[diamondAfarms]

I've had a couple of my custom guys mention that they'd like to see a chopper on my combine, I don't THINK that they would pull their acres from me because I don't have one but in this day and age a guy can never tell. I don't know much about choppers because I've never run one. I went from an 8820 Titan 2 to a S670 a year ago. It was a big enough challenge to learn all the ins and outs of the drastic jump in combines, now I have this facing me. What are the pros and cons of a chopper vs. a spreader? Is this an odd comment or is this a true preference across the board?

Thanks

 

[cdnredneck_t3]

I have not seen a 670 or any new Deere rotary without a chopper. I am guessing yours also has one. To me spreader is just the 3 rubber arms that spin at low speed and just fling the straw around a bit. If you have the high speed drum with all the blades you have a chopper.

Maybe they mean the power cast tailboard?

 

[litefoot]

I don't know why you would need a chopper.....rotors chew up the straw enough for our area in Kansas. I love my 9670 with straw spreader! everyone who tries them in my area switch to them, but most still think they need the chopper. to each his own!

 

[deere john]

I agree with litefoot, I am also in Kansas. Demoed a 9650STS with a spreader on it many years ago, wound up buying it. Have used them ever since. We no-till as much as we can and like having the longer straw. They do a nice job of spreading and cost very little to maintain. No knives or hammers to maintain. We currently have a S670. The only down fall to a spreader is resale value, the vast majority of people still want a chopper.

 

[2388h]

Dont know about deere but case you can use the chopper as a chopper or a beater in a couple of minutes of changes. Litefoot I agree about 60% of the time but the good yielding years that chopper saves a lot of time and money the next year as far as residue management is involved.

 

[wheatwhacker]

Some of the advantages of a spreader are they require very little if any hp to run and I would guess you would also save some fuel per acre because of this. Almost no maintenance as already mentioned. Disadvantage would be longer pieces of residue that could cause issues with tillage in certain cases.

Advantage of a chopper is sizing the residue down to smaller pieces for quicker breakdown and easier tillage with certain tillage tools. This is very important to us in the northern climate because we have little time after harvest for our residue to break down before winter gets here and we tend to harvest a lot with tough straw that even the rotors don't chew up as much and also in the spring if we had all that big residue laying on the top it may cause us issues in the spring keeping the ground from drying out and warming up so we can plant back into it. I have not seen a spreader around here for decades.
Disadvantages would of course be the extra use of power to run them the extra fuel and the extra maintenance to keep them in shape. Chopper hammers and knives are not cheap.

It really depends on your tillage program, weather, crops grown and what you want. We have a customer in western NE that would prefer if we had a spreader because he fallows every other year and the longer straw would shade his ground better until he starts his fallow tillage the next summer. Another customer in OK has moved to no till and he wants a good chopper to size the residue for seeding his wheat back in the fall. Then we have another customer in north central KS that could care less because we drop 90-95% of his straw so he can bale it then it gets the disc over it anyway.

Hope this helps.

 

[aussie.ltd.]

We went from spreaders to choppers years ago because in chickpeas a chopper threw the material away and down away from the motor which helped a lot with fires other wise in dry harvests in cereal crops the JD spreader worked as good as the chopper in green ropey material differnt story