John deere 55 combine question

I am looking into buying a john deere 55 or 55EB combine. I am trying to harvest oats, Has anybody every harvest oats on a 55 combine before with a bean and grain head?

yes just like cutting wheat

Yuppy. Works great.

Thats great, Thank you

Hello Seth welcome to YT! In case you are not familiar with agriculture or harvesting oats I will give you this tip. The air from the cleaning fan has to be shut down to a very minimal flow or oats will be blown out the back of the machine. If by chance your combine does not come with an operators manual you can download a manual at no charge from the linked JD publication site. The manual will be very helpful especially when setting the machine to harvest the crop the best and with the least foreign material in the clean grain tank.
JD publication sight

Thank you. I appreciate it. I have been farming with cattle since I was little but I have never harvested anything before so I been looking at older combines to harvest cattle. I appreciate your input. I will have to keep that in mind. Anymore tips for harvesting oats or soybeans?

Thank you. I have been farming cattle my whole life but I have never harvested anything. So i have been looking at older combines to harvest oats or soybeans. I have to keep that tip in mind, do you have anymore tips?

By bean or grain head your talking about a head with a sickle bar to cut the beans or oats and a reel to make sure they fall onto the header then feed into the combine. Some areas combine oats by windrowing the oats while still slightly green with a windrower that cuts the oats and feeds them through the machine and lays them in a windrow that requires a pickup header to combine them. They let the windows dry for several days before combining. Soybeans don't handle laying on cold wet ground well, they need the header with the sickle and reel.
Our neighbor had a 55 combine, might have been a 55EB, I remember him combining 2 rows of 120 bushel per acre corn at 5 mph. I thought he was moving along really well. I never saw him combine small grains, he raised oats mostly for the straw for bedding and to start 20 acres of Alfalfa for hay. I would imagine a 55 would handle a 12 or 13 ft header for small grain, or 4 38inch soybean rows, or even 30 inch rows.
A buddy of mine had trouble finding parts to keep his 4400 Deere combine running 10-15 years ago, and he lived less than 4 miles from Deere's largest repair parts warehouse, and He and his son both worked for Deere. Seemed like every time he needed a belt it was 5+ states away, and there would be a special handling express shipping charge of $100.

If you are talking about picking them up out of a windrow,Yes,it will work great. And the oats will be cleaner because all the green stuff will be dry and seperate out.

If you are talking about harvesting out of a winrow it was NEVER done here in Ohio and eastern Indiana. Years ago neighbor got a big idea that he could do that and get a couple of days earlier planting double crop soybeans. Winrowed his wheat, rain came, he lost entire wheat crop to spoilage. And he was later getting the double crop beans in field than if he had just cut the wheat with the cutting head instead of the winrow head he spent big money on. And a lot of 45 combines but no 55 because they were too big for most farms at that time. Red clover used to mow, rake and then pickup with the cutter bar head, it would slide under the clover. I got Dad talked into direct cutting it and doubled the dead harvest, lost have the sead by cutting it ahead of harvest. Never tried that dumb trick again on the red clover. Too much chance of getting rained on after cutting and never being able to get it to dry enough for harvesting.

In my younger days my dad had a JD 55 that he direct cut beans, oats, barley, milo and wheat. Did a good job but dad, being from the old school, had said that oats needed to be threshed, as in cut with a binder, shocked to let dry, run through a threshing machine, which I remember doing. But, in later years he went to direct cutting oats along with the other mentioned crops. Like mentioned earlier, a combine needs set a lot different when harvesting oats vs. wheat or other small grains due to their being a coarser but light weight grain. Setting the machine by the book is a good place to start. Good luck.