SHELBOURNE CVS32 vs AGCO 8200 Header

This a reconstruct of a 2019 post that I lost in an attempt to update after I recently noticed that the videos would not run.  This is four years out of sync with the post, (below), titled " STRIPPER HEADER -- YES/NO", August 6, 2023.

Because of CANOLA we upgraded our combine from a 1985 Gleaner N7 to a 2013 Gleaner S77.  The N series did not have enough room in the threshing area to allow canola stems to pass through blocking the area leading to the accelerator rolls.  The S series has an enormous amount of room allowing free flow.  S77 came with a 30' AGCO 8200 flex header with a Crary Air Reel.  The auger has exceptionally deep flighting and retractable fingers the full length of the auger.  It is very aggressive in moving bulky crop material to the feeder house of the combine.

When mounting the Shelbourne 2012 CVS32 on the N7, we upgraded the feeder house mounting that included tilt control.  This allowed us to direct mount the header on a 28 year newer combine.  To this point in time we have been harvesting canola and mustard with the CVS32 and putting up with the blockage issue because the standard head on the N7 did not move bulky material well.  Since we now have the 8200 with the ability to harvest bulky crop material we decided to compare the two headers for harvesting canola.  We liked the CVS32, but had some concern about rotor finger wear from processing the branch material associated with canola/mustard.

The 20 second video above is of the AGCO 8200.  The 38 second video below is of the CVS32. 

 The results of our comparison are:  The measured AGCO 8200 loss was 60% of the CVS32.  There are caveats to this however.  First of all, I was surprised how little seed was in the catch pan with the AGCO even though the reel was deep in the crop as shown in the video.  On the other hand the AGCO was missing a significant number of pods on low branches that didn't show in the pan.    These pods were being pushed down under the cutter bar.  Adjustments probably could have been made to catch those pods.  OK!, I'll accept the idea that the AGCO header has less header loss than the CVS header in canola.   What other comparisons can we make?  The CVS does not strip green material and put it through the processor like a sickle head.  This includes green crop pods/heads, and weedy material.  There was more growling of the processor with the AGCO.  Obviously more material was being processed.   --cleaner sample with the CVS because of less processing of green material.   --faster cutting with the CVS.  The CVS will fly through canola compared to the AGCO.  Speed is limited only by shatter from the pods impacting the nose of the hood.   Less material laying on the ground with the CVS.  Although most of the branching is processed, the stalks along with some branches and weed residue are left standing.  This leaves a better field condition for low disturbance single or double disc drills to seed the following crop.   --less tire wear/damage with the CVS.  The stalks are left longer, hence tires/tracks bend the stalk over instead of spearing.   --better moisture retention.  Long stalks, although not nearly as dense as wheat stubble, does a good job of trapping snow and leaving it in place on the field.

    This year we experienced some rain while harvesting winter wheat.  Even though the amounts were light, the humidity was high and delayed harvest.  With the CVS we were able to start several hours earlier than those with sickle heads.  This condition left the standing stubble with a different look, more head material left on the stalk, but I didn't find one kernel left in a head.  The following pic's are examples.

These heads were picked from the ground.  All the kernels were removed, although they look pretty much intact.  

    We love the Shelbourne heads and use it almost exclusively; however, there are conditions where it won't work as well as a flex head with sickle cut.  Being rigid over 32' is definitely problematic with short crops in our hilly topography.  I drove the combine for the first time in years and found it difficult to keep the header leveled with the crop.  I'm surprised that Kye hasn't complained louder about the need for auto header tilt and height control.  It's critical for the crop hit the nose of the hood at the proper height, and manual tilt adds operator stress to maintain that optimum contact.  Header height is critical for hood height.  We will add the auto control for these two functions next harvest.  Auto header control for the CVS is significantly more expensive than for a regular sickle header.  We were told that more ticklers and faster data processing was needed to avoid ground strikes at speeds operators drive the CVS. 

STRIPPER HEADER --YES/NO

Harvest is upon us and we have had two inquiries about our Shelbourne Stripper Head, so I'm making a post about it.  For more head detail visit the following link.   Stripper Header

 Does a stripper head have a future in your operation?  That will depend on what you want to accomplish. 

