Combine work in May....

paul

Well-known Member
Sigh. Trying to get done planting here in wet Minnesota.

And so I spent a couple hours on Memorial Day taking a combine apart.

Momma cat moved her 2 kittens a couple days ago. Heard one yesterday mewing up a storm.

Well she had the kittens in the back of the F3 on the sieve. One was there, one the noises were coming from within the combine.

Tracked it down, somehow the critter got itself on top of the fan.

There is a small triangle of space with no access holes, no clearance, no way for anything to get there, hard shrouding pop riveted and spot welded in place around the top rear 1/3 of the fan.

And there were the kitty feet and tail. Couldn't see much else, tight area. No IDE how it got itself in there, there is no access.....

Worked 2 hours of my day taking the combine apart to find a way to it, had to bend a little metal in the end to squeeze it out. Never took a shoe out before, tried that first....

I'm sure it will catch distemper and die anyhow, but what do you do?

Today its raining, would have time today......

Paul
 
In your heart, you know you did the right thing......BTW, seem to remember the fan comes out the side of the machine.....but mine came out easily when the hubs released and the fins blew apart.....
 
I've done that in the dark not too bad a job, you need to spin off the screw on sprocket on the one side, get the bearing off, the other side is easy, 6 1/2 inch headed nuts and the whole big cap comes out with the fan and all.

Problem was the bearing often needs heat; and there is no way to easily support the fan once you pull it out, it will drop an inch once it comes off the bearing.

Ida had cooked squished kitty. Most of the time it was sitting in the bottom part of the fan, but not by the 2 access covers, towards the rear behind the shrouding.

But I sure was considering that angle of attack.....

We joked about just starting the combine, the kitty didnt weigh much it woulda come out.......... ;)

Paul
 
Paul, a couple weeks back I told the daughters I was going to pull the baler out and get it ready for hay season because the frickin weather was pushing the corn planting so far forward that I was afeared it would run over my best mowing time. Kids said "good luck with that, there is a turkey in it". I will spare you the rest of the conversation, only say that I went back there and, yes...there was a turkey in the baler. I had put it away clean last year but there was still some loose stuff in the pickup area. She had flown over the pickup reel tines and gone back into the bale chute. There she had gathered all the loose stuff she could find and made a nice little nest. She had been in their a while because after a week or so she appeared with 5 poults.
 
One of our mother cats used the baler just like you say for a nest.

The following year I looked close, and sure enough she used it again, the plunger was open only a few inches and she had her kittens behind the plunger, never woulda seen that if I hadn't been checking close because of the previous year....

Yes, we have a cat problem. At least the mouse and rat problem has gotten a lot less around here.

Paul
 
Boy, a straw chopper will sure send a coon and her litter quite a ways out the back, I'll tell you that one for sure. It was probably the best way to clear it out. It's not like I am partial to saving coons and I don't own thick enough gloves anyway.
 
Sorry to say this but I'd gladly sent a family of raccoons out the back of mine. I had 1 tear up a wiring harness in the worst place to work on last year. I hate 'em.
On the bright side we used to have a momma cat have kittens in a cardboard box everytime. When she would be looking close I would leave a big air filter box empty in the shed and sure enough she'd have kitties there. We always called them kitties in a box.
 

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