We milk 700 cows, plus all of the dry cows, replacement heifers and steers.
Dairy farming is a little different than beef farming. In dairy you need very high quality feed. For beef, not so much.
We have a seperate LLC that we started that owns the 7350 Chopper, Oxbo 334 Merger, and two H&S wide bodies. The rest of the equipment is owned by one of the three farms invested in the LLC, and gets billed through the LLC. Our farm (700 milking), my uncles farm (450 milking) and my cousins farm (300 milking) are the ones invested in the LLC. That gives us a lot of animals to feed.
with forage you always seem to have a small window to get it done, so the quicker the better.
Our old setup was two FP240 new Holland choppers. We would fix them all year, and by the end of the year they would both be replaced because we would snap cutterheads, and break processor rolls. The FP240 is a great chopper, but we ran both of them with 300hp tractors on them and pushed them to the max.
So with $100,000 a year tied up in pull type choppers, it already made sense to go to a self propelled. Not to mention the self propelled uses 40% less fuel, and gets the crop put in the bunker in half the time. Which overall saves a lot of money in labor, fuel, equipment wear, and feed quality due to the fact that we can have a better chance of getting it in before bad weather.
Our 7350 with a 645B (15') pickup head and 686(6 row small drum) kemper head, was $330,000 new when we got it. It has quite a few options on it, IVLOC, Prodrive, Rear wheel assist, and many other small things. But overall $330,000 really isnt a lot to pay.
The Claas we were lookig at was $440,000 for a 940. Which is 6hp less than our deere, but is more efficient, and puts a lot more feed through it. Plus the parts and service are more readily available.