Forage chopper

I am a young dairy farmer starting out an thought maby some 1here could help me. I am looking for a pull type forage chopper at a affordable price. If you have something feel free to post on here or email me I am located in southern MI but willing to travel
 
Define affordable. The old IH cut and throws did a lot of work in my neighborhood years back but they are not everybody's cup of tea. Probably could buy a good one with both heads for a few hundred dollars. The biggest problem would be availability. New Holland 717 and Super 717 are cut and throw plus will run a hundred or two more than the IH. Either way a yard such as Fry's in PA has a good stock of used parts for what the manufacturer no longer offers. Older Gehl's are good but you would want to have a parts machine lined up to go with the user for something on the order of a 600 or 800. I saw a couple of good 35 JD's sell last spring for a few hundred dollars a piece each with a head. I know somebody will pipe up and say they saw a later model Deere or NH sell with heads for a few hundred dollars but I have never seen that happen here outside of a salvage unit.
 
Something to think about... your success as a dairyman is largely dependant upon your ability to acquire high quality forage. A "cheap" chopper may not be so cheap. They are a very maintenance intensive piece of equipment, probably more so than any other.

Are you a good mechanic? Do you have the time to maintain and harvest yourself? Or should you hire it chopped?

Think it through.

I am not trying to discourage you, but instead, get you off on your best foot. The world needs new dairymen such as yourself.
 
IF you have a good custom harvester in your area I would consider hiring it done. Your time and money would be better spent with your cows. Also a cheap chopper that you fight and make your feed late will turn out to be a COSTLY chopper.

Maybe trade out your labor with a neighboring farmer who has a chopper.
 
I had to build up from a borrowed IH to a Fox 1 row to a 717 and 718 single row. Then I found an older 892 and now a two row 3750. That's over a 25 year period. I must have gone through about 5 or 6 717's. You can find 717's for around $500. They may need some work, but if you spend the time on them earlier, it will pay you back when you chop. If you have trouble, Fry's in Pa, has parts and can have them to you in a day. You can swap labor for wagons and sometimes for chopping, also. Being poor can't help, but being bullheaded and determined is a plus in this business.....
 
JD and Coonnie make some good points but take into consideration the reliability of a custom harvester and the personality of the neighbor. In theory either should work but in real life things often get complicated and therefore do not work out. It's one thing to stop in and chit chat with the neighbor but it is another to find he is in a sour mood the morning he is to chop for you or the wife has been grinding on him for a few days so no he is looking for a fight. The morning the custom guy is supposed to do your hay but his buddy knocked down 20 acres of alfalfa so the custom guy gets delayed. I don't want to make you paranoid but point out depending on others can have downfalls.
 
Just look and see what's cheap and available in your area. Around here it's fairly easy to get half decent used Deere 3940/50/60/70 harvesters at consignment sales. 860 and 1060 Gehl's are also fairly available and cheap since Gehl is no longer in that business... but Deere is a much better bet for parts. The chopper itself is nothing to really write home about other than it's better than a NH S717...
Around here they sell for anywhere from 500 to 2500 on sales ranging anywhere from lightly stuck to working order. HAving to go through the feedrolls and replace the bearings is normal and most of them have blower drive problems or soon will. That can be fixed by replacing the bearings on the drives and welding the drive hubs to the shafts. Fixes it for a while anyway. Just watch that they aren't already welded... most of them also need new knives and shear bars.

Rod
 
An alternative is buying a round baler . Neighbor has one that pulls double duty takes care of both dry and wet hay. He uses a trench silo and stacks the wet bales in that then breaks one up over top doesn't pack it and it works great. You can also wrap the bales to. It's easier to manage then a silo and you can save on the cost of wagon and blower plus extra tractor
 
I don't know where you are from but many farmers like to make corn silage for a high energy feed to be fed during the cold months. I know some balers can be used for corn stalks but it is best if the corn can be chopped into approximately one inch pieces which the balers do not do as far as I know.
 
I guess I'll be the one to say that better models can be had cheap if you're in the right place at the right time. We found our New Holland 892 with a pickup head for 700. Had to pay another 500 for a corn head (that's where you can really spend a few bucks) and I picked up a second chopper for parts for another 200.

