L-3 vs a 850 Massey
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We ran both at the same time and both did a good job, the Massey was a lot better in Barley and tough crops but the Gleaner loved grain sorghum and wheat. Our Masseys were lifted in the HP to around 175 so that helped. The L3 is a lot easier to service and I would say the Gleaner cab is nicer although the last of the Masseys were fairly quiet but still cramped. There is more grain noise but a lot less engine noise in the L3. The unloading tube is a bit low nowdays(Massey is higher) but there are ways around that to help lift the height a bit. The late 850s had a lot of fixes over the first of the 750/850s that made them a better long life combine. We kept one running with our rotaries to do crops that farmers wanted to bale long after a custom harvester normally does and had a great run out of it but the Gleaner is a simpler combine.
The L-3 is far simpler to work on if you need to. It will also out perform the 850. It is easy to get parts for and as was stated earlier, a better cab and way better traction in tough conditions. An L-3 will go through way more mud if need be than a Massey 850. (I am a bit biased because I have been running gleaners but, I have run along side many 850's and 860's and my L2 never left me hanging!
Your conditions must have different to ours then as the Massey definately had more go when the going got harder and we ran Gleaners along side the Masseys from Ls / 750s to L3s / 850s until we ended up with all rotaries. The reason we ran both brands at the same time was we liked both machines and we did have good dealers for both.
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411 Posts
cowboy ever kick yourself in the backside ? you buy a massey and not the l3 you will be doing such . L 3 is way better to work on than that massey , gleaner is a better machine hands down.
Ausfarmer, I must apologize for not being to clear. Must have been in too big of a hurry!! Anyhow, by tough conditions I meant muddy ground, etc. Not green wheat, etc. I will agree that the Massey may do better on green wheat or beans if the header is not set correctly. The main drawback in green conditions is the feeder house drum and proximity of the cylinder. You do not get the evening out effect of the feeder chain. However, this can be reduced by making sure the header is fine tuned so that it feeds even. Also, the teeth in the feeder drum must be set correctly. Over the years, I have been amazed at the number of Gleaner heads out there that have not been set properly. Most folks get them from the factory and never change them. With these mods and proper settings, a 760 could not hang with my L-2 in most conditions, especially mud! But, you are right about both being good machines but the gleaner wins for simplicity hands down!
Hope all is well in the land down under!
Bryan
Hope all is well in the land down under!
Bryan
Brian, that is fine and no offence was taken, its good to be able to have a polite discussion on the benefits of these machines. Gleaner made changes over the years on the feeder beater and at the end they worked very well feeding. You are right in saying the feeder beater is so important in the feeding to the cylinder.
Some rain would work well here but there are places that are suffering mice plagues down south where they had to stop sowing due to the mice eating the seed out of the ground so we are a lot better off than those guys.
Some rain would work well here but there are places that are suffering mice plagues down south where they had to stop sowing due to the mice eating the seed out of the ground so we are a lot better off than those guys.
You are kidding right? Mice eating the seed? sounds like and Alfred Hitchcock Movie plot!!!! I will try to send you some of our rain. Been real wet this year. Low spots drowning out and lots of potential for scab and White Mold. But, the good Lord knows whats going on so I am not too worried! Hope you get rid of your Mice problem. When I was a kid, I had to crawl under a silo to fix an unload belt. When I got under, I could not see so I grabbed a flashlight and when I turned it on, All I could see was eyes! Big beady eyes!! It may have only been a 2 ft crawl space and I was close to 4 ft tall but I know I stood up straight and ran out of there. The only problem was the low beam over the top of the entrance. Well I hit that square in the middle of my forehead and it laid me flat. The rats thought this would be a good opportunity to make their getaway and the boiled out all over and around me. To this day, the thought of hoards of rats or mice just give me the shivers!!!!!!
Bryan
Bryan
Nope! ausfarmer is not kidding one little bit when it comes to mice plagues in Australia.
We had some 500 acres of newly sown wheat eaten out by mice in one paddock in the 1993 mouse plague to the extent that it had to be resown.
The paddock looked like a desert by the time those mice had finished.
The other couple of thousand acres had very bad mouse damage but we just didn't have the time frame or the seed to resow.
The plague ran it's course as they always do and the end to a plague is always obvious as they start cannabilising themselves, so much so that partly eaten mice might still be alive.
The stench of millions upon millions of plague mice and the dead and dying mice across the countrside, in the sheds, in the houses, in the rural towns for perhaps three or more months during the plague was just about overwhelming for anybody.
Under field bins at night, the torch would light up a teeming mass of mice so thick that you could not see the ground under the bin.