PRO's:  --tall stubble is great for snow catch.  Tall stubble will hold yours in place and catch some of your neighbors passing by.   --tall stubble reduces air velocity across the soil surface for potential moisture savings by reducing the replacement frequency of the surface boundary layer.   --there is a significant reduction of material that the combine has to process resulting in less overall machine wear.         --there is a significant reduction in dust at the throat of the feeder house resulting in better operator vision in the evenings with calm conditions.   --generally there is an increased speed of harvesting.    --generally, heavy single disc drills work better because there is less residue laying on the soil surface.   --if you intend to remove the straw, stripper headed stubble is great for swathing and baling.    

CON's:  --stripper heads can leave the field more challenging to seed.  Hoe drills will likely be problematic.   --stripper heads are less adaptable than a conventional cutter bar head for some crop types (crops with deep podding and crops with fragile seed coats).  The adjustable hood over the rotor of the stripper head is restricted to approximately 18"maximum opening for efficient crop intake.  An example, winter canola will set pods ~24"  down the plant compared to wheat at ~8"-12".    --ground hugging crops like lentils subject the rotor to more potential damage from ground strikes.  The stripper head rotor will fling rocks long distances with great force.  --there is a greater concern of starting a fire from vehicles in tall grain stubble.

NARRATIVE:    The Shelbourne Reynolds Company make three models of stripper heads (RX, CVS, RSD) that range from 12' to 42' wide.  Our head is a 2012 CVS32.  They all require an adaptor plate specific to the type of combine it is being mounted on.  We have found that auto tilt and auto height control are good investments to lower crop loss and reduce operator fatigue.  Hood position and rotor speed is operator controlled.  Correct settings of both are important to minimize crop loss, and may need adjusting to match different field conditions through out the day.  Notice that the rotor fingers have an elevated edge forming a cup like shape.  When that elevated edge is gone we consider the finger worn out.  We change out the fingers more frequent than Reynolds representative's told us.  When we inquired about the wear, we were reminded that wear is a function of volume processed.  Our crop yields generally are significantly higher than midwestern yields where the data is developed.

    The WSU dry land research station at Lind, WA. shows no advantage in moisture saving with the stripper head.  This 8"- 12" rainfall site has very little crop residue to work with on light (near powder) soils, exposed to a lot of wind on a relatively flat open landscape.   That station is a challenging site, so I'll revise any statement I may have made on earlier posts in this way, --soil surface armor (cover) is very important for moisture savings when compared to bare soil.  Any crop residue height that can be developed or maintained beyond soil surface cover will have beneficial effects on saving additional moisture.  Thin standing residue with no soil surface cover under it, exposed to blistering sun, will pull moisture fast.

    The stripper head excels in small grains (wheat & barley).  We have harvested wheat-barley-garbs-spring canola-mustard and dry peas.  We currently own a Gleaner S77 and it came with an model 8200 30' auger header with an air assisted reel.  We use the 8200 head for dry peas and brassica (mustard and canola) crops.  With brassica's, most of the plant is processed, hence we found excess wear on the rotor fingers compared to small grains.  Although stripper head loss is low when harvesting brassica's, loss was still approximately twice that of the 8200 air assisted head.  We had excessive seed coat damage when harvesting dry peas.  That may have been do to bad rotor speed adjustment, but the Gleaner 8200 head also has a floating cutter bar for closer cut to the ground, along with deep flighting on a full fingered auger to mover bulky crop material to the feeder house.  We have never harvested lodged wheat that hugs the ground.  We are told that it will recover that type of lodged grain very well.

Stubble can end up taller than the crop after harvesting grain with heavy seed heads .  We mostly notice this phenomena with barley where heads with heavy grain pop up when the grain is removed.  I don't recommend leaving a patch of unharvested crop in the field unless you have the capability of machine mapping to show where you have cut, and where you haven't.

A sign of a farmer with a stripper head.  Avoid going into stripper headed fields when conditions are conducive for fire.  

At the right side of the blog click on "stripper head" under "label".  This brings up all postings on the Shelbourne Reynolds Stripper Header that I have made over the years.

