Yep

The auger cart or the gravity wagons?? Yep gravity wagons can sometimes end up on their sides if you're unlucky or not on your A-game... Later! OL J R :)

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FYI Travis' channel is the "Rest of the story"

They both "do their own thing" and want to remain kind of distinct from each other... not a secret that each has their own channel doing their own thing, but they don't cross-promote each other too much because they don't want to "cross-pollinate" their channels too much (meaning they don't want to mirror each other's channels or what they're trying to do with them... Ryan's is more about the money shots, lots of great drone and "action shots" in the field, machinery reviews of the stuff he's getting to demo, etc. Travis is more about the backstory, about the plans and reasoning for certain things, and what HE is trying to accomplish compared and contrasted with what his Dad and Ryan are doing, or where they're hoping to take the operation into the future... More talk and less fancy camera work and editing...) Later! OL J R :)

Probly not wouldn't be of much use with the down corn... Shame they couldn't demo a Drago corn head; they're supposed to be MADE for down corn... :) Plus, the chopping feature sucks up a lot more horsepower and is harder on the combine, and that's the LAST thing you want when you're working in down corn that you're feeding a lot more stalks and trash through the combine for it to have to process and handle, which takes more power for that anyway... In addition, the chopping head stubble kinda created some headaches for them to deal with when working the residue into the soil when they were doing their tillage and getting their ground ready to plant, from videos they made earlier... Chopping heads have their place, but they're definitely not for everybody and all situations... OL J R :)

Possibly... or probably haul it to the elevator and just get it off the farm-- get rid of it you don't have to worry about it going to pot in the bin and losing you MORE money!!! Later! OL J R :)

The first music

We have some small fields as well in Kentucky, and I will take first stab and recommend a John Deere 2000-2002 9650 STS 4WD with a 6 or 8 row head. Anything bigger and you may have issues getting the header cart into the field and hooking up. A 9650 is $32-36k or so with no head, add 2-8 grand for a head, and a remember to add a grain cart (800 bushels max for small fields). Also get a good chainsaw so you can cut all the limbs that will hit the combine in the narrow entrances and lanes. John Deere is what we use because our dealer stands behind us, but my real advice is find a local dealer you feel good about and go with something from them. Trust me, the color of the combine is much less important than a well stocked dealer with good parts and service departments. Oh yeah, lower separator hours is better than low engine hours🤨

The "commodity" trailers have higher, taller sides and lower hopper bottoms sticking down below the trailer... This is because a commodity hopper trailer usually hauls all sorts of bulk materials besides grain, some of them like soybean meal, for instance, is quite "fluffy" and much lower density (takes up a lot more space for a similar weight) than denser, heavier stuff like grain (which weighs a lot more for a given amount of space, thus can use a smaller trailer to haul the maximum legal load, usually with shorter side walls and the hopper bottoms are higher up off the ground, giving them more ground clearance, particularly for getting into and out of fields, traversing hillsides or ditches or culverts or other common "field obstacles" that a lower-slung trailer could get hung up on or damaged by... "commodity" hoppers are more numerous and usually cheaper (as they're usually well worn by the time farmers buy them) but still serviceable and sufficient for a farmer to haul his own grain-- BUT with the taller sides and deeper hoppers capable of holding more volume, they're QUITE easy to overload, particularly with dry corn, because there's all that extra space that's needed when hauling low-density "fluffy" stuff like soybean meal, in order to get a full weight-limit load on the trailer... SO when using a commodity hopper bottom to haul grain "off the farm" they often look like they're "partially empty" and may STILL be right at the weight limit or even overloaded, because of the additional space. And of course the low-slung hoppers are a lot closer to the ground and could get damaged a lot easier working in 'off-road' conditions in the fields or turn rows or access roads into the fields than the grain hoppers with better ground clearance. Later! OL J R :)