During the day, when the lid on the auger hoppers under grain bins were lifted, the hoppers were jammed tight with thousands of mice.
Mouse plagues are a regular occurrence in the Australian wheat belt but mostly are far more regional than was the 1993 super plague.
A couple of videos from that plague;
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/447420/worlds_worst_mouse_plague/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH4EFgRB4bU
And one from this year 2010; http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south....from=public_rss
And have I told you about our oncoming spring locust plague which has the capacity and probability to seriously damage and perhaps to totally destroy most of SE Australia's grain crops this coming southern hemisphere spring unless the farmer / government's combined all out locust control program is successful.
http://www.daff.gov.au/animal-plant-heal....ulletin-May2010
Edit and add; Locusts in our region have been burrowing and laying eggs in cracks on sealed roads.
The seal, being black gets a lot warmer a lot earlier after winter and assists the early hatching of the plague locust
We had some 500 acres of newly sown wheat eaten out by mice in one paddock in the 1993 mouse plague to the extent that it had to be resown.
The paddock looked like a desert by the time those mice had finished.
The other couple of thousand acres had very bad mouse damage but we just didn't have the time frame or the seed to resow.
The plague ran it's course as they always do and the end to a plague is always obvious as they start cannabilising themselves, so much so that partly eaten mice might still be alive.
The stench of millions upon millions of plague mice and the dead and dying mice across the countrside, in the sheds, in the houses, in the rural towns for perhaps three or more months during the plague was just about overwhelming for anybody.
Under field bins at night, the torch would light up a teeming mass of mice so thick that you could not see the ground under the bin.
During the day, when the lid on the auger hoppers under grain bins were lifted, the hoppers were jammed tight with thousands of mice.
Mouse plagues are a regular occurrence in the Australian wheat belt but mostly are far more regional than was the 1993 super plague.
A couple of videos from that plague;
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/447420/worlds_worst_mouse_plague/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH4EFgRB4bU
And one from this year 2010; http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south....from=public_rss
And have I told you about our oncoming spring locust plague which has the capacity and probability to seriously damage and perhaps to totally destroy most of SE Australia's grain crops this coming southern hemisphere spring unless the farmer / government's combined all out locust control program is successful.
http://www.daff.gov.au/animal-plant-heal....ulletin-May2010
Edit and add; Locusts in our region have been burrowing and laying eggs in cracks on sealed roads.
The seal, being black gets a lot warmer a lot earlier after winter and assists the early hatching of the plague locust
ROM That is just wrong!!! What did you guys do in Aust to tick the good Lord off????? Haha! Thanks for the links. It is amazing that something like that happens. It is like the biblical plagues!!!!! What do you do to combat that or to clean up when that happens? What about the crops and animals? Do any survive? Thanks again!
Bryan
Bryan
The allusion to the biblical plagues was a regular quote in those times.
Like farmers and rural people everywhere since farming began some 12, 000 years ago, we coped, picked ourselves up and got on with life again but when something like that happens you never forget and you try to find ways of reducing or abolishing the problem.
When up against nature as in plagues, you just have to live with it until the plague is over.
A couple of items came out of that plague.
We were using some pretty nasty concoctions on grain to try and stop those mice from eating the sown seed in the paddocks but the authorities stopped that dead in it's tracks as there was a very strong probability of some of those nasties getting into our export and domestic consumption shipments of grain and then you guys would jump right in and tell the world [ which you have done on many occasions ] that Australian wheat was s**t and dangerous. [ at times, I don't know why we are still your allies ]
With the pollies and bureaucrats on the rack over the mouse plague and their preventing any action on reducing the numbers with the then non targetable available chemicals there was suddenly a lot of money on the table to find a fix and do it fast for mouse plagues.
The result was a broad acre mouse bait using Zinc Phosphide
http://www.garrards.com.au/zone_files/pdf/mousezp.pdf
The bait is spread at around 1 kg / Hectare [ 1/2 kg works just as good ] by using small spinners on the back of a ute so that you can click along at 30kph plus on around 30 metre widths.
So you can cover some big areas pretty fast if you can afford the cost of the bait!
The mice only need to eat a part of a sterilised [ to prevent it growing in the cereal crop ] and Zinc Phosphide treated grain and the stomach acids release Phosphine gas which kills most things quick smart.
That has been one of the best things against mouse plagues ever but as you can see in that Adelaide article even that can cost and some guys over there just made the decision not to plant this year.
With the oncoming locust plague which has already literally wiped out some thousands of acres of newly emerged crops in northern Victoria before the locusts went into winter hibernation, aerial spraying will take place on the hopper bands before they can fly and boom spraying on private property, ie; farm land.
