Image credit: DragoTec.com.
To hear Ken’s Agribusiness Report on Dragotec combine heads from the Farm Progress Show, click here.
As farmers prepare to harvest over 13 billion bushels of corn this fall, high-tech combine head manufacturers showed their wares at this year’s Farm Progress Show in Champagne, Illinois.
Drago is an Italian-made corn head built to minimize loss, even in variable stalk conditions. Dustin Balig led Ken through the engineering at the show.
It’s actually sophisticated, but simple. It’s got spring-loaded automatic deck plates, that automatically adjust as you go through the field. Each row thinks for itself. The stalks come in, and that spreads the deck plates to the exact width, then the springs close down on the smaller stalks, to keep the small ears from slipping through, and also to keep a lot of kernel loss from [ears] slipping through.
We don’t eliminate it, but we drastically, drastically reduce it. We easily save guys 3 to 5 bushels an acre, very easily.
Balig says that Drago’s technology is perhaps more important for producers with uneven corn.
That’s what Drago is designed for: it’s for variability, handling variability.
We do everything we can to maintain uniformity, but Mother Nature keeps proving us wrong, and putting obstacles out there. That’s where Drago – you don’t have to think about it. No electronics, no hydraulics. Each row thinks for itself. keeping those small ears from slipping through.
We also have longer knife rolls. We pull the corn down slower, and virtually eliminate ear bounce. If you eliminate ear bounce, you drastically reduce butt shelling, because we’re shelling corn that’s dry and shells easily. As farmers, that’s what we want in the combine, and if it shells easy in the combine, it shells easy in the head.
Balig says the design is adaptable for all harvesters. You can visit DragoTec’s U.S. website by clicking here.