Yeah you really need a BALANCED system... when one thing becomes the choke point, that's the one that needs to be replaced the most. IF you don't have enough transport and can't get the crop away from the field and into the bin or down to the elevator fast enough, and the combine you have is already sitting with a full cart waiting on a truck, then getting a bigger combine is just going to sit MORE because it's gonna get that crop harvested that much faster, while the trucking or wagon situation isn't improving. SO basically you're paying big money for a new bigger machine to SIT MORE. Getting a bigger cart in that situation would help some, because it gives you more storage capacity "in the field" between what the combine can hold and a bigger cart can hold, so it gives you more time in the field and therefore taking longer for the truck to get back doesn't leave you sitting with a full combine and cart as soon... Ideally, the truck gets back and loads out just as the combine and cart are approaching completely full, and the truck turns and burns and gets that crop out of there (or the wagons hauling it to the bin) and then get back to the field right about the time everything is *almost* full again... Of course it's a highly variable situation-- sometimes elevator lines are long or slow or it takes longer to get the crop hauled up to the bins with the tractor and unloaded or whatever... But just getting a bigger combine/head just to have it fill the cart and its own grain tank in half the time and sitting twice as long waiting on a truck, that's just stupid IMHO... Unless you want to either get a second semi, or hire another truck to custom haul the crop in alongside the semi you have... but then that costs money too... SO basically it comes down to a compromise between delta-T (time) and delta-$$$ (money). It has to be a wise decision and a good balanced compromise for maximum efficiency for the cost investment... Later! OL J R :)

All depends on hours and condition... some are rode hard and put up wet, and some just have a BUNCH of hours on them... just because its "newer" doesn't necessarily mean it's in good shape or not been over SO many acres that it's pretty well worn out! Later! OL J R :)

Hauling from the field to the bin its easier to unload with the gravity wagons than the semi... He mentioned in the video they were gonna try to use the semi to haul to the bin, but two problems arose-- 1) his "commodity hopper" trailer on his semi is lower to the ground and would hit the ground with the hoppers in some areas that are too steep or whatever, and 2) they couldn't get the unload auger up under the trailer hopper bottoms to unload into the their existing auger setup. They don't have a pit or drive-over surface unloader "pit", and they haven't or won't (or can't) rework the field access roads to enable a semi to get in, turn around, get loaded, and get back out without having issues. They have the gravity wagons, so they use them in those situations where it's appropriate and use the semi for hauling directly to the elevator, which allows crop to STILL be harvested and put in the bin while he's making a run to the elevator in the semi, which increases their harvesting speed and efficiency... IF they didn't already have the gravity wagons, or IF they didn't have another guy to run them (Travis) while his Dad combined, then it would be a different story... Later! OL J R :)

Because there’s not much point in a newer combine if you can still only run at 4 mph

You'd have to combine at 6-7 mph to keep a combine that size running at full capacity with a 6 row head... and that's not a good way to run. For one thing most heads aren't designed to run that fast and do a good job harvesting-- the faster you run, the more ears you get tossed out or bounced out, and running a loaded machine across rough fields at that speed is h3ll on the machine-- bouncing around and stuff. Plus the newer bigger combines are WAY bigger and heavier, and a 6 row head is only about 15 feet wide... my BIL runs a 9600 combine (one size up from their 9500) with straddle duals on it and from the outer edge of each outer dual was actually about 16 feet-- the header was actually narrower than the dual tires on the combine with a 6 row head! This was a TOTAL PITA when we had to combine down corn one year, as you had to be EXTREMELY careful or you'd be rolling flat the next row over from the end of the head if you drove even an inch or two out of position... He switched to an 8 row head and sold his 12 row planter and started using his son-in-law's 16 row planter for corn and it works MUCH better... he typically had to run 4.5-5.5 mph to keep a 9600 full with a six row head anyway in 200 bushel corn... with the 8 row head, he can run at about 3.5-4.5 mph most of the time and keep the machine working at full capacity. OF course since they have a 12 row planter, switching to an 8 row head would put them harvesting split rows... every other round would be 8 rows that were planted together by one end of the planter or the other, but then the next pass would be the outer four rows from two consecutive separate planter passes, and if the planter was off it's spacing from the last pass (wide middle or narrow middle) then ALL FOUR of those rows will be being leaned one way or the other while they combine that every-other-pass... Usually you want to stay on mated rows, so to do that the planter has to be a multiple of the number of rows in your cornhead... so a 16 row planter is mated to an 8 row header, which is 2 passes of the 8 row head to get 16 rows, all evenly divisible whole numbers... you could also harvest corn planted by a 24 row planter with an 8 row head and stay on mated rows... (3 passes of 8 rows each= 24 rows or a single planter pass). 12 row planter divided by 8 row corn head= 1.5 header passes per planter pass, so not mated rows. They'd have to trade their 12 row planter for a 16 row planter to stay on mated rows, which adds cost to the whole deal. You CAN harvest non-mated rows, but it's harder on the operator and you usually get more losses to some extent, though with autosteer on the planting tractor it should be minimal... so not a deal breaker... and one COULD continue planting and harvesting non-mated rows for a few years and then go to a bigger planter. Now, a 12 row head following a 12 row planter is always on mated rows, so not a problem... BUT that's a BIG step up and a lot of extra cost... harder to justify. BUT if they're looking to expand, certainly a consideration... then later switch to a 24 row planter and get done faster... Later! OL J R :)

