Question about snapper heads and snapplage

Bruce from Can. · Aug 3, 2018

Yeah, I know , I ask a lot of questions, lol. And today I am trying to learn about snapping ear corn, with a forage harvester. I see a one row snapping head for sale in western Ontario, says it will fit a 780 NH harvest. I have a 782 NH harvest, and I assume this head would fit my harvester. One row sounds like slow going, but this unit is priced right for experimental purposes.
Have any of you fellas ever made snapplage, or had any experience feeding it?
I am thinking this could be a very economical way for me to harvest ear corn to feed to milking cows, as I already have the harvester and wagons. Looking for advice and opinions. Bruce

Roger in Iowa · Aug 3, 2018

Slow go with a one row. Need to run a recutter screen to chop earlage fine enough.

greg oliver · Aug 3, 2018

Bruce, Back in the mid 80's my neighbor had a 2 row snapper head on his Gehl 750. He only used it 1 year and it was nice forage but he needed the tonnage. We round baled the stalks using our 5400 Hesston baler and we had windrowed the stalks with our MC Rotary Scythe. Just remembered we bought that baler new from Prescott Farm Equipment n Ont. Canada on June 20 1979. Still have the owners manual!

mjbrown · Aug 3, 2018

I did as an employee on a dairy far many years ago. We used a corn snapping head on a new idea uni with the silage chopper body. I think it had recutter screens for a fine chop. It went onto a concrete silo as I recall and it was very finely cut. Kind of like sawdust. I didn't see the production results but the owner said the cows loved it and he was pleased with the results.

brandon56 · Aug 3, 2018

I run about 40 acres a year through my Gehl setup, it makes for some nice feed. I use a 1 inch recutter screen in the chopper and store it in bags. Making snaplage is slow going, heads for pull types are getting some age on them and today's higher yielding corn means that I'm usually in low gear all the time and it takes awhile to get a load of chopped ear corn. Also remember this stuff is heavy so its easy to overload a wagon.If I was buying another snapper head I wouldn't consider a one row just for time reasons and I would try to buy a chopper and head as a package. There's a lot of little parts to make a snapper head work on a chopper. You will need recutter screens and the hardware to mount them, and on the Gehl I have to pry the feedrolls apart with spacers and cover the lower roll so that the ears will feed into the cutterhead. Snaplage with a pull type is a low cost way to make feed but there are definitely some drawbacks.

tomstractorsandtoys · Aug 3, 2018

I fed it when we had the dairy cows. It is great feed. Most nutritionist want it made fairly wet but in the real world that does not work very well. When wet it pile up in the chopper rather than feed back to the auger that delivers it to the fan. We ran a two row head on a Deere 3940 chopper with 170 hp in front and still ran mostly low gear in 200 bu corn. You will need a screen. I would look for a two row head. I quit using it because with the small number of feeder cattle I have it would not keep in my bags as we did not feed it fast enough. Brother inlaw feeds only snaplage and haylage to his dairy cows no cornsilage. Tom

JD Seller · Aug 3, 2018

Bruce it is good feed for finishing cattle. Most of the dairy guys around here quit making it as it drove their NDF too high in their dairy ration. Dry ear corn will cause the same thing.

As for setting up your chopper. Like others have told you, you will need a recutter screen. Then a pan that goes behind the lower feed rolls so the ears go into the cutter head and do not drop out the bottom. Then most of them have taller spacers on the top feed roll to hold it open about 1 1/2 inch so the ears will feed through and not just be ground up right at the feed rolls. Then covers over the slots in the side of the cutting head frame where the feed rolls move up and down to keep the corn from falling out the sides of the cutter head.

On a JD pull type chopper it usually takes about 1/2 day to switch it over. The trouble is finding all the attachment parts. I would have zero idea where to find all of that stuff for a NH chopper. You might asked the fellow with the header if he ahs the stuff for his chopper.

Bruce from Can. · Aug 3, 2018

Thanks for the input guys. I do have recutter screen for the harvester. By far NH has the harvester market here , followed close by JD. Gehl, Fox, and all the others fall in some where in the following pack.

Bob Bancroft · Aug 3, 2018

A neighbor did this religiously, but he is long gone. His was two row NH equipment. Seems like, along with the other changes, he installed spacers at the axle mounts to raise the whole machine, as the angle of the snapper head required it?

I know he was very partial to one variety of corn, which snapped clean of the husks. He didn't like husks getting in this feed.

Tech 7 · Aug 3, 2018

I was led to believe it took some hp to do as well. Neighbours had one but i never saw it work. We ground cob corn out of the crib, 53 weeks a year.

bradley martin · Aug 3, 2018

Hi Bruce. My brother in law did it for a couple years, but quit because he said it caused a significant drop in butterfat. He milks Holsteins, not Jerseys, if that makes a difference. If I recall correctly, he also complained about the power and time it took. I know he had a heck of a time selling that head.

Kickinbull · Aug 3, 2018

.I have no experience but another question. Bruce, could you raise the chopper head your using now and chop less stalk? Would that get closer to results you?re after?

Bruce from Can. · Aug 3, 2018

No it won?t grind the corn fine enough, and you will get far too much stalk. End up with a glorified silage would be my thinking, instead of something closer to cob meal.

Jcrowl · Aug 3, 2018

Bruce, Back in the 80's I worked for a farmer that would put up high moisture corn. He had NH 770 chopper that we put a recutter screen in and spacers between the rolls along with a small hopper where the pickup head went. The chopper was setup at the silo and we fed it with a small converyor. We picked the corn and ran it trough the chopper up into the silo. That all worked pretty fast. The cows loved it, I'm not sure of the actual feed value.
Jim

caterpillar guy · Aug 4, 2018

Bruce I don't know how the butterfat dropped. We fed high moisture ground ear corn foe several years. I always noticed the butterfat, dropped when we had to go back to shelled corn to grind. We used an NI Uni with a 3 row stripper plate head I set the knives so they just ticked the ledger plate in the chopper with a 3/4 hole screen this came out like ground feed from a feed grinder with about 20-30 percent moisture corn. It does take some power though the key is to keep the knives sharp and tight to the ledger and screen. The guys complaining about fuel and power consumption probably are either trying to push the machine to hard or don't keep the knives sharp. If the ledger is worn change it.
We bagged it in silage bags with little spoilage. The honeybees love it in early spring to feed on till it greens up a bit. They would cover the face during the day. So would just work there late in the day that time of year. We ground it into anything we could pull with either the chopper or along side as in the 80's we had a lot of wet falls.

Question about snapper heads and snapplage

Bruce from Can.

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Roger in Iowa

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greg oliver

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mjbrown

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brandon56

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tomstractorsandtoys

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JD Seller

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Bruce from Can.

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Bob Bancroft

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Tech 7

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bradley martin

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Kickinbull

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Bruce from Can.

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Jcrowl

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caterpillar guy

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