durallymax
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Well spring is here, and it was an early one. Got all of our new seeding in pretty early, and got all of the corn in before the rains we have been having lately.
Just finished up chopping my uncles rye, and well be doing our hay at the end of the week.
The end is near. Once the first cutting of hay is off things tend to slow down a bit.
This spring I basically lived in our MX240. Covering all but 150 acres of our 550 acres of corn ground putting on anhydrous with a field cultivator with an anhydrous applicator mounted to it and then another 100 acres with a toolbar (the rest got 28%), then covering it again with either the field cultivator or mulcher, and covering some of the other ground with the turbo till.
Grandpa got the fun job of sitting in the 8940 with the chisel plow and covering a little less than half of the ground.
And my dad and another one of our employees kept the planter going 24/7.
Now all thats left is a little bit of sweet corn and peas.
And were done.
Heres some pics I got from this spring so far.
The MX240, shes getting kinda old, but still a nice tractor to run. Got a lot of work done to it this winter. New transmission, a lot of new parts on the injection pump, and a new set of tires all the way around. all in all it was around $25,000. A lot of money, but the repairs were expected as it is our silage pushing tractor and has 100hp over stock injectors. We only get about two seasons out of the tires. And for a full set of Deep Tread Firestones its about $12,500. Another thing me and my cousin did to it this winter was redo the hoses for the silage blade. The factory way of doing things is to fasten the hoses the the undercarraige. And every time you hooked it up or unhooked it you had to do this, it was a real PITA. These hoses would always get pinched by silage and break as well. It was costing us a lot of downtime, hoses and hydraulic fluid. So me and my cousin set to work on redoing it. The sculpted frame made it tough, but we were able to run all 6 of the hoses along the frame rails and up under the cab (in a kevlar sleeve) to the rear of the tractor. Upfront we mounted them to a plate with bulkheads and redid the hoses on the blade so that everything is now connected up front. Out back they simply hang out of the way when not in use. Having our own hose making setup proved to be a real big help in this process. It was a $1,000 investment in hoses, hose ends and the sleeve, but it will pay for itself before the end of the season.
Here is a pic of the tractor
Here is a pic of where the hose on the blade connect to the tractor with our new setup. There are 3 on this side and three on the other side.
Heres the turbo till, Its only 22' but I forgot how hard they pull. For those who dont know what a turbo till is, it is a form of vertical tillage used as a minimum tillage tool for residue management. Basically it chops up the residue and aerates the top couple inches of soil. But when you are done the residue is still on top and the field looks untouched.
Here is the field cultivator with the anhydrous setup. It is a fairly new Wil-rich Excel series 30'. The anhydrous application setup, is setup with a system to vent the vapors to two other shanks so that only liquid anyhdrous gets put into the ground for a more even application. It is controlled with a Raven controller with a GPS dome to monitor speed. Its is very simple to operate and allows you to switch application rates with the flick of a switch. The other filed cultivator we use simply for soil prep is a 34' Wil-rich Quad 5. The mulcher is a 25' Brillion.
As some of you may remember we put a front 3pt on our 8940 to mount our new mowers on. Well I snapped a pic of it yesterday finally with everything mounted up. The front three point is a zuidberg, frontline. The tractor has the wheels widened out as far as they will go so that we can keep the center windrow as wide as the other two windrows without driving over it to provide even drying. The rear mower is a new Pottinger V10 with autolube and rubber conditioning rolls. The front mower is a new Pottinger 356 Alphamotion with rubber conditioning rolls. The full width of cut with the rear mowers slid all the way out is 33'. With them slid in for making corners and such it is 30'. We also installed a Trimble EZ-Guide 500 to minimize overlap. In the end, it cuts a lot of hay FAST. We are still using our New Holland HW365 18' Self propelled discbine as well. We completely rebuilt the cutterbar this winter with all new gears, cross shafts, and bearings and seals. Due to the fact that these 18' cutterbars suck, we have become very good at fixing them and do all of our own work on them. By running both we get everything cut very fast but the drying time is spread out far enough that we arent chopping overdryed hay at the end of the day. We are still running our 09 Oxbo 334 merger on an 8910 Magnum.
Here is a pic of the setup (sorry camera lens got blurry for some reason)
And we are still running the JD 7350 Prodrive chopper. Didnt have much to do on it this winter, just 500 filters and fluids to change, and a couple of wear parts. Nothing major.
Snapped a pic while loading my wagon yesterday, again camera was blurry sorry.
And i almost forgot about the 7110. i mentioned a little while back that we were getting it repainted, well after the guy speant 150 hours on it (mostly fiberglass work), here is how it turned out.
so thats my story whats everybody else been up to.
