Trailed silage harvester outfit

Your charges would be fairly on the ball.
Maybe you'd give a brief outline of your history with the Hesstons ? The Good , the Bad , and the Ugly . Help was your problem I think .
Few others on here running older SPFH .
@agreid
@diesel power .
Interested more in the running costs, the financial frights that ye may or may not have had .

@TAFKAT .
Those men should bite the bullet , buy a JF 900, 1050 or 1100 . They should get a tidy straight machine for 5 grand , even 7 or 8 . Try it for 1 year , see how it goes . They won't go broke trying it .
I have a 1992 claas 695 tipping away at our own work every year. It's going into it's 21st season for me this summer. Some years it would have had a few thousand spent on it for things like blades and shearbar along with wear plates and liners but those costs are the exception not the norm. Last year I only had an engine oil change cost. It was very nearly it's last as it got a bit toasty for a few minutes. If it ever packs up or burns or parts just can't be got I'll probably try get an 840. There a super harvester. A cheap one with a blown engine would be ideal as I'd just switch in my own engine from the 695.
Perhaps I'll make my fortune selling straw and retire to Tramore :laugh:
 
I have a 1992 claas 695 tipping away at our own work every year. It's going into it's 21st season for me this summer. Some years it would have had a few thousand spent on it for things like blades and shearbar along with wear plates and liners but those costs are the exception not the norm. Last year I only had an engine oil change cost. It was very nearly it's last as it got a bit toasty for a few minutes. If it ever packs up or burns or parts just can't be got I'll probably try get an 840. There a super harvester. A cheap one with a blown engine would be ideal as I'd just switch in my own engine from the 695.
Perhaps I'll make my fortune selling straw and retire to Tramore :laugh:

Thanks dp .
A few thousand wouldn't want to be too often.. Parts are probably priced shockingly ?
You don't want to be stepping on the other tillage man's toes in Rosslare , or Antibes .
 
Thanks dp .
A few thousand wouldn't want to be too often.. Parts are probably priced shockingly ?
You don't want to be stepping on the other tillage man's toes in Rosslare , or Antibes .
It's rare it needs even a thousand spent on it. Last year and this year all it's getting is a service and I'm expecting to get a few more years before I'll have to do a lot.
 
My uncle and a neighbour used do their silage together in the late 60's early 70's, a 165 and side mounted 43" Taarup single chop and a 10 x 6 KP trailer,drop the harvester after every load and cart to the pit where a cabless 135 and Kverneland trip buckrake was tasked with the job, 3 walled pit in a 25ft x 45ft shed, fill it till you were ducking your head under the roof trusses. I was put on the buckrake at 13, wheelies up the ramp with only the buckrake preventing a complete upset, the 165 got traded for an IH 674 and the cab would be removed at silage time to allow the user reach the spout controls, a stub in the end of the long drawbar allowed it to pick and drop trailers and with the second trailer output was as good as doubled to 7 or 8 acres on a good day, by the mid 70's the job was given to a contractor with a 60" trailed single chop and they used just do the buckraking or more to the point I ended up doing it and following the contractor to the few farms in the locality to buckrake with the farmers own tractor which could be anything from a Ford 2000, DB 780, MF 135 at the lower end or the afore mentioned IH674, a few years on and I was driving a MF 185 with a Taarup double chop that a neighbour bought to do his own and a small bit of contract work, bought a new IH 955 and McConnell hedgecutter of my own in '79 and between hedge cutting and buckraking or pulling someones double chop managed to pay for it, bought a side mounted JF 80 precision chop and used the uncles 135 on a 6'6" krone drum mower to knock the grass and a IH 574 to draw in and hired in a lad to buckrake with a 7600. 4 years with the JF then traded the lot and bought a Deutz DX 6.30 and a Taarup 602B with an 8ft direct cut head, used to have to drop the head and carry it into some fields on the buckrake as it was too wide for a lot of gates at the time, if you wanted to put in wet silage that direct cut was the way to do it, damn near every bit of water on the grass would end up in the trailer, 3 years of that led to a 9ft JD1327 mower and a JD 3760 trailed harvester that would leave the noise in your head even as you slept, a hard yoke to drive with limited output which got changed to Mengele 30 flywheel harvester had us up to 35 acres a day, the Deutz got traded for a DX 6.50 and the ability to do 40 acres, 2 more years and I joined up with another man who was using a JD 3760 behind TW 20 and he took on the mowing duties and I traded Deutz and Mengele for a NewHolland 1905 spfh, 6 years with that but ended up with running the whole show because the other man had health issues, in '97 strarted another shared operation with lads that were using a Pottinger Mex6 and a Fiat 110-90 up to that, the 1905 went in against an FX 375 which ran until 2006, during that spell we ran 2 JD 1360 mowers with groupers for 4 years sometimes grouping to 20's or spreading full width and rowing with a 20' Pottinger but due to labour shortages changed to a 4 metre Krone and a TM175 for mowing and raking everything, upscaled the rake to a Kverneland 9178 to put 8 metres of grass in a row and still had a bit of hired in in the form of 2 tractors and trailers plus drivers and 2 of my own, amalgamated again in 2006 to the current setup with owner driven triple mowers, owner driven loader on the clamp, rowing up and 2 tractor and trailer units are mine, 2 more belong to the mower man, its now 50 years since I was put on the 135 and buckrake and there was always some sort of a shared operation going on whether it be mowing or drawing in or clamping.
Good post Arthur👍 I love the history of how you got where you are.