Below are two videos from 2019 showing the Shelbourne stripper head and the AGCO 8200 harvesting canola.  These videos wouldn't play on the 2019 posting and I tried to update, and I think I have botched the whole posting, and maybe more.

2017 HARVEST UPDATE

The 2017 crop year was a record breaker.  Never in my lifetime have we received 20.4" of rain/snow in a crop year at our SJ/Ewan operation.  Also, we have had near record or record breaking temperatures for the 2017 crop year.  That sounds like it should be a banner year with plenty of moisture and heat.  Well, not for us.  Timing of the rain and heat trumped everything.  The harvest of 2017 was mostly disappointing.
WINTER WHEAT:   (Brundage 96)  All of our winter wheat was seeded on pea ground (no ww on fallow ground).  The ground was dry, which meant we didn't consider seeding until after Oct. 1st, --a bad decision this year.  October was extremely wet all month.  Lesson learned?! --Seed in September regardless of dryness, and seed it deep (1.5-2") so it takes a significant rain to start it.  Had we done that, the Thornton winter wheat crop would have probably been 100-110% of average, and the less forgiving SJ/Ewan area winter wheat crop would have been in the range of 90-100% of average.  As it was, Thornton was ~90% of average, and SJ/Ewan was ~50% of average.
SPRING WHEAT (DNS):  (Glee)  The season started out with great soil moisture, and timely seeding, that developed into a very nice looking stand of spring wheat.  The unusual heat wave (~ three weeks ± 100 degrees) damaged the bloom and seed development.  Our quality was remarkably good, --the meshes were just blanked out.  Test weight was good and shriveled kernels were few, and protein was just under 14%.  Our yield was ~ 90% of average.

[Update 6/28/18] --Meetings held during the winter and spring on Canola have emphasized the importance of proper timing for chemical applications.  There will be a yield loss to the crop if chemical is applied after bolting commences.  We didn't get to the in-crop application until bolting started showing, along with some flowering, --this is probably why we were ~200#/a below a neighbors yield although we had a better stand and population.  The neighbors field was a couple of hundred feet higher, and that may have been a factor as well in terms of heat effect.
SPRING CANOLA:  (hyCLASS 930 rr) The crop was timely seeded.  The plant population was good.  The crop was growing well, but the heat hit in early bloom (for 2016 trials, we had nearly a month of bloom).  The high heat over the extended time did not let a re-bloom establish pods.  In fact the spring canola continued to bloom through the beginning of 2018, although no pods set.  The yield was ~ 30-40% of what we expected.  Any other field would have probably done better this particular year.  This field was our poorest soil, lowest elevation and all faced S and SW.  It took the brunt of the heat.  We are not deterred.  We think that spring canola is going to be a great alternative to winter wheat.  Also, it appears that we will be able to cut spring canola with the stripper header which is a big plus.  This field went into winter in great shape, --good residue, standing tall with most of the plants still living.   The tall canola stubble, although not thick like wheat stubble, is great for reducing wind velocity near the soil surface, and snow catch.  Winter of 2017-2018 was not a big snow year like 2016 but we haven't seen any drifting in that field compared to mowed or tilled fields.
      I haven't sorted out the data for any comparison between CF/winter wheat and CC/winter wheat, or our canola on ground that has had a cover crop and ground that has never had a cover crop.  I may include that as an update to this post or it may take a post of it's own.

GROWING A CROP IN TALL STANDING STUBBLE

   

Last spring-----As I watch our spring canola grow, the question that keeps nagging at me is 'is the standing stubble interfering with the growth of the canola (and other crops).  Most of the winter wheat stubble is laid flat, but there are areas where our drill leaves some stubble standing.  I have observed that spring wheat growing up through winter wheat stubble appears to grow taller in the early stages and tillers less.  When I mentioned this to Dwayne Beck his comment was "yes, and that's fine.  I don't want tillering of spring cereals".   Crop maturity is extended 7-10 days for each tiller.  One or two tillers may add to the yield, but, more will likely degrade your crop.  They take moisture and nutrients from the main stem if there is a shortage of either or the summer heat forces maturity.
     This fall-----It appears that tall tangled residue does hinder canola branch development.  Canola plants in very tall stubble with some of the stems lodged was observed with less branching and fewer and mispositioned leaves.  Normal harvest height using a sickle bar appears to have little impact.

