WINNIPEG – Dennis Hueppelsheuser said neighbors had a few questions for him during the last few harvests of his fields near Lacombe, Alta.
He said they asked, “What’s a combine doing out in the middle of a field in all this tall-standing grain? What are my trucks doing driving around in the field?”
Hueppelsheuser is one of a few, but growing number of farmers who have invested in stripper headers for their combines. The stripper header has a rotating drum with fingers that literally strips grain from a plant and leaves the stalk standing in the field.
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Most farmers who have used the header swear by it. Shelbourne Reynolds has had their version in fields for two years, while Massey Ferguson is starting to mass produce its model this summer. Western Combine in Portage la Prairie, Man., plans to roll out 130 headers.
Bill Simpson, quality control manager at the Portage plant, said all the headers are spoken for by dealers in Canada, the U.S. and South America. They can be used on most cereal grains and some people are starting to use them on canola.
But don’t expect to see them in every dealer’s lot. Because they’re new, they’re expensive. And because of their cost, many farmers are skeptical.
Glenn Christians of Massey Ferguson in Atlanta, Ga. said the suggested list price in Canada is $37,970 for a 20-foot (six metre) header and $40,460 for a 22.5-foot (6.75 metre) header. While list prices for Shelbourne Reynolds models weren’t available, farmers say they sell for about the same price.
Kevin Blight said he hasn’t bought one because of the high price. Last year, he tried a stripper header from each company on his fields at Oakville, Man., and was impressed with results on his wheat and flax.
“It’s going to be hard to go back to a regular header,” he said, but added he thinks they’re overpriced right now.
“As they get more of them out there and more people have the opportunity to try them, I think you’ll start to see them in the area,” Blight predicted. “When the companies are able to produce more, the price will come down a bit.”
Hueppelsheuser said the header is two to three times the cost of a regular head: a 24-foot (7.2 metre) cutting head is about $16,000 while a flex-head can run around $20,000.
But by buying a stripper header, he said he eliminated a combine, swather, truck and three people. He estimated a combine is worth more than $200,000 and a swather more than $40,000. He added that an operator running a combine for about 400 hours costs more than $7,000.
“It really made my life a lot easier,” he said. “It allowed me to utilize my investment in my combine a lot better by having only one combine instead of two.”