My history of drag silage started 1985 aged 11 on the Ford 5000 and km22 mower,I’ll do a similar post when I get time.
 
We went from cutting our own with a JF1050 on a 210hp tractor to hiring in a SP only to pick up, and still doing everything else ourselves. One disadvantage of a trailed is not being able to ted out the grass. The fear of losing a tine off the tedder and finding it with a harvester with no metal detector is a risk.

As said earlier on, a well set up trailed with good organisation will clear plenty of grass in a long day. But, when distances get longer and weather windows tighter it’s hard to beat a self propelled to get through work.

The JF is a good harvester, but probably a bit soft and under engineered compared to other makes. The fact it’s easy to repair if damaged is a good plus point though.

An old but well maintained self propelled would be a good option rather than a trailed. It doesn’t have to work to maximum capacity the whole time.
 
How many acres has it cut in total 50k
No idea Tbh. It's near 6k hours on it. It doesn't have a drum hours just engine hours clock. It cuts about 200 acres a year give or take for us and a bit of silage for a couple of neighbours here and there when they're own yokes cave in.
I don't regret one bit having it. It can do in one day what the jf800 used take 4 days to do.
 
It would take a lot longer to write if I went into some of the detail, been meaning to write that bit for 3 days, might elaborate a bit more in time.
Well thanks for taking the bother to write it out. Fascinating read. The 135 must have been under pressure driving a 6’6” mower. We had a ford 3000 amd it just about drove a pz 165 5’6” mower. Maybe the Perkins engine was better I suppose.
 
Well thanks for taking the bother to write it out. Fascinating read. The 135 must have been under pressure driving a 6’6” mower. We had a ford 3000 amd it just about drove a pz 165 5’6” mower. Maybe the Perkins engine was better I suppose.
They were meant to be a great tractor on a mower. Have a neighbour down the road that used to do contracting with a 1965 135 that he still has, said he used to run a deutz km24 on it no bother.
 
540 pto speed was reached at lowish revs, 1750ish so were not putting out their full power to the mower unless you were over revving the mower. I always felt heavy pto work was where they showed their age, they could compete with a more modern small trators on most other things, but oil flow and pto work.
 
540 pto speed was reached at lowish revs, 1750ish so were not putting out their full power to the mower unless you were over revving the mower. I always felt heavy pto work was where they showed their age, they could compete with a more modern small trators on most other things, but oil flow and pto work.
I had a brainwave to put the wrapper on the one at home one day when we were under pressure, it's a Multi-Power and they were supposed to have superior oil flow to standard tractors, 3 or 4 turns of the table and the idea was quickly abandoned.
 
I had a brainwave to put the wrapper on the one at home one day when we were under pressure, it's a Multi-Power and they were supposed to have superior oil flow to standard tractors, 3 or 4 turns of the table and the idea was quickly abandoned.
The first man to start doing round bales around here in the 80s started off with a 35x, 188 and a Belarus which was later replaced by a 110 laser. The wrapper was usually meant to be on the 188 but he says hed often send it off mowing and the 35x was put on the wraper. Used to run the hydralics on it with a pump off a jcb ran by the pto. The uncle that used to work for him who has the 168 has plans to run the same sort of setup on the 168 when it's done up.
 
The first man to start doing round bales around here in the 80s started off with a 35x, 188 and a Belarus which was later replaced by a 110 laser. The wrapper was usually meant to be on the 188 but he says hed often send it off mowing and the 35x was put on the wraper. Used to run the hydralics on it with a pump off a jcb ran by the pto. The uncle that used to work for him who has the 168 has plans to run the same sort of setup on the 168 when it's done up.
A friend of mine runs a wrapper on a 188, the wrapper has it's own independent hydraulics run off the PTO, I probably put up pictures of it on here somewhere before I'd say.
 
A friend of mine runs a wrapper on a 188, the wrapper has it's own independent hydraulics run off the PTO, I probably put up pictures of it on here somewhere before I'd say.
They're meant to be strong enough with the hydralic ran off the pto. I could be wrong but didn't tractors with multipower have an aux pump that you could use to power the spools as well as the multipower via the pto plate or perhaps I wonder is there a way to join up the flow from the aux pump to the main pump. If so surely this would increase the flow a fair bit?
 