2016 Harvest Update

   This year has been the most confusing of my 60+ years of farming.  The weather looked like it was going to treat us pretty good, but, mostly after the fact, we found it wasn't as good as it first appeared.  I thought we missed the frost in April, but as it turned out, not quite.  The moisture was coming along just fine, then it shut off.  The years moisture was just short of our long term average.  The heat wave in May, although not real hot, apparently did damage depending on where the crop was in it's development.  The temperature for this growing and harvest season was quite comfortable.  A relatively mild winter, and no 100+ days. Very different from 2015's long stretch of 100+ temperatures.  All in all everything was looking pretty good.  Looking back on Art Douglas' prediction, I think he was right on for my immediate area.  There apparently was a big swing of temperature in the April-May period that set us up for falling number issues depending on area, and wheat cultivar.  I knew when it happened but didn't think anything about it, --not severe, not unusual.  Everything I hear is antidotal; however, I'm of the opinion that the test is badly flawed.  Inconsistency in the ability to replicate the numbers, even in a relatively narrow range, is wide spread.  It appears to me that the milling industry has found a way to purchase high quality grain, --cheap, and at our expense.  Hopefully, this will be addressed before another harvest.  I have been hearing of some fantastic yields, but some are pretty mediocre,  and some fields have very low FN's, but not all of them.  With the quality issues and plummeting prices, this will be a year we hope to never repeat.
     Now, for our farm.  ---Wheat yields were good, but not exceptional, --with exception.  The FN's varied across the fields ranging from 279-330.  Wheat yields ranged from 83 to a little over 100.  This yield range is close to norm for us at this stage,--slow but steady gain over time.  We have a variety of soils ranging from very complex shallow ground to deep Athena soils.  Our cover crop ground was the 83 and we consider that fantastic.  This is the worst ground we have with complex soils and large areas that have a couple of inches of soil over fractured rock, and infested with Rush Skeleton weed.  This area was seeded to a multiple cultivar (brassica/legume) cover crop last year and used 3" water compared to our CF.  This spring there was less than an inch (0.8") difference in moisture.  There were variations in yield over the CC area but none of the shallow spots showed significant drop as was expected.  Was this unexpected yield do to the cover crop?  Too early to tell!  One year doesn't make a trend, but since it wasn't a flop, it's encouragement to expand the practice.  Our experience is paralleling the experience of other farmers in the area, --covers used 3" moisture, yields didn't collapse.  This also matches the literature on the subject.  The remainder of our Brundage 96 looked exceptional through harvest, but didn't end up yielding exceptional.  The Puma went over a hundred.
--- The mustard was a disappointment.  Yields ranged from ≈680 to 870#/a.  The stand emerged well with an OK population.  Quality was good.  It was harvested with the stripper head.  The field Rep. indicated that they were finding similar results region wide, and no real explanation as to why.  In our case, my thoughts are: --we should seed 8-10#/ac instead of the 5-6, and that we seeded to shallow.  we had emergence over too long of time span.  I'm guessing that another factor was that the little heat wave in May hit the mustard at the wrong time in it's development.  I didn't see frost damage during emergence.
--- The winter peas were problematic from the start.  They yielded 1262#/a.  One field was destroyed because of contamination with Billy Beans.   They were all dormant seeded in November.  They came up this spring looking great and high population.  With no experience in dormant seeding we didn't put on the pre-emergence chemistry.  Bad mistake!  Spring applications of grass and broadleaf herbicides were a total failure.  Dormant seeding of winter peas has great potential, but make sure to get the pre-emerge chemistry applied.  We ended up with an even over-story of Jim Hill Mustard, that proved to be challenging to harvest.  An IH8230 with MacDon header had no easier time than our N7 and standard head.  A very slow grind.  The crop grade showed high percent of hard seed which was subtracted from the germ making it un-usable as seed stock.  Our supplier had only one field that returned seed quality winter peas, and they were seeded in the spring, --so missed the environmental condition that caused the hard seed.  We will likely see Austrian peas show up for several years because of this hard seed issue.  Fortunately they are not difficult to remove.
----The spring peas were fantastic at Thornton.  Thornton was DRY.  They were ≈6" below normal, but the yields were very good.  Most communities north and south of Thornton had fairly normal precipitation.  Except for the rainfall, the other environmental conditions favored a good crop in 2016.  Our "Ginny" peas ranged from 2400-2980#/a, depending on the field.  The normally high yielding low ground tallied as much as 6500#/a.  They stood way too long for a green pea; however, the bleach, was insignificant, and seed coat damage was reasonable.  Normally green peas will have significant bleach if they stand beyond maturity.  Ginny is a great cultivar.  We harvested them with a standard head w/o pea lifters.  A slow harvest and in areas some peas were left on the vine (too deep in the track).  Our old wheat residue was left intact and we had a lot of pea residue left in the field.  We expected we would process all the residue, leaving exposed ground, which is normal with pea harvest, --but didn't.
--- Our DNS (Glee)@ 42b/a was ok.  Heavy weight, but only 13+% protein.  Stand was good but maybe it needed to be thicker.  Consider increasing seed rate, --we had 2-3 tillers and don't want more than two.  Probably needed more N to get protein.
--- Our SB (Lenatah) @3030#/a was ok.  Heavy weight and quality was excellent.  Stand was good, but may consider increased seeding rate.
--- We had a Viterra test plot of 6 new spring canola cultivars for the area.  Most were a GMO of one type or another.  They all had excellent yields ranging between 1700-2700#/a.  The plot was in the flat in front of our house.  The trial was not limited in moisture, and had a high pH (8+) in much of it.  We seeded the plots after the mustard and before moving to Thornton.  The seeding rate was ≈4#/a.  The stand developed over about 3 weeks,--it didn't seem to effect the outcome.  The canola probably stood too long; however, there was very low shatter on all the cultivars.  The quality of the stand didn't allow much movement within the crop canopy.