Just finished up chopping my uncles rye, and well be doing our hay at the end of the week.
The end is near. Once the first cutting of hay is off things tend to slow down a bit.
This spring I basically lived in our MX240. Covering all but 150 acres of our 550 acres of corn ground putting on anhydrous with a field cultivator with an anhydrous applicator mounted to it and then another 100 acres with a toolbar (the rest got 28%), then covering it again with either the field cultivator or mulcher, and covering some of the other ground with the turbo till.
Grandpa got the fun job of sitting in the 8940 with the chisel plow and covering a little less than half of the ground.
And my dad and another one of our employees kept the planter going 24/7.
Now all thats left is a little bit of sweet corn and peas.
And were done.
Heres some pics I got from this spring so far.
The MX240, shes getting kinda old, but still a nice tractor to run. Got a lot of work done to it this winter. New transmission, a lot of new parts on the injection pump, and a new set of tires all the way around. all in all it was around $25,000. A lot of money, but the repairs were expected as it is our silage pushing tractor and has 100hp over stock injectors. We only get about two seasons out of the tires. And for a full set of Deep Tread Firestones its about $12,500. Another thing me and my cousin did to it this winter was redo the hoses for the silage blade. The factory way of doing things is to fasten the hoses the the undercarraige. And every time you hooked it up or unhooked it you had to do this, it was a real PITA. These hoses would always get pinched by silage and break as well. It was costing us a lot of downtime, hoses and hydraulic fluid. So me and my cousin set to work on redoing it. The sculpted frame made it tough, but we were able to run all 6 of the hoses along the frame rails and up under the cab (in a kevlar sleeve) to the rear of the tractor. Upfront we mounted them to a plate with bulkheads and redid the hoses on the blade so that everything is now connected up front. Out back they simply hang out of the way when not in use. Having our own hose making setup proved to be a real big help in this process. It was a $1,000 investment in hoses, hose ends and the sleeve, but it will pay for itself before the end of the season.
Here is a pic of the tractor
Here is a pic of where the hose on the blade connect to the tractor with our new setup. There are 3 on this side and three on the other side.
Heres the turbo till, Its only 22' but I forgot how hard they pull. For those who dont know what a turbo till is, it is a form of vertical tillage used as a minimum tillage tool for residue management. Basically it chops up the residue and aerates the top couple inches of soil. But when you are done the residue is still on top and the field looks untouched.
Here is the field cultivator with the anhydrous setup. It is a fairly new Wil-rich Excel series 30'. The anhydrous application setup, is setup with a system to vent the vapors to two other shanks so that only liquid anyhdrous gets put into the ground for a more even application. It is controlled with a Raven controller with a GPS dome to monitor speed. Its is very simple to operate and allows you to switch application rates with the flick of a switch. The other filed cultivator we use simply for soil prep is a 34' Wil-rich Quad 5. The mulcher is a 25' Brillion.
As some of you may remember we put a front 3pt on our 8940 to mount our new mowers on. Well I snapped a pic of it yesterday finally with everything mounted up. The front three point is a zuidberg, frontline. The tractor has the wheels widened out as far as they will go so that we can keep the center windrow as wide as the other two windrows without driving over it to provide even drying. The rear mower is a new Pottinger V10 with autolube and rubber conditioning rolls. The front mower is a new Pottinger 356 Alphamotion with rubber conditioning rolls. The full width of cut with the rear mowers slid all the way out is 33'. With them slid in for making corners and such it is 30'. We also installed a Trimble EZ-Guide 500 to minimize overlap. In the end, it cuts a lot of hay FAST. We are still using our New Holland HW365 18' Self propelled discbine as well. We completely rebuilt the cutterbar this winter with all new gears, cross shafts, and bearings and seals. Due to the fact that these 18' cutterbars suck, we have become very good at fixing them and do all of our own work on them. By running both we get everything cut very fast but the drying time is spread out far enough that we arent chopping overdryed hay at the end of the day. We are still running our 09 Oxbo 334 merger on an 8910 Magnum.
Here is a pic of the setup (sorry camera lens got blurry for some reason)
And we are still running the JD 7350 Prodrive chopper. Didnt have much to do on it this winter, just 500 filters and fluids to change, and a couple of wear parts. Nothing major.
Snapped a pic while loading my wagon yesterday, again camera was blurry sorry.
And i almost forgot about the 7110. i mentioned a little while back that we were getting it repainted, well after the guy speant 150 hours on it (mostly fiberglass work), here is how it turned out.
so thats my story whats everybody else been up to.
