Looking for small combine advise.

First excuse my ignorance. I am new to beans. We recently started planting soybeans for the pigs my dad got and wants to continue to raise. Now he wants to find a way to pick them. I have no clue on what will pick soybeans. I know how to plow, plant, and pick corn but am lost on beans. Is a grain head on a combine what is used? We want to expand our farm more. We only have a very small area now(5 acres tillable) and its half corn half beans. What would be a good machine to start with? Pull behind or self propelled(doesn't matter), cheap, fairly reliable, doesn't lose a ton of seed when picking. Im in SW PA if anyone knows of any for sale that I could get cheap and use this fall. I have a corn picker but if I found one with a corn head I wouldn't be mad.

I don't know what they used for beans in the old days. Believe it or not, soybeans were kind of a novelty in the USA not that long ago. I have books about feeding from the mid 20th century that call them an Asian bean and indicate limited cultivation in the US. Modern picking of beans is done with a header on a combine that follows the contour of the ground somewhat...flex head...as opposed to a rigid head. If you are going with an older pull behind combine I dunno if you can find one that flexes which would leave you with a rigid grain head. Might get you by on flat level ground. If you have a good year and your beans get some height to them...maybe not lose too much close to the ground? I grew soybeans last year for the first time and picked them with a flex head. The drought kept those plants to a foot high or less. You don't want to know how hard that was and how little I got for my efforts.

A purpose built bean head is the way to go on any SP combine. You can make a straight cut grain head work on your small acerages, but be prepared to be part of the combine. Many small SP combines out there...Massey, Gleaner, Deere, IH, Case, can be had for a couple grand and still be a reliable machine. Start looking now. Ben

Is there a small scale neighbor (someone who know their way around a 5 acre field) in the neighborhood who could do them for you?? We could tell you to buy some cheap machine (and there are plenty out there) but it really doesn't pay for 5 acres!

You will have the cost of the machine, repairs, and then a machine that is going to last needs a shed in your climate... it all adds up. If this also entertainment, it can be justified, but if at the end of the year you are wondering "why didn't I just buy some soybean meal?" then, well, you will know why...

Soybeans have to be extruded in order to be palatable, don't they? Don't think you can feed them from the field with any results.

I was going to run them through a hammer mill and mix them with other feed.

Close enough would be tough. But we may end up going that route. Although it is 90% hobby 10% necessity. I like old stuff but sometimes it's just not worth it.

(reply to post at 15:12:46 06/08/17)

Click to expand...

Soybeans don't go throughout mill very good
They need to be processed in order to use them for feed
I would find another choice

Do you know what kind of process? I've heard
steamed to break down a protein but I'm not
sure. This mill is pretty good with 1/4 inch
screen

Years ago a neighbor grew and ground his own soybeans for cow feed. It worked fine. he said the only restriction was you couldn't grind a lot ahead as the beans would turn the feed rancid. When there got to be a roaster in the neighborhood, he had them roasted just for convenience. I don't know how raw beans would work in other animals. We used to keep roasted beans here to grind for pigs and chickens. They loved it.

They have to be roasted. There is an enzyme in them that isn't good for animals to digest them. Roasting kills the enzyme. Maybe things have changed from my days in a feed mill in the early 70's but the guy who owned the mill bought a roaster and was doing them. We were eating the roasted beans all day long and tasted a lot like peanuts. Sometimes you would get an unroasted one and they tasted awful. I had guys tell me their pigs loved the raw beans in feed but any time I ever tried it the pigs stopped eating.There can also be an issue with whole beans and the type of oil in them because its very unsaturated oil. Too much can effect the fat on pigs making it soft. Maybe not such a problem for todays pigs that are naturally leaner than the old time breeds.

I understand your situation. It is good you are thinking of it now, and not in October. The advice above about how to process them is good. We used to feed roasted beans to our milk cows... it was good feed. But raw was not great for dairy cattle, and I am unsure about pigs. Frankly, purchased soymeal would have been an easier (and probably cheaper) solution.

Do you have someone there in your county in Extention? I'd ask some questions about feeding hogs to them, and how best to handle the beans. I'd also do some internet searches- look for published papers, etc. from Universities and the like. I'd shy away from advice from people who are trying to sell you something. And keep in mind- we like to help here, but we are a bunch of self proclaimed "experts" you never met face to face!