2015 Harvest with Stripper Header -- Chickpeas

We left a lot of chickpea pods on the ground.  Was this unique to the stripper header or was it the year? To get a comparison I visited two operations, one using a new MacDon 40' draper header with all the bells and whistles, and the other using an older 24' International auger header equipped with a pea bar.  Both of those operations were complaining about the amount of chickpea pods that were left on the ground.  To me, it appeared that those operations had similar losses, and they were less than our losses.
      Things that were apparent:
-- After observing the two other operations that were in a higher rainfall, if we had not had the 28 degree night June 12th, I think we could have had a pretty decent crop.  The frost devastated the low ground.
-- The 40' draper did an amazing job of getting close to the ground without picking up dirt.  That big header was light on its feet, and the flex in the middle allowed it to follow the ground contours quite well.  The ground was smooth and soft.  The terrain was fairly consistent with few sharp slope transitions.  The vines were tangled and some branching was on the ground.
-- The older 24' pea bar equipped auger header was on harder soil surface and still had difficulty with pushing dirt. It had no auto header control features.  There were a lot of low pods on the vines.  Many vines were not standing erect.
-- Our ground had more sharp slope transitions than the other two operations which makes for more challenge.  Our ground also has a rougher surface.  It has been 20+ years since we have leveled the surface with cultivation or even a harrow.  Our stand population was a little less and the vines appeared to stand a little better than the other two operations, but there were many low hanging pods.
-- A 32 foot ridged stripper header is too long for this short statured crop in our hilly terrain.
-- Since pod drop was the main loss observed in all three operations, and all operations had some bare seed on the ground, I don't think the stripper head shelled and spit out seed any worse than the other two header types.
-- I don't think the stripper header processing is any harder on the chickpea seed than the other header types.
-- We were able to leave a lot of chickpea residue standing following harvest, and very little old residue was reprocessed.  The other operations clipped the crop at ground level and processed all the residue, leaving a fast degradable, low carbon surface cover.
-- Our heavy residue may be a problem with other header types.  A least, much more would be reprocessed.  This in turn will degrade our surface cover.
-- I think a 20' Shelbourne stripper header will work just fine for this crop in our terrain, --and even better if you include the auto header control features.

