Combines Green Yellow or Black

Before you buy anything else check out MacDons Flex head. Check out the thread on the Case page about 1052 Drapers.

GlEANERS draper is pretty nice

IF you are concerned about knife visibility, on a John Deere you CAN NOT see the knife with a Honey Bee. We run Macdon and Deere drapers, and find the Deere is like a large bulldozer compared to the Macdon. our preference is the Macdon espesially in short crops - A 974 is hard to beat

I run macdon, have operated a H_B, but only watched deere. H_B has a great knife and knife drive, but it is a heavy header, and unless you tilt the table way back, then you can't see the knife in the center. Macdon is lighter, and has a nice canvas tightening system. The new flex draper is great, but a lot of coin. The guys that run deere in our area seem happy, but they never had any other colour, just started out with JD's, and they keep trading for them again and again.

Hey about the headers... we have a new JD 930 Flex for our 9600, all i have to say is wow! as for picking up downed crop, peas inperticular, it worked amazing wonders in our fields_conditions. me and my father couldn't have been pleased any more. as to macdon, we have a 30ft 960 header. works well but we were told from the dealer when we were looking for a new header, that the draper does flex, but not that much. and thats exsactly what we found with the 960. i guess it all depends on your field conditions and the condition that you normally get your crop off in. draper good for cereals but in my opionion didnt work that well on peas... hence the reason why we bought a 930 flex ... your call

The 960 is not designed to run on the ground for peas and beans. On the 972_974 they tilted the cutter bar so that it would get lower to the ground and the 974 flex's in 2 different places so its like pushing 3 heads through the field.

Honeybees need the adapter. JD draper heads fit right on. Perhaps that's why you don't see them on Deeres as much. We have a 30' Honeybee for our JD 4890 swather. On a scale of 1 to 10 1. wheat 10 2. Canola 8 3. FlAT peas 6.5 My only problem with it was in the lodged crops. The fingers on the UII reel break easy if the head starts to push a pile. In all fairness though we had more rain during harvest then in all of the previous year. The peas were so flat we had to swath them in one direction even with crop lifters. We usually use a JD rigid head on the combine for peas, but we were afraid wrecking something good. The swather is much lighter. I wouldn't wish conditions like that on my worst enemy...

macdon is the only way to go.I have one that has done over 120,000 acres on three different machines.

macdon is the only way to go.I have one that has done over 120,000 acres on three different machines.