Members, a friend of mine has been tossing around the idea of using his NI 319 on a Super M to pick 30" rows. He picked off some 30" rows on the headlands, slow but steady with no issues other than the tire nudging the next row. Which got him to think about using a narrower tire, but taller tire something around 12.4x42 or 13.6x42. I think he has 15.5x38 now. His idea was to use the narrow tires so he could get them as narrow as possible on the axle and be able to pick. Would there be enough space to shimmy down the 30" rows? Has anyone used a mounted picker to ear pick 30" rows with some modifications to the tractor or picker? He wants to keep some ear corn for the cattle but would like to change over to 30" rows and he loves the mounted picker. So I put it out there to all of you...thoughts? ideas? direction? Thanks!
With the wide husking bed i thin could be a problem . Same with the wagons maybe knocking off ears. i got a wd allis and been thinking for some decades about making a picker for 30 inch rows. I would make a trailing husking bed from a uni picker . Just set it on my old ni trailing husking beds frame. It can be done. I just need the money and time to do it
Sorry, I haven't been on for a while due to harvest. We don't use mounted pickers any more, but we set the snoots on our NI 324/327 pull-type pickers about a foot to foot and a half off the ground to pick 30" rows. We only pick about 10 acres a year for cattle feed, and combine the rest, so it wouldn't be feasible for us to plant a little corn to wide rows just for picking convenience. With the snoots set higher, the corn eases around the center snoot and right into the picker. Between today's taller hybrids, stronger stalks, and fungicide, we don't have any real problems. We don't have trouble running down the next row with the picker, and the wagon doesn't trail on that edge. We lose more to operator error failing to shut off the wagon elevator in time on the corners (oops). Then again, we turn our cows onto the stalks in the fall and winter, so any fallen corn disappears quickly.
