RED DEER – With a range of horsepower starting at 350 and peaking at nearly 700, the engines on John Deere’s forage harvesters are attracting attention.
However, it’s the little things that make the recent line of forage machines stand out.
For example, the self-propelled harvesters can take advantage of an optional Harvest Lab that mounts into the wiring harness and onto the outside of the forage spout.
A near infrared system provides real time moisture readings 10 times a second as harvested material passes a super hard glass sight window on its way to the truck or wagon. An averaged reading is compiled and provided to the operator every five seconds.
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Rolland Lavallee of Deere said the system allows the producer to select the optimal length of silage cut as conditions change.
“Getting the (silage) pack right starts with controlling the length of the cut material,” he said.
“The Harvest Lab lets you manage that length as the conditions get drier or wetter.”
Traditionally, the need for this fine control over silage quality was relegated to the best dairy feed, but Lavallee said beef feedlots are also finding that consistent, high-end feed benefits their operations.
Building on the Harvest Lab is Deere’s Auto LOC (length of cut) system, which takes the data feed from the Harvest Lab and controls the length of cut automatically as conditions change.
Another option, Harvest Mon, can track tonnage and yield while chopping, which eliminates the need to weigh each truckload.
For a given crop, Harvest Mon measures the throat opening at the feed rollers and how fast the rollers are turning to establish the volume of material that is passing through the chopper. By knowing the moisture from the Harvest Lab, it can establish the tonnage to within an error factor of a few percentage points.
“There is bound to be some variability, but that is the nature of the material going in,” Lavallee said.
A Greenstar Two display provides the operator with the touch screen computer control of the Starfire GPS unit for auto steering and for recording field yield and variability.
When the forage harvester isn’t busy in the field, the Harvest Lab unit can be put to work in the feed shed measuring silage moisture.
Using an adapter, the unit accepts silage samples, plugs into a computer and provides sample results in five minutes that can be used to prepare feed rations.
