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South Western Ontario | Could you expand on the dollars comment?
When we made the decision to go to the Holmer we figured over 3 yrs ,despite the higher initial cost of the machine, that we would be money ahead due to the reduction in labour and tractor hours. Everyone's situation is different, but we were running an Artsway 692 on 6 30's and we needed a defoliator and tractor, 2 side dumps and a chain cart to keep the harvester moving in normal yielding beets. That being said, with field piling we most likely could have reduced the cart fleet to two end dumps, but the chain cart allows you to maximize real estate when piling on small frontage fields.
With the Holmer(or Ropa) and field piling(with Maus or Terra Fellis ) we send 2 men, a tractor and the chain cart to the field and in most situations can cover an average of 3 acres an hr with a ten foot machine, including headland and breakouts. Breakouts are quite easy, depending on yield and field length. In good digging conditions breakage at the lifters is minimal, breakage in the cleaning area is about the same as the Artsway in my opinion. In harder digging conditions we do see beets missing tips, maybe somewhat more than the artsway, but I think the Maus, Terra Fellis or piler would break those tips off in the end. We feel we make up yield by not knocking many beets out during the defoliating process.
The elevator location did require reworking our carts, but unloading on the go with the machine crabbed is not a challenge, view from the cab is decent and the camera on the elevator allows operator to see the rear of the elevator.
Compaction wise, the jury is out. We suspect we get more even compaction at a shallower depth. When running trucks in the field, compaction still an issue(we do have to move some fields to alternate locations for road accesssability) and the cart and tractor are still over part of the field.
The biggest gain we saw in the switch was the fewer man hours and less iron in the field to accomplish the end result of beets topped, lifted and piled. | |
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Beets done a few pics
