jaydee, I've seen this discussed before, and as usual, there's mixed opinions, but some guys swear the row crop does an awesome job and you can really go. I don't have 1st hand experience. I was looking in to a row crop header a few years ago to do flowers, but the guy building the extruder petered out, so that's one time when I was told I could use it for my beans too and it would work great.

 

I am just wondering how close you can get to the ground with a row crop header and the terrain following capabilities...

 

Yeah, I understand. Hopefully someone will chime in that knows more than me. That shouldn't take much!

 

Rowhead has less shatter loss in my experience and that is the only thing it does better.

They hug the ground equally well. (Row units float individually)

Flexhead has much less maintenance. Speed matching is not as critical. Steering errors are much more forgiving. Row spacing does not matter.

 

I have a 853A for sale, skid shoes, very good belts, shed! $8,500

 

What is the tightest (minimum) row spacing on those row crop headers?Can they be set at less than 30inch?

 

Only came in two sizes jaydee, 30 or 36/38 inch rows.

"x"53 is the 30 inch head, "x"54 is the wide row version. "x" stands for number of rows. Eg 653 or 654 etc. 12 row 30 (1253) was as wide as they went.

They can shave the ground if your land is reasonably flat. If it's up and down then I think you'd be better off with a flex head. What are you looking to harvest with them?

I wish they still made them, they were an awesome milo and sunflower head and we used them to do chickpeas a few times. The responses you got on NAT give a pretty fair rundown, most of those guys are corn/soybean growers. Like they said, lots of moving parts and upkeep but they work well.

 

Years ago we had a 653A on a 7720. You could run about as fast as you could sit in the seat. It would flat out eat beans. They marched in there like soldiers. We sold it when the 9000 series combines came out. Have thought on occasion of getting a refurbished 1253A for our rowed beans, but leaning more towards a draper head now.

 

I knew a guy that made a 853A into 20'' spacing and used plastic snouts

 

Thanks

 

I have looked into one for the last 4 or 5 years and haven't pulled the trigger but got a lot of education on them. Currently run a 635f. The biggest advantages are even feeding, superior to any cutterbar table, even a draper, and no reel to knock out beans, particularly if they are really dry beans. That's my only problem when people talk up these drapers-you still have a reel, and the reel knocks out as many beans as an auger does on an auger platform. Even if you slow the reel down as much as you can and put it as far up as you can. With the platforms there is a constant tradeoff between reel to high that feeding is poor, but less loss off of reel, and reel to low and feeding is great but you pop out a lot of beans with the reel. With the row crop head you eliminate that, just get your header speed set to your ground speed and drive, and they really shine on short beans where they just pile up on an auger header, and bunch feed, they feed right in regardless of height. They march right up the gathering belts and into a trough auger, not a pinch and pull platform type auger. So once they reach the auger its a gentle movement over to the feeder house, no need for full finger or anything like that because there isn't a grabbing action done but the auger.

Bish makes a 16 row. They make a 16 row frame and put the JD row units on. FYI Home

 

By the way, the reason deere doesn't make these anymore isn't because they don't do a good job in my opinion. If you look at a 50 series combine literature book they still have a page on the row crop heads. Then in the 60 series with the new 600 series platforms they don't show them in the literature sales books anymore. So my guess is somewhere in the early 2000's. I think I have seen a 2002 model for sale before. We all know what happened. Roundup beans came out in 96, the row crop cultivators never got out of the shed, 750 drills, and 1780 15" row planters came on and sold big (atleast in my area) and at the time soybean seed was cheap (compared to now) and there was a lot of push for narrow rows making more yield. I have always planted in 30" rows, I never made the switch, and have been happy with yields, population, stand etc. But I am in a conventional tillage area. I think deere is happy selling everyone a $200,000 (depending on size) 15" row planter, and a $300,000 self propelled sprayer and probably doesn't worry about the lost row crop cultivator and row crop header sales

 

Thanks a lot for your input,thats very interesting to me.There is a guy who makes a 20inch conversion for those row crop headers,for those who want e better canopy...How do you control your weeds,do you still cultivate?

 

On my conventional soybeans I do still row crop cultivate with a john deere 845 c-shank. My RR beans so far making one application and planting a bushy wide canopy variety holds weeds. But I do fall tillage and work everything before I plant with a field cultivator. I am in a very conventional tillage area.

 

Why would you only wan't to take a 30ft swath when you can take a 30 45 foot swath and do alote better job than with a row head?

 

Hey jaydee, would you mind sharing where you found the 20 inch row conversion? We are 20 inch rows and have threatened to make a row crop head,

 

How well do they work in milo?