Hi Followers,
Sorry, that you had to wait a little bit longer for news this time! The last two weeks in California has been busy and very successful. Like at the last round in the spring, I could run a lot of demos in the Central Valley in California. This time I showed the BiG X 850 and the BiG X 700 with our new trifold 10-row corn header Easy Collect 753. Most of the demos have been in the northern part of the Valley around Turlock and Modesto.
Beside the demos, we had a very interesting field day in Modesto. This field day was organized by Mycogen Seeds and it was all around chopping quality and pit management. All the competitors have been around. We were there with the BiG X 850 and the EC 753. Approximately 180 people from University and Industry, Farmers and Contractors came to see the choppers running. For the comparison of chopping quality every forage harvester chopped one truck load each with different length of cut (longest chop, 19 mm, 16 mm and 13 mm) and a KP distance of 1.5 mm. The samples were investigated by the visitors at the pit. With shaker boxes, they defined the different particles of the sample. You could really see the difference! People really liked the consistency in the chop and the good processing of our BiG X 850. And that what Dairy Farmers in California want! After that, we had people waiting to fill a few truck loads with the BiG X and see the performance in corn. And the performance was impressive. In 15/16 feet tall corn, yielding 38 tons/ac, the customers were filling trucks in no time.
This big corn in California is nothing special. The yields are averaging between 30 and 35 tons/ac. That’s really MAN Corn. The length of cut are mostly around 19 mm, reaching from 13 mm to 25 mm. More important for the farmers is the processing of the kernels. They don’t want to find a kernel and grind it up. That’s why the KP is so important around here. In the Krone choppers we are running chromed hard faced KP-rollers with 30 % speed differential. More surface and the speed difference allows to run with a wider gab and still getting the high processing. A wider gab follows in more performance. Good processing at high performance: That makes farmers and contractors happy. During the demos, the customers were really impressed about the high torque of the MAN-engines and the possibility to push it down to under 1300 RPM under load. It will recover easily!
Customers liked the header. With the collector chains instead of turning drums it is much lighter than the competitive headers and needs less power to run it. It feeds the corn plants more consistent and leads to better chopping quality. Customers, who are running Krone headers on competive machines (The Easy Collect 6000 FP is available for John Deere, Claas and New Holland choppers) told me, that they could speed up to 1 mile/hour during chopping after changing to the Krone header! Again, better performance of the chopper!
Right now, I am on my way to Sunny Side, Washington, where I will run demos this week. I have heard, the corn is even taller than in California! I am excited…
Regards,
Benedikt
