Every now and then I find something that gets me excited about farming. Perhaps a bit too excited at times. My current romance is with corn/sunflower pans.
For those of you not in the know, these pans work a lot like corn heads in that they channel the stalk into the combine, keeping it upright so that the ear is cut off and sent into the machine's threshing apparatus. In the case of the pan, the stalk is cut by the sickle and stalk and all is sent into the machine. Corn heads, on the other hand, channel the stalk into roller knives, that grip the stalk and pull it through stripper plates that then snap the ear off the stalk, sending just the ear into the threshing apparatus. This method produces much less trash material for the combine to sort out and has long been thought superior. Sunflowers, another tall stalk, crop are dealt with similarly.
In this age of rampant corn production and good prices for the crop, many growers are wanting to get in on the corn growing bandwagon but are not interested in the cost of a corn head for their machines. Good used heads can run between $100,000 to $180,000. This is just for a corn head. Not the combine. Obviously if you are running multiple machines, this is a serious capital investment. Pans, whether you build them yourself or buy them, cost considerably less at $250 per pan or about $8000 to outfit a 16 row machine. Flexxfinger, a manufacture of crop lifters and pans did field tests that showed a 15% increase in harvested corn over corn heads due to less ear loss from ears tumbling out of the head. The pans retain the paddle wheel which catches errant ears and propels them into the machine. Row attenuation apparently, is meaningless as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7RIWGlxYaE
I have seen these pans used on All Crop Combines for use in sunflowers. I am told results were satisfactory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7siG3waypMU Small acreage farmers have to be creative in order to survive.
The drawbacks...
(1) Corn stalks, especially Bt tend to be hard on the sickle. This probably means you will spend time sharpening or replacing sickle parts.
(2) An Aussie farmer explained to me that though these pans work well, you need to run the cylinder about twice as fast as recommended to deal with the extra trash. In the case of All Crop combines, on which corn is hard on the rubber on rubber concave and cylinder bars this will be even a bit more rough. I am considering replacing the rubber with Teflon bar stock on my combine. We will see if it works.
I do not raise very much corn, so I am very reluctant to look into corn head or yet another harvesting machine in my already crowded barn. Also, the varieties I raise are heirlooms, the most modern of which is Reid's Yellow Dent.
Pans are worth considering. For now, I am sold on them.