I don`t remember them working but I do remember the first silage fleet here .My father buckraked with a Nuffield 3/42 or a 10/42 I`m not sure ,His brother pulled a single cut DB albium? three or four ft. inline harvester with our Nuffield 10/60 ,His Fordson major with a kick of your heel release pickup hitch drew in. The two trailers were PTO powered one a JF dung spreader chain and latt floor the other was a timber and corigated iron body on an old truck chasie and PTO pump to tip it . A new Abbey trailer was bought in the early seventies ,I do remember it being filled and towed in behind the harvester and tipped with a hydraulic pipe extension . Then a contractor lifted it for us with a Ford 8600? and a kidd ,maybe a double chop and my Father on the pit with the 10/60 and I vividly remember him rolling it off the side of the ramp and jumping clear , After that a roll over bar was fitted and the contractor bought a new MF 50 b to push up .He then went selfpropelled a Hesston 4000 ,a Hesston 7650 and then a Hesston fieldqueen ,the 50b was replaced with volvo 621? He had two drum Fahr mowers three drum Claas mowers Ithink a grasshopper ,Kuhn with a Kuhn flex, he changed to New Holland when Jamenson in Roscrea closed and is running a JD at present .In 1988 my brother bought a well minded NH 1895 we had an eight ft. JD conditioner mower and a 1494 case on the pit . We bought an other one for spares but it ran faster and had a wider pickup . We went to look at another outside Loughrae and there was a Mengele sp 300 there so much simpler than the NH the only draw back was it has variable speed pullies and clutch rather than the hydrostatic transmission .the NHs were soled for thier caterpillar engines .The fly wheel threw a paddle and imploded a few years back ,a s40 with a drawbar mounted engine was bought ,the engine is now on a neighbours jf and the 40 grafted onto the front of the 300 . I will say some times if we are under pressure we just mow ,thed and push up JCB320s and wagon is hired in .
 
I don`t remember them working but I do remember the first silage fleet here .My father buckraked with a Nuffield 3/42 or a 10/42 I`m not sure ,His brother pulled a single cut DB albium? three or four ft. inline harvester with our Nuffield 10/60 ,His Fordson major with a kick of your heel release pickup hitch drew in. The two trailers were PTO powered one a JF dung spreader chain and latt floor the other was a timber and corigated iron body on an old truck chasie and PTO pump to tip it . A new Abbey trailer was bought in the early seventies ,I do remember it being filled and towed in behind the harvester and tipped with a hydraulic pipe extension . Then a contractor lifted it for us with a Ford 8600? and a kidd ,maybe a double chop and my Father on the pit with the 10/60 and I vividly remember him rolling it off the side of the ramp and jumping clear , After that a roll over bar was fitted and the contractor bought a new MF 50 b to push up .He then went selfpropelled a Hesston 4000 ,a Hesston 7650 and then a Hesston fieldqueen ,the 50b was replaced with volvo 621? He had two drum Fahr mowers three drum Claas mowers Ithink a grasshopper ,Kuhn with a Kuhn flex, he changed to New Holland when Jamenson in Roscrea closed and is running a JD at present .In 1988 my brother bought a well minded NH 1895 we had an eight ft. JD conditioner mower and a 1494 case on the pit . We bought an other one for spares but it ran faster and had a wider pickup . We went to look at another outside Loughrae and there was a Mengele sp 300 there so much simpler than the NH the only draw back was it has variable speed pullies and clutch rather than the hydrostatic transmission .the NHs were soled for thier caterpillar engines .The fly wheel threw a paddle and imploded a few years back ,a s40 with a drawbar mounted engine was bought ,the engine is now on a neighbours jf and the 40 grafted onto the front of the 300 . I will say some times if we are under pressure we just mow ,thed and push up JCB320s and wagon is hired in .

Thank you for that interesting and informative post . Any idea is the David Brown Hurricane remains still in existance ?
 
It sat in the back of the work shop for decades but was lent to an old man to de haulm spuds in the naughties after he died i asked his son about it and he reckoned he never saw it .
 
Ah no I didn`t mean it that way ,I was disappointed not to get it back but there was two sons farming as well and they were spread over three farms ,and maybe he asked my father did we want it back but my father was long retired by then and sick and tired of tripping over it in the shed .
 
Thats a pity . Rare nowadays .
Amazing the selective memory some people have , or dont have , when it suits them.
There used to be one lying in the haggart at the great grand parents place but from what I last heard the morris minor that sat beside it has rotted away completley so I'm assuming the hurricane has disintegrated away too as it was far worse off the last I seen the 2 some 5 or 6 years ago. Think it was bought with the 30d or one of the implematics.
 
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