Course, when you're running a 12 row combine and head, then they'd need a H3LL of a lot more trucks to stay ahead of a combine that size... That would mean in their situation, probably Ryan running his semi and STILL having to hire ANOTHER semi to do half their hauling for them to stay ahead of the combine, and probably need a bigger cart to boot, which adds more cost. Hiring all that trucking gets expensive too, and loses half the cost advantage of having your own semi and using it to haul the grain, or at least part of it during harvest... BUT without doing that, it's kinda pointless having a combine twice as big and fast as the old one, that gets the same amount harvested in half the time, but ends up sitting TWICE AS LONG because the truck(s) can't haul the grain out of the field fast enough, and it fills itself up and the cart up in half the time... It's not *quite* that cut and dried, but the principle is the same... SOMETHING will ALWAYS be the "bottleneck" in the operation... Some guys have 2 semis and a little combine and the trucks end up sitting for an hour on the turning row waiting to get filled up and hit the road. Some guys have a big combine and a semi and fill the truck quicky, he hits the road but sits in line at the elevator or getting unloaded back at the farm takes time, and the big combine RAPIDLY fills the cart and its own grain tank full in short order, and the COMBINE ends up sitting for an hour waiting for the truck(s) to get back... A bigger cart CAN help to a degree with that, but it's not a full cure... Big mother bins help for sure, but that costs a lot of money and you have to be able to place them to load out trucks quickly and efficiently, and so that takes some planning and work. The nephew's family farm runs 3 big S670 combines, 3 1100 bushel Kinze carts on tracks, and FOURTEEN SEMI's and STILL can't keep up with the combines at all times, and they end up with everything full and parked in the field waiting for a truck to get back so they can unload and get back to the field... It's all got to work TOGETHER in a BALANCED SYSTEM so that no one part is too much of a "bottleneck" and so everything stays running in the field as much as possible with no more sitting waiting for something else than is possible... Later! OL J R : )