Farmers are getting subsidised chemicals but on public lands they will be using a natural parasitical fungus that is sprayed onto the hopper bands and that grows into and through the hoppers and kills them.
But that takes a couple of weeks to act so we are still stuck with the strong probability that many swarms will be missed until too late and they then scatter and really destroy anything that is green.
In a very bad 1930's plague, my mother use to tell me that the locusts actually ate the green paint off of broom handles.
And that is not a tall tale from Australia but is fair dinkum.
In northern victoria early this year, a lot of outdoor people were wearing fly nets to stop the locusts swarms hitting their faces all the time as they are big and they can hurt when they hit you on the face.
If you think you are doing it hard, try looking at some other places on this planet and when you do you realise that we do have it rather good despite all our apparent setbacks.
EDIT; my apologies to all for getting off topic but if you learn't something then that is why we are all here on this forum.
Thankyou.
Like farmers and rural people everywhere since farming began some 12, 000 years ago, we coped, picked ourselves up and got on with life again but when something like that happens you never forget and you try to find ways of reducing or abolishing the problem.
When up against nature as in plagues, you just have to live with it until the plague is over.
A couple of items came out of that plague.
We were using some pretty nasty concoctions on grain to try and stop those mice from eating the sown seed in the paddocks but the authorities stopped that dead in it's tracks as there was a very strong probability of some of those nasties getting into our export and domestic consumption shipments of grain and then you guys would jump right in and tell the world [ which you have done on many occasions ] that Australian wheat was s**t and dangerous. [ at times, I don't know why we are still your allies ]
With the pollies and bureaucrats on the rack over the mouse plague and their preventing any action on reducing the numbers with the then non targetable available chemicals there was suddenly a lot of money on the table to find a fix and do it fast for mouse plagues.
The result was a broad acre mouse bait using Zinc Phosphide
http://www.garrards.com.au/zone_files/pdf/mousezp.pdf
The bait is spread at around 1 kg / Hectare [ 1/2 kg works just as good ] by using small spinners on the back of a ute so that you can click along at 30kph plus on around 30 metre widths.
So you can cover some big areas pretty fast if you can afford the cost of the bait!
The mice only need to eat a part of a sterilised [ to prevent it growing in the cereal crop ] and Zinc Phosphide treated grain and the stomach acids release Phosphine gas which kills most things quick smart.
That has been one of the best things against mouse plagues ever but as you can see in that Adelaide article even that can cost and some guys over there just made the decision not to plant this year.
With the oncoming locust plague which has already literally wiped out some thousands of acres of newly emerged crops in northern Victoria before the locusts went into winter hibernation, aerial spraying will take place on the hopper bands before they can fly and boom spraying on private property, ie; farm land.
Farmers are getting subsidised chemicals but on public lands they will be using a natural parasitical fungus that is sprayed onto the hopper bands and that grows into and through the hoppers and kills them.
But that takes a couple of weeks to act so we are still stuck with the strong probability that many swarms will be missed until too late and they then scatter and really destroy anything that is green.
In a very bad 1930's plague, my mother use to tell me that the locusts actually ate the green paint off of broom handles.
And that is not a tall tale from Australia but is fair dinkum.
In northern victoria early this year, a lot of outdoor people were wearing fly nets to stop the locusts swarms hitting their faces all the time as they are big and they can hurt when they hit you on the face.
If you think you are doing it hard, try looking at some other places on this planet and when you do you realise that we do have it rather good despite all our apparent setbacks.
EDIT; my apologies to all for getting off topic but if you learn't something then that is why we are all here on this forum.
Thankyou.
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439 Posts
That is one the the most F-ed up things I have ever seen.
Now so I am not off topic. The L 3 is better than an 850.
Now so I am not off topic. The L 3 is better than an 850.
ROM,
Thanks for the information!! I still can not get enough of the videos. It is surreal watching all of those critters just pour out of places. I have been asking around if others have seen it and some have and some have not. You guys are in my prayers that something like that never happens again! I can not even imagine the smell and the cleanup and just the plain devestation that those rodents could do!!! Thanks again!
PS Looks like the L-3 would chew the mice up better than the 850!!!!!
Thanks for the information!! I still can not get enough of the videos. It is surreal watching all of those critters just pour out of places. I have been asking around if others have seen it and some have and some have not. You guys are in my prayers that something like that never happens again! I can not even imagine the smell and the cleanup and just the plain devestation that those rodents could do!!! Thanks again!
PS Looks like the L-3 would chew the mice up better than the 850!!!!!
Off topic again but just to show you what an interesting place Australia is to farm in!