Feeding raw soybeans to hogs and poultry will greatly reduce the rate of gain and can cause illness in the animals. There are enzymes in raw soybeans that retard the digestion of the protein. When the soybean is roasted or extruded the heat breaks these enzymes down into a form that can be digested.
:The science of the issue:
Trypsin Inhibitors
Trypsin inhibitors are a unique class of proteins found in raw soybeans that inhibit protease enzymes in the digestive tract. They reduce trypsin activity (a protease enzyme secreted by the pancreas) and, to a lesser extent, chymotrypsin, and, therefore, impair protein digestion by monogastric animals and some young ruminant animals (Leiner, 1994). There are two main classes of trypsin inhibitors found in soybeans: Kunitz and Bowman-Birk. Kunitz soybean trypsin inhibitors bind trypsin enzyme in a 1:1 molar ratio. Bowman-Birk trypsin inhibitors have two binding sites, one which binds trypsin and the other, chymotrypsin.
Feeding raw soybeans to monogastric animals like poultry and swine is not recommended as the presence of trypsin inhibitors and lectins will result in stunted growth, reduced feed efficiency and pancreatic hypertrophy (Leiner, 1994).

In the 1980s when soybeans where $4-5 a bushel and soybean meal was over $300 a ton a lot of fellow tried feeding raw soybeans in swine and cattle rations. It did not work very well at all. The actual results usually where a HIGH feed cost to market because the cattle and swine rate of gain dropped when the raw soybeans where added.

A friend of mine was buying feeder pigs form the same exact grower as I was. His hogs where taking 3-4 weeks longer to get to market size than my hogs where. He was ranting a raving about how he was getting "bad" feeder pigs. I was visiting him one day while he was grinding his hog feed. He went right to his grain bin and ran raw soybeans into the grinder. I questioned him about it. He stated he was getting "all the good fat" not the watered down amounts when you buy soybean meal. I had an up hill battle trying to convince him his ration was the trouble. Finally he agreed to have a wagon load of soybeans roasted. He fed them to his next group of feeder pigs. End of the drag time to market.

So PLEASE pass this information along to your father. Wanting to used your own products is good. Just know how to do so without hurting the feed performance. Check around and see if there is anyone roasting grain in your area. We have several that will come to your farm and roast grain for you.

Thanks JD. I appreciate the info. Looks like we will probably buy the soybean meal. Thanks for all the info

After rigid heads, there were floating cutterbar heads, then came the spendy and more effective flex head. Big difference between a floating cutterbar and a true flex head. FCB can be had very cheap, and certainly fine, and justifiable on small acreage.

Yes, beans did come from Asia...in the "30s there were some here, but really took off in the "50s. Farmers were realizing the value of balanced rations, and the importance of various feedstuffs, thru University research.

Flex heads are ideal but beans were harvested many many years with straight cut rigid heads. We had a Gleaner M2 in the 80s and used a rigid head. You can't cut right close to the ground but it will work.

Al

Along with the other good advise re feeding raw soybeans, running them through the grinder reduces some of the protein level, due to the heat of grinding.

Regarding a combine, you won"t find a combine that is gentler on beans than an AC All Crop...has rubber on rubber shelling, with the concave and cyl bars both having a rubber surface. You can get the pull-type combine for a few hundred dollars.

Depends on the way the head is made, some you can cut a lot closer with than others. Our John Deere 45 would cut 2" lower than our Massey 35SP and the Massey was only an 8' head while the JD was a 10' head, also had 12' for same machine and extra 2' made it so you could not cut as close as ground was never perfectly smooth. Massey was traded in on the Deere and then had 4 of the deeres and got both 10 & 12' heads with them.

You can direct feed Lupines for protein and that's about all I know about them.

Dad remembered when beans first came around. Some places they were cut and baled for hay, befor the bean set in the pods.

Sure was a different crop mix back in dads early day.

Paul

Start checking around, I thought there was a guy in PA that specialized in Gleaners.

I would suggest a F series Gleaner, (F, F2 or F3) they are very common, parts are plentiful, and they do a beautiful job combining.

They are easy and economical to repair, etc. Very good smaller machines.

What ever combine you get, make sure your header is a flex head, and make sure your combine has Header Height Control, so you can get real close and shave the ground and get all them beans close to the ground.......john

You can feed field peas without roasting. They will grow in Pennsylvania. I've grown them here in New Jersey interseeded into oats and combined them together. The peas vine up on the oats and you're not down on the ground sucking in rocks to get the vines then. Didn't get too many splits at the higher cylinder speed needed for oats.