Final Prep Before Corn Chopping /Fine Tuning the Corn Head

morning everybody welcome back to the channel again it's tuesday september 8th um i started putting this corn head on the chopper the other day a couple days ago i had everything all lined up i had the head balanced on the floor jack there which actually worked really good for putting the head on um and i noticed something wasn't lining up right i was having trouble getting these one was way off from the other side or one of these on each side this is where the head hinges when it lifts um so then i got looking closer i shut the camera off because i was trying to figure out what was going on and didn't want to waste time on the camera well down here it's kind of hard to see but at one point in time they hooked something with this and this was bent up probably two inches and it was cracked there so last night my brothers came over we got it bent back down and then we re-welded it my brother matthew re-welded it on there so now we're we've got that all lined up and then we got the head put on now i just need to uh oil the chains grease the head check the gear boxes sharpen the knives and i do have to put a drive chain on here yet i got a the only one i had was the one for the hay head and it's a little bit too short so i'm gonna make a new one to hook that up but i didn't get any footage of putting the head on or anything last night because it was after dark so but we did get it on there and it seemed to fit good after we got that fixed so oh yeah we got the the sledgehammer up there we had to do a little a little persuading on this to get it bent back down we had a big bar in here pulling on it and then had to hit it because it was really really stiff but we got it bent back down down good so um anyway that's what i'm gonna do now so [Laughter] sounds pretty good everybody um we're here down by the garage at the chopper here got it all going yesterday head works good sounded good um i got the knife sharpened they were i don't know if the previous owner sharpened them with an angle grinder or never sharpened them at all or what but they had a real high heel on them so it took me forever to get them cut down to true and they seem pretty good now so i got an edge on them cutter bar adjusted up i did have to i'm not going to open it up again now but inside here where the knives are i can show you probably a different time there's tracks along the side walls um where if you put a recutter screen in there that's what that sits against that had they had rust behind them in some places and it was bulged out and then it would um the sides of the knives were hitting so i pulled those tracks out cleaned that all out put them back in and that seems to be good i found a couple more grease fittings that i need to grease while i was doing some other stuff there and then that should be ready i'm actually going to go out hopefully this morning and green chop a little bit for the cows um and then the wagons we'll go over here i'll show you the wagons my brother got a couple of them ready i just got to check the gearboxes our third wagon i don't know i got to fix we had an issue with that i'll show you and then i got to get the i got to go over neighbors got uh he's got a big drill for raising the silo unloaders so i'll get them probably folded up today so we can get them raised and that silo up in the pasture there has already got the blower hook to it i just got to grease it and oil it and what i like to do i've got another blower i'll put by the silo by the barn that way when that silo's full i can start on that one that settles a day or so i can add another load i don't have to keep swapping blowers but anyway i'll kind of go over these wagons a little um i mean they're nothing fancy they're bad the two of them are badgers and then this one is a i don't know it's a load king i think maybe h s made these it's actually it was pretty pretty decent wagon this one never had a roof on it from the time we bought it i need to do some work on the back wall um it's getting i've actually put a couple years ago i put plywood along the back but the inside boards are getting pretty rotten on the back wall so i need to uh i need to take them out and put another another sheet of plywood on there but this wagon is i don't think it was used much when we bought it because the chain stuff looks in pretty good shape but um i don't know i mean i'm sure these wagons we've had we've actually got another wagon like this that needs similar my grandpa rebuilt the sides and everything with treated boards but the back needs to be done i mean it's they're a good wagon i guess but they're a ratchet drive so like the four chain it ratchets back and forth as it goes and i think that's harder on the chain but you can see in there that one broke um and i don't know why my brother brought this up to the garage to oil the chains and he turned it on he said it made about three ratchets and that chain broke and then this chain is not worn out so i don't know it must have hooked somewhere i'm not sure where but um so i got to look at that and get that fixed and and see if needs to be tightened i did use this last fall and it worked fine so i'm not sure what's going on there but that this one is going to need some attention but these badgers um they're they're uh they're pretty good wagons i don't know we're happy with them um this this is just a a 14 foot long just a single axle running gear on the back there this other one's a 16 foot with a tandem gear i've got the side covers off of here because