How many bushel are those wire cribs/?They look like 2000 bushel ones. I've been offered a 1600 bushel one but havnt taken it down yet.Not sure if its a one man job and the shape i'm in nowadays might be a daunting task.Thanks in advance. Picker looks great. I had a 325 with a 8 roll husking bed. That 12 roll looks like it would do a great job.Looks like some pretty clean corn in the wagon and going into the crib.The big IH looks good with the duals on it too.I think thats why i dont care for the super singles on some semis now. lol
They appear to be 15 foot (to the eaves) Behlen cribs. The roof would add about 10 foot to the height.
The basic 10 foot crib held about 1000 bushels, but would shell out at about 1100. The 15 foot, (one 10 foot, and a 5 foot) wire was about a 1500 bushel crib, and would shell out at about 1650 bushels. The 20 foot cribs were made of 2 10 foot high sections, and were 2000 bushel cribs, which would shell out about 2200 or so bushels.
The selling point of the Behlen wire crib, along with being made in Nebraska, was the steep roof, which was at the angle of repose for ear corn, and if you filled them to the lid, they would not settle below the eaves and let rain or snow in.
They had a vertical round wire ventilator tube, that would set onto the U shaped wire tunnel that let air circulate, and the U shaped tunnel provided a way to run the drag off the sheller thru the crib.
My Dad and his brothers had 20 20 foot Behlens, AND with the wood cribs, for a total of about 75K bushels of ear corn storage.
I am very impressed with the very clean, lack of shucks, that your picker is doing.
-- Edited by Art From De Leon on Friday 13th of November 2009 02:07:51 PM
It's 28' to the top of that roof, 33' on the one next to it. Can get 13 loads of corn in that one we filled, whatever that comes out to in bushels. Can get 23 loads in the larger one next to it. We made the vent for this one, and the larger one we took a corn bin dryer vent and used that. You can see the pit, we slide the drag elevator in there and slowly take out boards that cover the pit, as it goes down. It also serves as a tunnel for air to get to the vents.
We had 2 of the 1500 bushel ones years ago and you're right, usually we would shell 1600-1650 bushels out of them. One of ours was the 10 foot panels with the 5 foot ones added on top of it. The other one was 15 foot panels straight through (no splice).
WOW ! I had an old montgomery wards catalog that had the sizes in ther for the behlen and a behlen brochure but those looked taller than any i had ever seen. @0 cribs. i'd like to seen a picture of that.I heard of a guy in ohio who had a half dozen and he ground the corn for cattle. made a hydraulically powered auger for a sweep to get the corn out of the crib. He had like a silage wagon floor to dump the corn on to take it to the eleavator.
IIRC, there were 2 different diameters of the Behlen wire cribs, I am thinking one was 14 feet, and the larger was 18 feet. Of course, this would throw off the volumes, the ones I quoted were the larger cribs.
I thought I had saved the picture I had posted on RPM several months ago, but I will take a picture of the picture that I have showing 13 of the 20 on one place.
-- Edited by Art From De Leon on Saturday 14th of November 2009 10:21:32 PM
I dug thru my files and I had kept an article from the June-July 1978 Successful Farming about a guy in Michigan that had 25 of these cribs. It sounds like he put these all up at the same time. There was a picture of some of them in the article - you can see 15 of them in a row. It doesn't say in the article, but I sure hope he had a Uni for picking all that ear corn!
I have one of the JD Day videos sold by the Two Cylinder magazine, and there is a segment on the 226 picker showing a man in Minnesota, saying that he had picked 100K bushels that year.
I have a copy of a National Geographic magazine from the early/mid 70's containing an article they did on Nebraska, and it contains a full page picture of Cousin Bob on one of the 3020's with their 237 "corn gobbler" (as NG called it).
OK, I'm impressed. I built a 4'x8'x6' "crib" out of 2x4's, plywood, and 2"x4" welded wire. The corn I picked I put in the "crib" with my front end loader bucket.
How do you figure how many bushels would fit in this 4'x8'x6' "crib". I know with it half full I couldn't hardly pick it up with the front end loader.
Also, I would like to build one of these round cribs. Maybe 10' in diamater by 10' or 12' tall. How many bushels would that hold and where can I get plans to build one???
I want to plant 10-20 acres next year to sell (on the ear) to deer hunters and I need somewhere to store it.
I planted 3 acres this year, but pulled most of it by hand to sell at the Farmers Market for Rossen ears. I pulled 200 (62 ear) bushels and got $15.00 a bushel. What was left on the patch I ran the 323 over and am feeding it to my two feeder pigs and 15 Boer goats. Grinding it with a Troybilt chipper shredder .
Oh yeah, My corn was planted in 60" rows. We only have a one row covington planter. I'm currently searching for a two row to plant with next year, so I can go to 30" rows.
Chris
-- Edited by firefighter9208 on Wednesday 18th of November 2009 02:47:05 PM
Ive been seeing lots of wire corn cribs advertised for $250.oo apiece. ive also remember seeing an article on different row spacings. For someone that doesnt need a lot of corn and would benefit from growing grazing plants or other produce or crops that the extreme wide row concept worked quite qell for them.
Grinding ear corn with a chipper/shredder is a great idea. It sure made me grin as I pictured the operation. As much skin as I've left on our old Farmhand grinder/mixer doing repairs, I might be better off switching to your method.
My daughter and I ground a 2 wheeled wheelbarrow full for the pigs on Saturday. Took about 15 minutes. That's enough to feed the two pigs for about a week. I'm mixing it with 12% commodity blend (cattle feed) and hog finisher.
The goats don't like it with the cob and corn mixed, but the pigs will eat anything. I'm shelling the ear corn for the goats with a hand sheller.
How do you feed it in to the chipper shredder and how many horses is it I love that idea for feeding holstein steers does it make it really fine or corse
How do you feed it in to the chipper shredder and how many horses is it I love that idea for feeding holstein steers does it make it really fine or corse
It's a Troybilt (about 8 horsepower) that belongs to my MIL. I didn't want to buy one and it not work. I'm good friends with a Vet and he said that's the way they ground corn for animals when he was a kid.
This chipper has the bag on the back for collecting leaves. I just crank the chipper and run it just above an idle. Feed the corn in a few ears at a time. I would throw them into the hopper where you would put limbs. I would try to make sure that I threw them in lengthwise and one at a time, but could go about as fast as I could feed the chipper. My daughter was helping me and would sometimes throw in too many. I had a 4' piece of 2" schedule 40 PVC that I used to "poke" the ears down if they got jammed.
I'll try to take pics of the corn tomorrow and post them from home. It's not too fine. I had to mix it up after chipping, because all the corn settled to the bottom and the cobs were on the top.
What was funny is I got the bright idea that I could leave the bag off and chip into a bushel hamper. I set the hamper under the outlet and cranked the chipper. My daughter said, "that's not going to work". She's six. I threw in an ear of corn and when all was said and down I had six or eight pieces of chipped corn in the hamper and the rest was all over the yard. Of course she said, "told you it wasn't going to work".
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