This isn't sweet corn (which is in the cans or frozen) this is regular old "yellow dent" "#2 field corn". They keep some for their cattle, and the rest gets sold to elevators, with most apparently going to Gavilon grain in Dubuque, Iowa. From there it ends up loaded onto river barges on the Mississippi River and shipped out from there to who knows where. Most of the grain going on river barges usually ends up going into the export market, more or less.... goes down the river to bigger ports and is loaded on ships going abroad. There's plenty of "landlocked" farm areas that ship by truck or railroad cars to either local (or not so local) ethanol plants, or to livestock feed plants, or both. Corn that is ground and then fermented to make ethanol, leaves 44 pounds of wet distiller's grain out of every 56 pound bushel after producing the ethanol, and that wet distiller's grain is either sold locally for immediate use as livestock feed, or dried to make "dry distiller's grain" that is used to make livestock feed. Some corn also ends up going into high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) production where its ground and mixed with chemicals and stuff to make HFCS for use in soft drinks and other foods, again with the byproducts going into livestock feed. Some corn is crushed for corn oil, and the crushed grain waste coming out of that process is "cattle cake" used for livestock feed. Basically there's no way with much certainty to say WHERE it will end up once it reaches a large elevator and gets dumped into the bin... some of those bins hold 500,000 bushels or more; that's about 500 semi truck loads right there, so it's coming off a LOT of farms and all mixed together in the bin... by the time it's dumped into one of those big bins, an entire semi-load of corn might only be an inch or two thick layer added to the bin LOL:) Then there's also the seed corn side of the business, and popcorn, and specialty corn like white corn or blue corn for human food (most human food products like hominy, grits, corn chips, etc. are food grade white corn). Popcorn is a different type of corn that is delivered directly to elevators specifically taking popcorn. My nephew's family farm grows some popcorn in Indiana, along with regular field corn. My other nephew works for Pioneer Hybrid Seed Company and is a field rep for the company for farmers contracted to grow seed corn, which is a whole different type of farming than regular old field corn for regular use... Farmers plant different parent varieties provided by the company in male rows and other variety in the female rows, to produce a hybrid cross of the two. The female rows are detasseled to prevent them from self-pollinating, and the male rows produce the tassels and pollen to fertilize the silks on the ears in the female rows. Once the female rows (usually four side-by-side, with the fifth row being a male row) have pollinated and the silks start turning, the male rows are then simply chopped down, since their ears are self-pollinated and the grain produced by them would not be a true hybrid, so those rows are chopped down and destroyed, leaving only the female rows to produce seed. Then you've also got some specialty corns like waxy corn or high oil corn or stuff like that for specific markets for specific industrial uses, which are kinda for "niche farmers" close to the end user (usually) and contracted by the specific buyer to produce that specific corn for that particular end use... Later! OL J R :)

BTW all the "fresh corn" you eat like frozen corn, canned corn, and of course corn-on-the-cob, is all SWEET CORN, and that's produced in a totally different way. It's planted much the same but the varieties are TOTALLY different; it's much shorter than field corn, and the ear characteristics are specifically bred to produce high sugar and low starch content for good table corn. It's also harvested GREEN versus as dry field corn by pickers that can pull the ears off the green stalks without destroying them (somewhat different from a regular corn head made for harvesting "dry" corn on a combine) and this ear corn is delivered to a canning plant for shucking, washing, the kernels are cut off the cob with a rotary knife, and then blanched with scalding water and either then put into cans and cooked to sterilize the cans, OR flash-frozen to make frozen food section boxes or bags of corn or included in mixed vegetables. A very small portion of sweet corn actually gets sold to stores for "fresh" corn since the shelf life is NOT good, ie it goes bad quickly. Most of it goes straight to the processor. Later! OL J R :)

They need the traction at the British Farm for the grain cart. The Duramax has the power yes, but Travis has had the gravity wagon push the 7600 down the driveway before even with front-wheel assist and the dif lock on before (more than once). So the weight of the 7600 and the bigger tires are what make it more preferred than the Duramax or even the 4640

Yeah, true! I bet yall have some pretty big, pretty flat, straight, rectangular fields to run in as well, which is what a wider header is really suited to. Trying to run a big, WIDE head around some those curved contours and steep hills of theirs, would be a nightmare IMHO... the tighter the curve of the rows, and the wider the header, the more the end rows get pushed over as the head goes around a curve... and the more one end of the head is running "down in the dirt' and the other end is 3 feet up off the ground on rolling hills, as well. "Contour master" can only do SO much... I think they'd do well to consider factors like that before jumping into going to a 12 row head and big combine... it can really lead to some unforeseen pains in the butt and a lot of expense that turns out to be ill-suited to the conditions they're working in... by all means, in 200 acre fields that are mostly rectangular and half-mile or more long rows that are arrow straight and mostly level, heck run a 24 row header... but for rolling, hilly, curved rows planted on contours and narrow strips?? WHY BOTHER!!! Later! OL J R :)