normally we keep them out in the pasture we store them out there and the cows will always knock those covers off and step on them so that's why they're not on there but anyway and then the roofs on these you'll probably notice on these two badgers i need to get new tin on them they're slid back some of the pieces are mashed up what originally happened there was we used to have a two row pull type new idea corn picker and we had an attachment for high moisture corn you took the husking bed off and you bit a grinder attachment for it in order to use that on we just blew it into these wagons it had an auger that came out so the roof was too far forward so we slid the roof support back and slid the tin back well it never got moved back into place and the tin just was loose and moved around and pretty soon and got hooked on stuff and just made a mess out of it um so i don't know that's just how they've been i need to get new tin on them and move that support we don't have that thing anymore so i wouldn't be using it on here so i need to move that support forward and put new tin on it but for now i got to slide that sheet back and cut that one off that's bent and i think their tin was probably getting a little rusty anyway so it probably should have new tin anyhow but that's why the roofs are so messed up on there kind of looks rough but um that's that's the story behind that so like i said that's that's our wagons um so now i'm gonna go finish greasing that chopper and see if we can try that out and make sure that's working before we go full bore here came out here to the dry cow heifer pasture here checking on me see if anybody was in heat or anything and uh thought i'd stop this is one of them bales of that old hay we bailed actually it uh smells really good cows cows seem to like it it probably doesn't look quite as good in the camera as it does up close but uh yeah smells good and smells good looks good so so that's nice nice for some extra feed there just came out here in the pasture to get the get the feeder wagon over there um so i can green chop a little for the cows i'm not going to do too much today just because i want to start them out slow if you take that out and fill it up full of corn green corn and first stuff they've had it's like sitting down and eating a big tub of cookie dough all at once you'll regret it later so i'm just gonna chop a little bit now make sure the chopper is working and get them started out on that so the boys are here now cleaning out the wagon there was a little bit of uh old feed in there from previous so once we get that done we'll go try it out i went up and tried it and i shared a pin on the head um plugged up a little bit there and i see i got a gathering chain here that has kind of jumped jump time so i got to pull this apart and figure out what happened there morning everybody it's about nine o'clock in the morning friday september 11th today it's hard to believe it's been 19 years since those attacks happened and i just thought i'd take a minute i'm sure everybody remembers what they were doing that day i can remember it just like it was yesterday i was down here in front of the garage getting the corn shopper ready came across the radio we had in the garage me and my grandpa were down here um then my grandma came out of the house and said that it was an attack like i said i'm sure everybody everybody has their own story about that but i just thought being today i'd like to bring that up because i think it's important that it's never forgotten what happened um so you know and like i said i'm sure there's you'll see this video after today already but you know take some time and say a prayer for those who were lost and for their families because and those who are still suffering from effects from that because i'm sure they could uh definitely still use prayers for that but anyway i just wanted to talk about that a little bit seeing as is what today what today meant for this country 19 years ago anyway we're still working on the chopper here um i got those gathering chains untangled um and then i was able to a friend of mine had a i don't have an owner's manual for the head i have one for the chopper but not for the corn head um but he had one so excuse the sun there he had one for this 822 head so i got that from him this morning to see how to time the chains because i had no idea how to time them and also how to get the correct spring tension on the tensioners there i think that was part of my issue was that i had those maybe too loose and they are a little bit out of time too but i'll turn this around here as you can see here you know they're closer here than they are here and what the book says if you have to move them a long ways you can jump the chain one um one cog here i did try doing that but it's too much so then it it says to take the nut off here there's finer splines under here and then you can you can move it finer adjustment so i'm just going to have to the way it looks move the outside chains because they also have to be timed in here and they look pretty good here so i don't think i have to mess with that one this one is still i had to loosen these all the way up to get them untangled yesterday so i need to get the right tension on all of them and then um go from there then we can get that set so definitely pays to have a book so i'm going to be ordering one that's for sure but anyway so that's what i'm working on now all right i got that adjusted um got this side here centered nice the other side over here is a little bit off um but i did check the book