[jdeere]

Hey there,

As the title says, I have one main, major question/deciding factor whether to get a 9650sts or not. What is the dropped straw like?
We'd like to round and sqaure bale some of it.
For example: in 40-50bu/ac wheat/barley, straw about 2 feet tall or taller,
How do these machines pulverize it? is it round bale-able?
What settings do you play with to adjust your straw quality

To sum it up: How many here are succesfully baling cereal straw behind their sts's?

Thanks

 

[bud]

If straw quality is your main objective then stay with a straw walker machine.

In a year where the straw has some moisture, then you can make baleable straw in the morning and evening when the dew is on and possibly during the heat of the day. You will only get 1/2 the number of bales in the heat of the day that you will get from a straw walker machine in barley. In wheat you will have a hard time to get straw you can bale at all once the dew comes off if the straw is cured and dry.

In a year when the straw is completely cured out and dry (4-8% moisture) you will get 0 bales once the dew drys down. I harvest malt barley and the crop has to sit for weeks with the heads completely turned down and the straw very dry and I can only make good baleable straw for about 1-4 hours in the morning and it is difficult to get the barley down to the 13.5% that malt requires. If you live in an area that harvests crops that are higher moisture you will get better straw than me.

All rotary machines will put out less bales per acre than a straw walker machine when the straw is dry. Deere salesmen like to claim that the sts combines will give much better straw than the competition rotaries for baling, but in my experience that just means that the sts machines can drop straw for an extra 20 minutes longer than the others before they switch back to chopping the straw.

 

[Alex Ryan]

You can do it fairly well, but it may require a different concave setup, a pushing the lower limits of rotor speed, higher limits of concave settings. We ran round bar, round bar, large wire concaves in our combines, the roundbars had 3 sets in 1,2,5 of interrupter bars. You can do it, but requires to think outside the box.