New Idea Picker Sheller?

I am raising 30 acres of round up ready corn next year. I am thinking about buying a New Idea picker sheller. Do the picker shellers do a good job,or do you have alot of grain loss? Are they hard to work on, and can you get parts for them? I am sure they are slow, but how slow are they? When it says two row narrow is that 30" rows? I just think they would be alot simpler than a combine,and alot less room to store is that true?

We used a picker sheller on the farm for years, and it worked great, little awkward to pull in wet conditions. as far far as parts availability not sure on that anymore but wasnt a hole lot to go wrong with it pretty simple machine and to replace parts on it today sure you could always find something that would fit. Good luck with it

As far as capacity they made 2 shellers. A regular sheller that would go with the 8 roll husking bed and the "supersheller" that went with the 12 roll husker. The smaller shell would be about like a small 2 row combine like a 300 massy or 45 jd. the supersheller was at least as good as a 55 jd combine or a bit more. We had the supersheller and could pick any corn at 3 1/2 mph or 3rd gear with our 730 case. You could pick in 4th, about 5mph, but if the corn got over about 110-125 bu./acre it would go over the sieve. We picked many thousands of acres over the years with ours.

Yeah I will only buy a 325 that is the narrow picker, and a 329 super sheller. Thanks guys sounds good so far!

The Supershellers worked good, except in the mud or for opening fields. The gathering units used snapping rolls which do butt shell particularly if the corn is less than 20% moisture. That butt shelled corn is lost on the ground. The quality of the shelled corn in the wagon is great....clean and w/ very few cracked or damaged kernels. There is not much to go wrong. They are easy to adjust and I have picked 200 bu corn at 3.5 mph with a 85hp(Case 930) on the front.

The neighbor had back surgery so me and relatives picked the corn. He has a NI 324 Supersheller two row wide. How fast depends on how good the corn is. The comments made here are all good. You have to go slow but the quality of the corn is excellent and it gets it all other than the butt shelling already mentioned. It was not much at about 17%. Two days in a row we did 1200+ bushel each day and did not get started until late morning and didn't work late either. It's a great picker-sheller. Sheet metal parts don't seem to be available but those I needed to repair a gear box for him last year I was able to get. I got the sense that it depended alot on how good the parts guy was at finding parts. Paul

I bought a 325 a couple of months ago in pristine condition, manual and some spare parts for $240. Spent a couple hours lubing and adjusting and it worked just like new.

I've got a three row with a super sheller. Does a great job but haven't used it for quite a few years. A combine is just handier. It has a cage type sheller which damages the grain less than either a rotary or cylinder/walker machine. I never had problems with snapping roll shelling, just set them as tight as possible. Tough to pull when the ground is wet or even a little greasy. Last time on greasy ground using the 100 hp tractor I was pulling somewhat sideways with the wagon half full. Went to the combine and it walked thru without even a whimper. Super sheller capacity with a three row is pretty much maxed out at 150 bu/acre so at higher yields ground speed will need to be lower than the ideal 3.5 mph. Ran it with both 100 hp and 80 hp tractors. The 80 hp didn't have any spare power when running the sheller and pulling a nearly full 300 bushel wagon. A super sheller and two row could handle any reasonable yield effectively. Major problem for us was opening the field. Didn't want to open them by hand and the picker flattened the corn too much for a backwards run. So we bought a corn head for the combine to open the fields and soon parked the picker.