and it allows for a quarter inch off the center side i was going to adjust it but being it's not too far off i don't think i have enough if i turn it one notch i think it'll be too much and it'll just be that much off the other way so um and it wasn't too bad to adjust i had to pull this cover this crop guard out and then just pull this cotter pin pulled the nut off and loosen the chain of course and then there's fine splines in here and then you can just lift it off and turn it it actually came off pretty nice so um and in their time i didn't do anything with the center chains other than i got all the tensioners adjusted like they're supposed to be because they have to run in time in the center any or also and those were good so i didn't do anything besides tighten the chains and i think that might have been a lot of my issue yesterday is uh i think i just had them set too loose because they're spring-loaded so anyway i'm gonna clean up my tools here i got one cover to put on underneath under those some bevel drive gears under there and then we'll uh try it out again all right got it running again sounds good looks good so we're gonna go try it out i got my co-pilot with [Music] well i got enough in there to get them started on um looks like it did a nice job of chopping really nice so that's good and these like so this was a later stuff planet so i'm sure the stuff in the back is probably a little riper but it's uh it's ready to go i think that stuff in the back i mean this these ones here are still uh boy chopped them up nice starting to dent a little bit of milk in them yet but like i said the stuff in the back i'm sure is wetter but i'll probably start with that little silo up there anyway and i like it a little bit a little bit wetter in there also so um and i was having a little trouble i don't know if you've seen jordan was taking a video on the head i was having a little bit of trouble with this inside row um wanting to kind of clog up in here now i know our gale used to do the same thing and that was because i didn't have enough clearance on that one between the knife and the wheel that had a stationary knife and i've heard it's kind of the same thing here so i've got to measure that out and see but uh in its defense though also it was really grassy along that outside edge but we'll check that out a little bit i'm guessing it's probably just an adjustment on that on that knife but otherwise it seemed like it did pretty good i got the grass cleaned out of there um i looked in the book and that said the same thing um if you're getting grass built up under there you're probably got too much clearance between these cutting wheels but they're supposed to be shims in here um i would imagine if there isn't shims these wheels are probably just too worn but i'll pull off and take a shim out and see if that makes a difference i know that gale we had that did the exact same thing if we got a little bit too much space in there it would plug with grass but so anyway otherwise it seemed to work good all right well yesterday i chopped um and i kept plugging up with grass on this side i took a shim out of the one disc and tightened them up and now it's clean as a whistle in there now and it we got rain last night so everything is wet i know that gale head we had that was also a rotary head except that had a star wheel with a stationary knife and that would do the same thing if it got too much gap in there so um but it seems like it's clean now i had one spot where there was a little corn knocked down i thought it had plug but it didn't i don't know i must have just caught it with the tire of the tractor and ran it down and didn't notice it but anyway looks like it did good especially with everything being wet i know that gale we had was notorious if it got wet if that wasn't lined up or you know wasn't set right tolerance that thing would plug all the time but and it seems to be chopping nice so that's good we should be i guess got to get the silo ready now and should be ready to start filling this stuff is kind of on the greener side yet but i think the stuff in the back is uh riper i haven't been back there for a little while but that was planted a few days earlier but so anyway it looks good down to this end there's some pretty good corn here up on top of the hill there right along the edge it was a little shorter but i don't know why some of this spot here along this edge got really a lot of weeds came back i don't really know why but i suppose more more sunlight out towards the edge but anyway we're gonna head back now and give the cow some breakfast morning everybody sunday september 13th i'm just up here green chopping another load for the cows uh i think my brother's gonna come over today we're gonna see if we can get the silo already uh finish up a couple little things on the chopper boxes i came up here back field more um the one i was chopping on that was the last field planted so i wanted to come up and see kind of what these were looking like for ripeness because they are they were planted first not a lot but a few days anyway they look pretty good too you can kind of see i'll go a little closer here um we did get some frost about three nights in a row didn't get like way down into the 20s or anything i think we hovered around 30. i don't know how long for but you can tell some of this is getting a little frost to it places some of it's still really green yet i'm going to check kind of see what some of our ears are looking like here they turn the camera around i know there's a neighboring farm here they