     The weeds we encountered were nearly all Russian Thistle.  They are a problem when large and green; however, if they are dried down, they were not any real issue.  They do slow up your ground speed.

2015 Harvest with Stripper Header -- Dry Peas

     We have finished harvesting our spring planted standup peas.  The weather decimated the crop.  We started out with a great plant population, but growth and seed development was stopped by frost and heat.   Our yield was ≈200#/ac of poor quality (small and dimpled) peas.
      The stripper header did fine.  We missed a few low pods, and there was a little pod shatter where the 32' solid head didn't fit the terrain.
      I think the split and skinned seed is manageable with the stripper head; however, a decent yielding crop is needed to evaluate this aspect of the harvest.  We had more splits than I would normally want, but, was it from the pea condition or from rattling around a near empty combine impacting with metal parts.  With two spinning rotors and so little cushioning material going into the combine, this may be challenging.
      Such a short crop needed an auto trim for the speed we traveled.  Kye doesn't think auto height control would have helped but feels we need to reduce the force of ground impacts.  The pea harvest is much dirtier than the small grain harvest.  Pods, leaves, and vines shatter into fine dust that envelops the machine.  We chemically dried the crop so very little green material entered the machine (weeds or crop).
      There is a lot of pea stubble left standing, making it look more like a grain field than a pea field.

Watch the crop, particularly the branchy china lettuce plant before and after the combine passes over the peas. (Sorry, the full screen web version of this video is poor.)

This area shows good growth of pea vine (a little over my knee), but few pods.  A close look will show that there is standing winter wheat stubble that is helping support the pea vine.  Where we have standing stubble the peas stand a little taller.  Wheel tracks don't have much effect on the stubble support, but flattened areas such as truck loading spots and some corners with multiple turns are too wide, and vines sag.  Supported vines appear to hold the bottom pods higher off the ground which is good for the stripper header.

2015 HARVEST WITH STRIPPER HEADER

[Update 8/2/15]-- Normally we don't have weed issues in our crops, but this year is an exception.  Yesterday, we were part of a 16 combine crew that harvested a friends crop.  The friend wanted to experience a stripper headed crop so we were assigned to cut the Louise spring wheat.  The heat this year beat up his spring grains and left room for russian thistles to grow.  The heat pinched the tips and the grain bin looked cobby, and where we had a lot of russian thistles, we added green material to the bin.  Not a sample to be proud of.  My son was asked whether the stripper head was better or worse than a standard head in cutting a crop infestation with thistle.  His answer: -- we process much less of the thistle, leaving more in the field; however, what we do process, is the tender top branches, and a high percentage of this material ends up in the grain tank.  Eight rows of fingers traveling between 400 and 800rpm, provide a lot of hits.  The material tends to be too small to sieve off, and too heavy to blow out.  This also is the tendency with immature grain.  Only a fraction of immature heads are stripped; however, most of what is stripped ends up in the grain bin.  Our pea and garbs have turned up weedy because of the June 12th frost and high temperatures.  We will use chemistry to dry down the crop and weeds prior to harvesting with either the stripper head, or conventional head.  With the material dry, none will end up in the bin.  An advantage with using a stripper head in lightly infested fields is that most of the green plant will be left intact.  The weeds will take in an application of herbicide soon following harvest.
       July 18th was our startup of the 2015 harvest of winter wheat.  I don't remember ever harvesting this early.  Several operations around us started the 10th.  Our normal startup is around August 1st.

 The hot, dry weather in June and July has left the straw more brittle than usual.  The stripper head is lodging a significant amount of stems as shown in the pic above.   The pulling action of the rotor as it strips the head is bending and breaking some of the straw at a weak node near the base of the plant..  We haven't seen this before.  Without the heads interacting and helping to hold the stand together, I think a good wind will knock down a lot of what is left standing.  This stand will certainly collapse with snow, --if we get any this coming winter.

