Ok, looking for an alternative to the mounted picker idea. What would be the best picker for my Late-Styled John Deere "B"? Where I'm likely going to be using it is slightly hilly, not too steep but definitely sloping. I like the JD 101, but availability and practicality are kinda slim. Never been around a Wood Bros. picker, are they worth bothering with? New Idea seems a better choice, but hard to find a one-row around here. I've seen several 323 pickers online, could I pull it with my B or would I be better off using my John Deere 1020?
Any thoughts or suggestions will be appreciated!!!
I don't know a whole lot. But I think I could pull my New Idea No. 7 one row with just about anything. It's light and doesn't take much power to run. The size of the wagon I would be pulling behind it and picking in to seems like more of the limiting factor, especially on hills.
Thanks! My Grandpa's first picker was a one-row New Idea, pulled it with a 1946 "A". I can find several 2-rows around here, really rather have a one-row.
Thanks, I plan on using our old barge box wagons but probably will leave the extensions off for the "B". Just heard from a neighbor that watched a nice JD 101 sell for $150.00 recently..... Now he tells me!!!
My biggest concern is "dog tracking" on the sidehills, smaller wagons should help.
-- Edited by treekiller on Friday 30th of August 2013 09:31:59 PM
It has more to do with weight than anything else. If your late B is weighted down enough to pull the accumulated weight of the picker and a full wagon (wagon size has a big bearing here - in agreement with rustyfordgarage) - you're good with a 1 row NI picker.
Picked alot in my youth with a JD model 50 hooked to a 120 or 110 JD picker. The wagons held 8-9 barrels or around 3200 lbs. The tractor weighed around 4500 lbs. Never had a problem on some pretty steep places.
For your comparison, we pull a NI324/327 with a small box wagon behind an AC D17. We have a SW Iowa hillside farm, with the usual terraces and occasional gullies. AC D17s are somewhere between 50-60 hp, and ours probably weigh between 8000-9000 pounds with fluid in the rear tires. They pull the 2-row pickers with full wagons just fine in those conditions. I would love to have the extra oomph of a D19 or even a D21, but that's more about my tractor wish-list than necessity for the picker. I am not familiar with your tractor(s), but I hope the comparison helps.
Yeah, that should work. Probably avoiding picking in the mud or snow would help too, sometimes couldn't be avoided back in the "good old days"..... We still have one of the original flareboards that came with the New Idea picker, Dad cut up the other one to use as a windboard on our old grain truck.
-- Edited by treekiller on Sunday 1st of September 2013 10:10:00 AM
Haven't had any dog tracking problems on our side hills, but we built 3' bang boards on the backs of our wagons to contain the ears from shooting over the back. The little flapper on the elevator just doesn't fine tune very well, and the bang boards were easier than constantly readjusting each time we changed to a slightly different size of wagon.
