[ryno]

I have a '96 9600 and would like to match it to a draper. i cut next to some guys with 2388s and 36 foot mac dons in some 60 bushel wheat. Loved the headers and how they handled the wheat but i'm afraid my 9600 just cant hadle the demand like the 23's.( please insert smart elleck color war comment here) i'm really thinking of a 30 foot mac don what do some of you other deere drivers think? While i realize that the 36 would be the ticket in my dryland i cant justify buying a header like that just to handle 700 acres every other year. Thanks in advance for your reply.

 

[bighp6030]

The last year I was on wheat harvest,my boss bought two 36' MacDons to run on his 9600s.I was thinking like you did,no way a conventional 9600 could handle 36 feet,I WAS WRONG!!!
With a 36' head in 20-30bushel wheat,we gained .5mph over a 30' auger header.It's all in how the crop is fed into the feeder house.A draper head feeds the crop more evenly than an auger head does.Your 9600 with a 36' head will run all day with a 2388,despite what all these children say!

 

[hulless]

the last 2 harvest we have run a 30' honeybee draper on the 9600 and a 30' Deere auger on the 9610, and we are easily 0.5-1.0 mph faster with the draper than the auger. the difference was just as noticeable in the wheat as in the barley.

 

[koldkanuck]

You can't go wrong with a 36' McDon on a 9600. I know of guys running 36' McDon's on their 8820's and they have no problem at all, in fact they gain capacity, since there is no "slugging". When the combine is full, the motor will start to slow down, so you know exactly what speed to run it at. Don't really matter if you get the 30ft., since you will just be going faster.

 

[deerefarm]

I have a friend that runs a 36' draper and runs faster than I run my 25' auger head and seems to do a good job of saving all the grain we both run 9600's. The only problem they had last year was cutting some still green wheat they pluged the cyl so tight they could not move it ,took half a day or more to get it going. The auger will wrap or carry the tough straw around where as the draper just keeps feeding smothly.