2014 Harvest with Shelbourn Stripper Header

The blog stats show that the stripper head is a topic that interests a number of people so I will add more harvest video and some commentary --- hopefully not redundant.

[SUMMARY]--We love the header!  We have used it for three harvests, cutting winter wheat, spring wheat, spring barley, and mustard.  I'm convinced that if the crop has seed heads confined to 24" or less on the stalk, it will do a good job.  With the drivers ability to adjust the height of the hood, the tilt of the header, and vary the rotor speed with the touch of a button, header loss can be kept very low whether you are harvesting 100+ bushel winter wheat or 600 pound mustard.  We haven't cut any peas, lentils, garbs, millet, or soybeans, but I don't think they would be a challenge.  Auto height and tilt control would probably be nice for low growing crops to further reduce crop loss and help with driver fatigue.  Of the crops I have raised over the years, sunflowers, corn, and canola are the only ones that I think would not work with the stripper head.  My understanding is that if we "push" the canola, then the stripper head would harvest it.  That is another $35K machine, and has to be used in a special way for a successful harvest.  If we farmed flat land it would be a good option.  My current thinking is that this money would be better spent on a good platform head configured for canola and tall mustard.

      Should you buy a Shelbourn Stripper Header ????????????  First question is ----> what do you want to accomplish with it.  Depending on how you intend on managing your fields it can be a godsend, or an absolute nightmare.  Long, standing stubble cannot be easily shredded and spread over the ground. The decision on how you will seed a crop back into that ground needs to be thought out before you purchase a Shelbourn.  From a practical standpoint, you will probably need to trade in your hoe or double disc drills for a new style, heavy single disc drill.  There are several companies with models to choose from, including the cross-slot from Baker .....company.

       In our case we had five goals we wished to achieve: 1--reduce moisture loss from evaporation.  2--improve survivability of our winter crops.  3--reduce weed competition, and 4--avoid buying a new model combine.  5--reduce the cost of growing a crop (improve our bottom line).  With only three seasons experience, all statements I make here may change in the future.  Being in a three year rotation, this is the first year that all our fields have had at least one crop harvested with the stripper head and seeded with the Cross-Slot drill. 

--It's too early to tell if we are seeing real moisture savings.  There is some indication that we are going in the right direction. 

 --Are we seeing improved crop surviability?   Maybe, it is questionable.  Our first opportunity was with the fall wheat seeded in Sept. 2013.  I think there was an influence by the residue mat that helped, although, we had serious winter damage from the December 2013 weather event.  There was no standing stubble, and the residue mat was not impressive.  Our August 2014 seeded winter canola will be the second opportunity to test crop survivability.  We seeded into very heavy residue with a lot of standing stubble.  Wheel tracks associated with harvesting, spraying and seeding all degrade the standing stubble, but we probably still have 30-40% standing.  

--Are we reducing weed competition?  We think this is a definite yes!  Broadleaf weed populations are falling dramatically.  Grassy weeds appear to be more persistent but there are signs that the population of these are falling.  We need to lengthen our rotation and include other crop types so we can employ different chemistry to effectively address this problem.  In general we find that fewer trips over the field means less surface disturbance and this seems to translate into fewer weeds germinating.  I now envision the possibility that an expensive chemical application may be skipped on occasion.  This will take a "mind adjustment" to allow a few weeds to grow in the crop, and it may not be field wide (possibly more spot spraying replacing field wide spraying).  This summer we only bordered the canola field with glyphosate -- come spring we'll see if that was a mistake.  In years past, not applying glyphosate prior to seeding was always a mistake regardless of whether you could see weeds or not at the time of spraying.