Plague Locusts this time.
The current Locust plague is yet to run it's course which will happen starting within the next couple of months when the eggs from the Autumn [ Fall ] plague that were laid in the egg beds start to hatch as winter passes and ground temperatures start to warm up.
That autumn Locust plague early this year covered an area about the size of Spain.
As locusts lay 30 or more eggs each time and they can do it 2, 3 or 4 times if conditions are good for locusts,which they are at present, then we will really have a plague on our hands with some pretty nasty consequences for our cropping, pasture and irrigation industries.
Huge Locust egg beds are being found in all areas from Longreach in central Queensland right down to southern South Australia cropping areas, about 2000 kilometres total distance.
The one bright spot is that the plague mice in some areas are eating a lot of the plague locusts eggs !!!!
[ Australian's have an ironic sense of humour derived from Australia's convict origins and the wide brown harsh land that is Australia, a humour which is not always appreciated by other cultures.]
Short videos following of locusts which don't video very well so a lot of scenes in some videos don't really give one an idea on just how thick those swarms are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOmda_KPgdY
And a video of the hoppers / nymphs before they are sufficiently developed to fly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FFhuwxl_C0&feature=related
Plague Locusts this time.
The current Locust plague is yet to run it's course which will happen starting within the next couple of months when the eggs from the Autumn [ Fall ] plague that were laid in the egg beds start to hatch as winter passes and ground temperatures start to warm up.
That autumn Locust plague early this year covered an area about the size of Spain.
As locusts lay 30 or more eggs each time and they can do it 2, 3 or 4 times if conditions are good for locusts,which they are at present, then we will really have a plague on our hands with some pretty nasty consequences for our cropping, pasture and irrigation industries.
Huge Locust egg beds are being found in all areas from Longreach in central Queensland right down to southern South Australia cropping areas, about 2000 kilometres total distance.
The one bright spot is that the plague mice in some areas are eating a lot of the plague locusts eggs !!!!
[ Australian's have an ironic sense of humour derived from Australia's convict origins and the wide brown harsh land that is Australia, a humour which is not always appreciated by other cultures.]
Short videos following of locusts which don't video very well so a lot of scenes in some videos don't really give one an idea on just how thick those swarms are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOmda_KPgdY
And a video of the hoppers / nymphs before they are sufficiently developed to fly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FFhuwxl_C0&feature=related
Thanks again for the info! I believe I was born backward so I may have inadvertantly picked up your same sense of humor!!! Do you guys spray for the locusts or is it even possible to fight them? I imagine they pretty much devour everything in their path when they come.
As bad as the locusts look, I think I would take them over the rodents!!!!
Just like the L 3 over the 850!
Bryan
As bad as the locusts look, I think I would take them over the rodents!!!!
Just like the L 3 over the 850!
Bryan
The trick is to get the locusts before they take wing as they are still in a small area and the spray will get them. Once they take flight it is almost impossible to kill them as they spread out over a huge area. I remember some years ago when we were hit hard that we had to run wire mesh in front of our radiators on our cars so that when we drove through a swarm we could pull up and clean the mesh off rather than having a blocked radiator full of locust guts.
Australian Plague Locusts Commission
http://www.daff.gov.au/animal-plant-health/locusts
Read all about it!
Some previous info in Reply #10. 22nd July above.
Not possible to fight a full blown plague when they are flying.
They must be sprayed and the destroyed before they can fly when they congregate into bands perhaps 30 metres deep by a hundred metres to a couple of kilometers long and at the densities you can see in that video of the flightless nymphs.
The mature locusts can migrate 200 or 300 kilometres downwind and do it almost overnight.
Potential plague swarms have been swept some hundreds of kilometres out to sea in the past where their bodies some just covered the water where they came down.
Sorry, I'm a bit embarrassed about being off topic so much!
We had the Australian built MF 860 I think, over here and it was only just and maybe a bit of a dog from all accounts.
http://www.daff.gov.au/animal-plant-health/locusts
Read all about it!
Some previous info in Reply #10. 22nd July above.
Not possible to fight a full blown plague when they are flying.
They must be sprayed and the destroyed before they can fly when they congregate into bands perhaps 30 metres deep by a hundred metres to a couple of kilometers long and at the densities you can see in that video of the flightless nymphs.
The mature locusts can migrate 200 or 300 kilometres downwind and do it almost overnight.
Potential plague swarms have been swept some hundreds of kilometres out to sea in the past where their bodies some just covered the water where they came down.
Sorry, I'm a bit embarrassed about being off topic so much!
We had the Australian built MF 860 I think, over here and it was only just and maybe a bit of a dog from all accounts.
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