Switch to New Holland combine highlights harvest

"I was elated with the CR combine"

The eastern edge of the Flint Hills, south of Emporia, Kansas, is really ranch country. There's only 60,000 tillable acres in the whole county. Cropping conditions can be frustrating due to rocks, hills and unpredictable rainfall. This is where Larry Short, a farmer-rancher from Hamilton, Kansas, grows corn and beans.

Rainfall is erratic here. If he gets the rain he wants, Larry can raise 60 bushels of beans and 160 bushels of corn per acre. On the yield monitor, he's seen yields peak at more than 230 bushels of corn.

Larry and his wife, Kay, have done well with a ten-year no-till approach for corn and soybeans. They were the first to try no-till in the area.

"We farm a little upland, but mostly creek bottoms," Larry says. "We farm for about 20 miles, up and down the creeks, near Slate Creek, Willow Creek, West Creek and the Verdigris River. Our creek bottom soils are probably three to six feet deep. There's really good soil in there.

"I have a few fields that are 120 acres, and I've got a few that are three acres. It's very hard to get my equipment in and out of some of the little fields and creeks I farm," Larry says. "It's not uncommon to have eight- or ten-acre fields along those creeks."

"(The CR) is the most fantastic combine I ever ran in my life."
—Larry Short

2003 was tough

Larry reports that his 2003 crop "was not very good at all. We experienced a drought. Our soybeans only averaged about 15 bushels an acre and corn probably averaged 58 bushels. In fact, this has been the toughest four or five years I've been through in farming," Larry says. His long-term averages have been about 30 bushels for soybeans and 110 bushels for corn.

A change to New Holland equipment may have been the best thing about the 2003 crop year, according to Larry.

After two decades of running green combines, Larry decided to visit the New Holland dealer when it was time to replace his combine in 2003.

He says, "I'd always been a John Deere man, and hadn't really considered New Holland. I was a little upset with a bit of a problem we were having on our John Deere combines."

Larry had purchased 8-row planters from a New Holland dealer. "He's always been honest, so I went and gave New Holland a look. I went to the factory and looked at the combines, and I was impressed. It was a hard step for me to do ‚ buying a New Holland combine ‚ but I did it and I was not disappointed. It's the most fantastic combine I ever ran in my life."

Larry had been using a John Deere 9610. Using a 30-foot header in soybeans, he discovered he could run the New Holland CR960 "twice as fast" through 50-bushel beans. In corn, he was cutting at 7 to 8 mph with the CR960. By comparison, the 9610 at 5.5 mph would "start pulling the corn out by the roots!"

Threshing capacity of the New Holland machine is greater than what he'd had. Larry points to a basic design difference. Instead of augering grain back to the pre-cleaner, the CR960 drops it onto a shaker pan "with little stair steps" about four or five feet in front of the pre-cleaner. "By the time that grain and chaff gets to the pre-cleaner, it's already partially separated."

Larry also was used to seeing ears fly off the corn head. Not anymore. The corn head is flatter on the CR and that makes a noticable difference in corn that's brittle or broken or laying down.

He says, "The corn fed a lot better with the New Holland. The ears don't fly off of it nearly as much. The capacity was much better, too. It didn't carry any grain over. If you do plug it, the reverser works well.

It was a good change that surprised him the day a technician arrived to set up the new combine.

He recalls, "I pushed it hard through some pretty decent corn, and it wasn't carrying anything over when the guy set the combine up. We stopped to eat dinner. Then I went out into the field and I hollered to that guy, 'We've got to adjust this combine or something. If we don't change this, all my birds are going to starve to death!' "

Larry says, "It really had very little grain loss. I lost very few ears of corn. That impressed me."

On other features, he says the New Holland cab is a little larger and roomier than the John Deere. Visibility and controls are fine. The lighting package, for harvesting at night, is "excellent."

The new rotary combine, equipped with New Holland's 30-inch corn head, also rewarded Larry's efforts in 2003 with narrow-row corn. He's been using a split-row planter, set on 15 inches for soybeans and normally 30 inches for corn. For a trial, he planted some corn on 15-inch rows.

"I thought I'd have to buy a special corn head for that, but I didn't have any problem with the 30-inch corn head. The 15-inch rows fed right into that 30-inch corn head really well, and I got a good yield response. So, I planted about half my corn in 15-inch rows this year."

Larry says, "I was just elated with the New Holland combine. It runs so smooth. It's a well-built machine. You can relax. In the John Deere, I was always on pins and needles that I was going to slug it. You don't worry about that with this combine. The New Holland's a little bigger so it's a little harder to get around in small fields, but it's got a better engine and is a better combine."

Larry admits he kept his old Deere 9610 combine as a precaution. His farm is growing in size, and he thought he might need two combines. But when the 2003 harvest was done, he changed his mind.

"The New Holland combine did such a good job, it got over the ground quicker, so I never used my Deere combine and I traded it for a 125-hp New Holland TM155A tractor and I bought a 90-hp New Holland TS110 tractor for the 8-row interplanter. The reason I went with the New Holland tractors is because I liked their combine so much."


Home | Products | Parts & Service | Dealers | Used Equipment

New Holland E-Store | 2007 Shows | News Releases | Publications | Contact Us | CNH Capital