uh they pile their silage and they've started chopping and i think they said it was about 65 so that's actually getting a little on the drier side for for uh piling but this one stock here he looks like he ripened a little early and then the rest but excuse my camera work here shaky trying to open this yeah that's it's not you know it's nice and pretty soft yet but it's ready it's ready i think this is a greener stock here look at this year nice ear on it yep that's about the same i think they're i think they're pretty good without having a kernel processor on the chopper which what that is is basically like two rollers um and they got like ridges on them and then when the silage goes through the knives like right in here shoot through the knives and the kernel processor would be back here it would go through those rollers and it would grind up the kernels and the chunks of cobs and everything so the cows can get more out of it but with not having that you don't want to let them get too the kernels to get too hard because then the cows can't break them down they can't get as much out of them so definitely it's ready to go i think uh like i said we're going to try to get at least that little silo unloader raised and everything start on the big one because i'm going to start filling the small silo first so up in the pasture there so anyway that's what i'm doing right now i really like how this chopper um chops i had my previous chopper was a model 1000 gale which was a good chopper i did get a lot of long leaves i mean pretty much all your leaves coming through you know were like this um this one i think just came through kind of at the end when there wasn't much corn coming in but most of your leaves are chopped up nice and fine and then last year when i that thousand broke down i used our old 400 gale and that was worse yet part of the reason that was was because the sharpener that was on it um was gone and got robbed for parts for another one so i had to sharpen it with a grinder and you can't get a good edge on it that way but anyway um so no it's it's chopping up really nice i was going to show you one other thing here on this chopper um when i had in our previous video there or video back aways when i was narrowing this head up uh we had gotten a comment that i had it set for 28 inch uh spacing because i had it pulled in all the way um and he was right that uh i did i did notice that after i got because when i did that i didn't have a manual for it and i just assumed that you moved both sides evenly once i got the manual i noticed that to get 30 inch rows you move one side all the way in and the other side one hole back from all the way to get 30 inch so you know i'm glad that they pointed that out and actually i really appreciate got a lot of comments and suggestions on this head i also did have some trouble with the one side when i first used it got clogged with grass i think we got that on video here too i did take a shim out of that side it's been working good now we did have that same trouble with our gale head we had a i believe it's a tr 3038 belt head which was a really good head more complicated than the new holland head but a good head that would do the same thing that had a star wheel with a stationary knife and if that got too much gap you'd have to bring that knife down which wasn't a big deal but this is kind of the same thing this just has two discs that run together instead of the stationary knife but anyway so i just wanted to thank everybody for their comments and suggestions on this head like i said i haven't used it a lot this is only my third load it's been working good so far so once we get rolling we'll we'll put it to the test a little bit more but anyway i'm gonna chop my way back i was gonna take some video chopping again today but jordan's not here to hold the camera and i can't find my my magnetic camera holder is on a piece of equipment somewhere i don't remember where i left it so and it's too hard to hold this and run the controls and everything so anyway that's what i'm going to finish up here and get the cows some get the cow some breakfast i just came back to this field back here that borders that state land um picked an ear here it's not a bad ear it filled out pretty good but it is a lot smaller a lot shorter um i don't know i wasn't up in the back part but everything down here kind of looks like it's got a little shorter ear on it i don't really know why because that little field that i was just in um that had pretty nice ears on it but the only thing i can think of is when it got dry this field probably got got it a little more so it's a little poorer soil here probably a little less moisture held in it i don't know but this was down in the bottom here too so it could be different spots that look better it's still a nice ear but just not quite as good as the other ones but anyway corn looks that piece and this one look about the same for ripeness they might even been planted on the same day i can't remember i'd have to look back but um anyway so that's a little crop update and go back and finish chopping that load

Channel: Trinity Dairy

Views: 11,509

Rating: 4.9887481 out of 5

Keywords: farming, dairy farming, dairy farm, New Holland Corn Chopper, corn chopper, corn chopping, chopping, dairy, small farm, family farm, Minnesota Farm, agtube, ag tube, farmtube, farm tube, #agtube, old tractors, vintage tractors, small family farm, homesteading, cattle, dairy cattle

Id: MwT3NQYbF_U

Length: 27min 9sec (1629 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020