Now it's here...

Today I go back to work for the week, and now the bagger is available and set up at the farm.....

Figures. This weekend while we got a very good start we couldn't go as hard as we wanted because we needed the bagger. Tonight and tomorrow night I'm staying home, then Wednesday I'll cut our new seeding (3rd crop off it) so it will be ready to mix with the corn this weekend. Think I'll put the pickup head back on the Fox so I can just switch choppers.

With any luck, we'll fill 2 9x200 bags on top of both silos with the rest of our corn and hay. If we do it'll be an all time best for our 30 acres of corn.

What a ride this season has been...

Donovan from Wisconsin

Here's a few pictures of what I had to deal with this weekend. I'd say about 60-75% or better of the field was blown down from 3 separate windstorms that hit it over the summer. The NH 880 head picked it up better than I ever could have hoped for, and with 3 18' wagons an 1 16' wagon, we averaged better than 2 loads per acre.









Donovan from Wisconsin

Had some corn like that one year after a huricane passed. What a nightmare....

While I could only go one direction, it picked up far better than I ever would have imagined. I'd say it picked up 97% or better, and it piled up too.

Donovan from Wisconsin

Man, I know that was a mess to deal with! Glad that your equipment handled it so well. Y'just never know do ya?

wow that poor corn sure took a beating you must have had some serious wind up there. Looks like it did pretty good despite the wind.

Dad and I agree that the equipment upgrade this year just paid for itself in that field. If it were the Fox in there, it may have picked it up but then it would plug up the head.

The nice thing about the new(er) chopper is the head reverses with the feedrolls so it'd just spit out the wad, then I can feed it in by hand, instead of trying to unplug the head and then feed it in by hand. Plugged a whole lot less too. I had to hug it to the left side but it worked well. In straight corn, the Fox was ok but it would still randomly plug without a really good reason.

Donovan from Wisconsin

I've never heard of mixing grass forage with corn, in the bag or bunk. Do you carefully mix at the same rate all the way so that you can balance the ration accurately?

I think that you see what I meant when I said those 880 heads did a great job in down stuff. I had some forage sorghum blown down like that about 25 years ago. I made some snout " extensions" using pieces of flat bar and welding a length of three quarter inch diameter rod to each . Drilled matching holes in each flat bar and snout and bolted one to each snout, mounting them so that when head was all the way down , the end of each rod just skimmed the soil surface. The rod ends scooted under practically every stalk that was laying flat to the ground lifting them so the chains grabbed them. I see that the center island snout of your machine has missed several stalks by riding over them but the right side snout and chains got the top end of the stalk that the center missed.

It's alfalfa we'll be mixing. We do somewhere around 1/2 hay to 1/2 corn, give or take, until one or the other is gone. In the past without 2 choppers we'd fill all 4 wagns 1/2 way with corn, then switch heads and fill them the rest of the way but then chop until almost done with the hay and then do all 4 1/2 full again, and then switch back to corn.

Not sure how many loads of hay are out there on the new seeding, as we already took 4th crop off the rest of our hay ground on labor day weekend. This is about a 10-12 acre field only, so it won't be a whole lot. It will still add up though.

It's common enough if a guy has 2 choppers. It drives our county agent nuts when we tell him what the mix is because he says he can't figure out what to say for a ration then... We tell him well we did it anyway so figure it out. It's a 1/2 & 1/2 mix...

He also complains if we mix our oats & peas w/ 1st or 2nd crop. Again, 1/2 & 1/2, give or take...

Weldon- it may have picked up a bit more if it were a narrow head as we plant on 32" centers, but it's a wide head at 38". Still did a great job, and next year I may just try to find a 880N2 instead of the 880R2. Like you said, the center did miss a little bit more, but atleast the outside snout caught enough and we got below the cob. This field has lots of corn in it. The ears were filled all the way to the tip.

Donovan from Wisconsin