I would stay away from Fox for the simple fact that parts are hard to find. They were great machines in they're day and we used one up until a few years ago, when it just got to the point I was fixing more than I was running ours and new knives while
available, weren't worth the investment considering the rest of the machine.

Gehl is still used by lots of guys and for a year or 2 would be alright but again, parts support could be starting to slide. There are really 2 options that should be considered, NH and Deere.

Donovan from Wisconsin
 
JD's comments bear listening to. Nobody loved forage harvesting more than me. But used forage harvesters and unloading wagons are HUGE money pits. You really need to be a very good mechanic and religious about pre-season servicing.

I used the S717 and 718 NH's for years. Two things about them. If you have a tractor over 80 hp, you are going to be constantly tearing up the u-joints on the chopper PTO on a S-717. The 718 is a much sturdier unit. On any NH forage harvester with the 717/718 style shear bar adjustments, make sure the adjusting bolts aren't stripped in the frame. That is a major repair project and a real PINTA. Make sure your corn row widths exactly match the center to center of the NH corn head of that era. The 3 chain two row heads of the S-717 era were very poor units. The early single chain NH heads worked better but still left a lot to be desired. The advertisements used to say: WIDE ROW HEAD 40 TO 36 INCH ROWS (Or something like that) narrow row heads 34 to 28 inch rows (or something similar). NOOOOOOOOOOO, there not! Those old NH heads had to be centered on the rows to work worth a darn, period. You can plug up the JD heads, too, but we seemed to have much better luck with the JD belted head than the NH heads.
 
I'm gonna disagree with Donald on the corn head issue. We have a wide row head (not the 824 head either) and we chop 32"rows with it no problem. The first year we had it we had some really badly wind damaged corn that was laying almost flat. That head picked up everything. Far better than our Fox would have done and we're convinced that fall that it paid for itself with what it saved in feed.

Donovan from Wisconsin
 
Not a criticism of anybody but I will say that late JD and NH choppers do not go cheap in my area meaning under a thousand dollars for a base. I saw a rough 3940 sell at a dealer inventory auction a little over a year ago. The spout was junk, front section of the PTO missing, half the teeth from the hay head were missing, back door of the cutter head was beat, no control box, and it brought 1100 dollars. A NH 782 with non-working electrical controls, shot knives, part of front PTO missing, rough overall appearance, and it brought 700 dollars. Keep in mind the 782 was replaced by the 790 in 1985. At the other end of the spectrum last spring a nice 718 with old style pickup and 1 row head brought 2100 dollars. The funny thing is once you get to 4000-4500 dollars you can get a pretty good 3940,3950, or 790 with one very good head or possibly 2 heads. So the market is limited in terms of buyers on fairly new p-t choppers.
 
So I found a new holland 717 with 2row corn head an any pick up. My question is the feeder house looks narrow will it handle 2 rows an im gona chop rye for my heiffers will it handle a 9 ft windrow? Should i look for a bigger unit? I have 2 forage wagons 1 dump wagon an a keaston blower an a 15x45 an a 10x50 stave silo with a patz an john deere silo unloader. I would hire it out but the farm down the road wants 800 an hour to chop an fill silo
 
A 717 was built when 12 tons per acre of corn silage was a good yield. You will have to go slow with today's yield. I would go with a newer 2 row machine. What exactly does 800 dollars per hour buy you? They have custom rate guides here for very variation of filling silo possible. Probably would not be too bad if you are getting a BIG self-propelled with trucks, dump table, and blower with tractor for that money. Way too expensive if the chopper by itself.
 
Figuring a chopper that does 6 rows 30 inch spacing or equivalent, 3 trucks or equivalent boxes, dump table, blower with tractor should be around 650 dollars per hour around here. I would point out I do not know your area but 800 dollars per hour would be on the high side here unless there is something I am not seeing. Most guys here do not have everything sparkling and new.
 
I think if 800/hour buys you a full line of gear that dumps the crop into your blower you might be wise to take them up on the offer. A big chopper can cover a lot of territory in an hour. Your main problem there may be in getting it up the pipe fast enough to keep the chopper working...
That would be a preferable alternative to me rather than trying to run a fricken old S717. You'd need creeper gears to chop a good crop of corn with that thing and a 2 row head.
One thing I will say for the Deere's... they will take crop in and they will take power... and you'll need power. Their downfall is that their feedrolls need attention every 4-5 years in terms of bearings along with the other things I outlined before.
The main problem with a Deere row crop head is that it does not deal with wet conditions. One shower of rain is all it takes to shut you down for the day because the corn leaves gum up under the belts and derail the operation. They work fine when it's dry.

