the blower be the bottle neck then?

My other questions are, how do you float the header? Does it ride on skids like a haybine? Is there any advantage to the walking tandems? How are the spouts and flipper on the end of the spout controlled?

Probably my biggest question after chopper to buy is, what is the best type/brand of dump wagons? Did anyone make a 14ton+ wagon? thanks
 
#15 ·
The auger on the jd is just poor design for hay crops. There is a different auger option that is supposed to help but never seen it or tried it.

The jd has gauge wheels on the hay head and you can set the float pressure with the lift. There is a gauge on the hitch to let you see how much down pressure there is. Walking tandems make the chopper way smoother and easier on everything. The spouts are either electric or electric over hydraulic controls with the deflector having a cable to a ram to move it up or down.
 
#14 ·
Wow, that's a bill. How many tons are you doing because it sure seems you would be able to justify a self propelled at that rate.

You can get a good JD 67-6910 or 67-6950 series pretty reasonably.
 
#17 ·
The corn head has skid plates but is usually carried off the ground. The spout and flipper are controlled by a control box running electric motors. Cross augers are what they are and are the bottle neck on all pull type choppers. The fp 240 is rated for something like 300 hp and I always thought if you put that much power on it you’d come home with only the draw pin. In alfalfa we chopped 3 14 foot windrows usually at 3-5 mph. Heavy oats we usually chopped single.
 
#19 ·
The shear pin problem, or lack of, is related to HP. If you have enough HP up front to keep the cutter head speed up at it's proper operating rpm, the shear pins can take a lot of abuse because the torque is fairly low. Put a smaller tractor on that is under powered and starts to slow down under load and shear pins start flying.



Neighbour was running his 3970 with his 4640 Deere and ended up with an oil leak in front of the rad. I brought out his 4440 and took the 4640 into the yard and changed out the hose that sprang a leak and then took it back. The 4440 went through 4 pins in an hour. Put the 4640 back on and never ate a pin for the rest of the day. The 4640 was able to keep the chopper up to speed, where the 4440 would slow down and shear the pin.



He still won't let me put my 6030 on his chopper for some reason. Have never been able to plug the chopper with the 4640.
 
#20 ·
Problem we had with the fp240 was the transition from the auger into the blower specifically trying to chop haylage on the dryer end plus we ran 6 knives instead of 12 for longer chop length. Our fp240 was an early model I am sure they have made improvements. We were chopping 4000-5000 tons of corn silage plus another 1200 tons of haylage
 
#21 ·
I do not know much about choppers other than driving trucks for some neighbors. Sounds like models have changed but one of the most respected ones 10-15 years ago was the NH 900 pull type. Another friend ran Case for years. I think there were 4 numbers in the model. 8750 with pick up maybe. He ran a 9130 Case Steiger 4wd with single tires and did thousands of tons of custom in this area. I think it was turned up to 260 hp and would fill a 20' box with extensions in 5-7 minutes IIRC. He did not bother with a hidump because of the time lost to stop and dump.
 
#22 ·
900 was the predecessor of the fp. We ran 2 of those prior to the fp240 and had no complaints. Would go through a set of liners a year. If processing silage isn’t an issue I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a good used 900 there isn’t enough difference in capacity to justify price
 
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