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SW MN | We mounted a 3pt hitch spinner spreader on our cornhead and ran it in the fall of 2017. The idea was to throw cereal rye out in front of the head so the leaves and chaff would cover it up.
I made it to be an easy bolt-on attachment that mounted to the head only. Ran it with a hydraulic motor off the reel drive circuit. I put an electric actuator on the gate lever with programmable setpoints (cheap from Surplus Center) so it's one button to shut it off and one button to return to spreading at the same setting. I was able to adjust the spread width with the reel speed control, and used the 3rd link to tip it up a little so most of the rye was thrown out above the corn, rather than lower where it would get deflected by the stalks.
Overall it functioned great, was cheap, and did a good job spreading. But, the next year we got a 750 no-till drill and tried planting the same rye right after corn harvest rather than spinning it on while combining. We had much better results with the drill, actually getting seed to soil contact. Nearly a perfect stand despite being seeded at the end of October. We've also had really good success interseeding a cover crop mix including cereal rye into the corn at V5 with a modified drill, which eliminates the need to seed anything post harvest on corn ground. The cover crops hang on well enough through the summer to take off and get really good fall growth after the corn matures, and then the rye comes back very nicely for a spring cover crop. Similarly, we've found that actually planting seed vs. dropping it on top makes a huge difference in performance for interseeding. So we don't really plan to use the corn head spreader anymore at this time, though I think it would work in the right conditions. Just some things to think about. We've never head great luck dropping cover crop seed on top of the ground with a spinner anytime we've tried it, at least not nearly the success rate we have with the drills.
Edited by rty 7/9/2019 21:20
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IMG_9831 (full).JPG (232KB - 65 downloads)
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Combine Cover Crop Seeder