-- Can we avoid buying a newer model combine?  This is a YES!  Our 1985 Gleaner N7 has been a great machine for us over the years.  The one negative of this machine, is straw management.  The chaff spread is good, but straw management/spread is poor/horrible.  With our interest in building/maintaining surface residue, the amount of long straw on the surface from wheel smash and straw spread at harvest (straw choppers of this vintage machine, of any make, are ineffective for our purpose), the seeding operation became problematic.  We have shredded/chopped stubble for many years, starting with a 15' SunMaster flail, and progressing to a 26' 5026 Schulte rotory mower.  The amount of residue we were building overwhelmed this management tool.  The new micro-chop technology available on some brands of combines looked like an option.  That technology costs several 100k.  The Shelbourn Stripper head was another option.  We decided, after much discussion, the 32' Shelbourn offered us the best bang for the buck.  1--the header cost $70k including the machine conversion.  2-- it resolved our residue issues. We had already decided that the cross-slot drill would be the method of seeding whether it be owned, rented, or custom operated.  3--with the Gleaner history for supporting their older model machines we figure we can extend the useful life of the N7 another 10-20 years.  The N7 had plenty of capacity.  As it turns out we have gained ≈200 bu/hr in capacity with the Shelbourn.  Except for harvesting canola (specifically winter canola), this header is moving us to our goals of removing fallow from our crop rotation, less runoff from weather events, and better winter crop protection, better weed control, and a better bottom line.  The Shelbourn offers me the opportunity to scratch an itch I've had since listening to the report on research done in the late 70's about retaining moisture (post of 7/3/12).

Harvest video needs to be high quality but bloggers limit of 100mb per video limits quality.  High quality results in a very short video.

This video is of harvesting on flat, low ground, our late seeded Diva spring wheat in the 18-20" rainfall zone.  The flat, low ground yielded in the range of 80 to 100 bu/ac.  Once you left the low ground, yields plummeted.  We had three fields. 1--yield average was 50bu/ac, 2--46bu/ac, 3--43bu/ac.  The puff of black is where the fingers encountered a straw pile with some dirt mixed in.  See the 5/17/14 post to view drilling conditions in the area this video shows being harvested.

This video is of harvesting our winter wheat in the 15-17" rainfall zone.  The area shown (≈70ac) yielded a low of 100 bu/ac and a high of 140 bu/ac.  This area is frequently a disappointment to us -- not this year!  The field average was 78 bu/ac.  This area was apparently protected from the December event, being behind a higher ridge to the north.  Most of the field, which this area is a part of, is a long north facing slope that took the full brunt of the December cold, northeastern wind event that damaged all of the crops in the region.  I wish the field would have been seeded into standing stubble to see if that would have led to less crop damage.

       This video is of harvesting our late seeded spring barley on CRP takeout in the 15-17" rainfall zone.  This was a very poor crop.  The average yield was 3/4 ton/ac.
        The volume of material going through the combine from using the stripper head is a fraction of that from a platform head.  Combine adjustments need to be made to preserve grain quality and threshing efficiency.  Head tips can be difficult to thresh with so little straw in the machine.  Aggressive thresh can skin the grain.

2013 HARVEST -- STRIPPER HEAD

        In it's second year the Shelbourne header performed very well.  Our harvest consisted of winter wheat with excellent yields, spring barley with respectable yields, and spring mustard with below preferred yields.  This year we harvested the mustard with both the standard header and the stripper header.  Header loss was not distinguishable between the two types by observing seed on the ground.  The mustard set seed pods low on the plant this year.  The stripper head picked all of the seed pods, where the standard rigid sickle head missed a lot of pods near the ground.  We did have a field with high moisture, and the low areas grew mustard five feet tall.   This field was cut with the standard head.  This field had a high population of china lettuce, and we felt the stripper head would have received a lot of wear (damage) engaging those tough stalks.   I think that the stripper head would have had higher loss in those areas with the tall mustard because the hood would have had to be wide open.  Although, with the shatter resistants of the mustard seed pod, it's possible, ?????, that  the hood could have been lowered to an acceptable harvest position, ---the mustard would have been pushed and compressed as the stripper head engaged the crop.  We have a neighbor that had a very dense stand of mustard.  It started out tall but lodged.  I think the stripper head would have done well in that condition.
       An observation we have made: ---> immature wheat and barley heads do not strip well.
We all have experienced situations where secondary growth and head development cause problems because that under story of green heads seem never too ripen.  We notice that the stripper head leaves most of those heads intact, thus reducing the contamination in the bulk tank.  That gives you the opportunity for a second harvest, if the timing and quantity warrants it, or food for animals.