Rod
 
(quoted from post at 16:49:21 04/03/15) I am a young dairy farmer starting out an thought maby some 1here could help me. I am looking for a pull type forage chopper at a affordable price. If you have something feel free to post on here or email me I am located in southern MI but willing to travel

Another advantage to hiring the custom harvest guy is that you avoid the expense of the big horse to pull that chopper. I have a friend that does custom harvesting. He pulls in with two eight row choppers and ten trucks, and he wants to be in and out and to the next job that day. They move FAST.
 
IF it where me I would dump those upright silos with those old unloaders. Put up some silage bags, better forage and lower cost per ton.

You asking for a long hard life with those two upright silos with old unloaders and cheap/junk chopping equipment.

The fellow that quoted you the $800 per hour may not be as high as you think if you figure the cost per ton of silage.

With the type of equipment your talking about using your going to be working WEEKS to harvest enough silage to fill those two silos.

IF your in an area that has much livestock I will bet that there are several custom chopping operators. Check around for pricing.

I can get bags filled here for$5-8 per ton. That is them doing everything. We did not chop all of our corn silage last fall. We had a local guy do four 12x300 bags for us. He was cheaper than it would have cost us when we figured all cost. The plus for us was it took him less than ten hours to do the work. It would have taken us 4-5 days to fill those bags.

The cost may seem high to you but you have to figure your time and the quality of the end product. Old worn out equipment can be made to make good feed but it takes a lot of work and time. Are you really going to have the time to do this????? Most diary guys I know have 25 hours of work to do in a 12-14 hour day.

You maybe looking at the cost of hiring it done and see equipment for about that same price. The equipment your looking at will cost to keep going. Then you add in your time and labor making your own silage is not cheap either. I have done it both ways and I never milked an I still was pressed for the time to make silage correctly.
 
I bought a fair 3960 Deere yesterday at a sale with good knives,7 ft pickup head,new blower band for $1400. It looks like with a complete service and it will go to the field. They also sold a 3940 with 5 ft pickup in good condition for $1300. Bought a good 714A forage box with 1065A wagon gear and roof for $1500.We have a 3940 that we use and i bought the 3960 because we want the larger pickup head.The Deere are very good machines that are easy to work on and are very rebuildable. Parts seem reasonable as well. Stay away from Gehl as they pull hard,are cheaply built and parts are getting hard to get.In the NH the 770,892 and the 790 were good machines. I somewhat see the idea of hiring it done but have always done my own.The custom fellow will have a kernal processor which should get you more milk from corn silage.Them filling your silos will not work as they can harvest it faster than it will go into your silos unless you have new pipe and silage distributers on them.Some amish in my area hired their silage cut last fall and it cost them lots of extra money because the silage carts were all full waiting to unload because they had to small a blower and poor silo pipes.
 
I find that interesting as the Deere pulls easier than any other machine I have ever been around.Also I have chopped corn that was to dry in the rain with no problems at all with both my Deere 35 and later a 3940 pulled with a 4020.A friend has a Deere 3950 with a 824 NH cornhead and I think that is about the perfect setup much better than the Deere for not knocking corn down. Tom
 
I will keep the silos because it costs me 60 an hour to fill it an bags are a 600+ extra expense a year an being a diry farmer i need every penny I can get. Ill prolly just do it like my grandpa did it when he use to farm. Fill 3 wagons an stop and unload them. Shouldnt take me too long to chop 40acres
 
If you plan on doing this alone it's going to take you a LONG time. Depending on the situation you may only chop 1 ac hour in corn and mabey 2-3 in grass with those old choppers. The guys I know with towers need as much time to haul and blow as they need to chop...
I know the argument has often been made in these parts that someone who is operating a one man band is much better off spending his time in the barn and get more milk from the cows... and hire the field work done... far better off than trying to do everything alone. You end up doing a half assed job of everything that way.

Rod
 

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