Combines winter wheat straw

Some farmers especially in Colorado like the long stubble, that the stripper head leaves behind. It helps a lot gathering snow in winter what would otherwise be blown away. And the moisture is much needed there. There are seed drills made to seed right into these stubble without any ground work. Too much straw in the combine is seldom an issue in the midwest, since yields are relatively low. Only irrigated wheat can slow the combine down a little.

Where you have heavy grain, I think that the straw could be a problem with tillage. We moleboard plow after using conventional harvesting in heavy stubble (40cm high with chaff and straw from out of the combine) and that's enough of a problem when plowing at times. In dry areas with thinner and shorter stubble, it may not be a problem. I would try some trial plots if possible with the longest straw you can get and try the discbine and see how it works. I always thought the stripper could be a real capacity booster, but what to do with the straw is a problem. In more southern states with wet climates, I think they use strippers to take off grain as early as possible and seed another second crop like soybeans into stubble with no till planters and use a double cropping system. I'm not really sure though.

I would ask this on the CIH and John Deere site also. There are alot of those makes of combines in the southern corn belt and northern Mississippi Delta where I would expect there would be more experience using stripper headers for double cropping systems. With alot of farmers just getting into the fields in the midwest, there may not be as many guys on the internet now to respond.

If I were to try only taking the heads to speed up harvest and than coming back in the field with a discbine to cut the straw at a later date, Is there a certain amount of straw that is needed to do a better job of threshing the wheatIJ

When I was a kid we used to do something like that. We'd sow clover in the wheat field in February or March. We'd harvest the wheat about the first of July, and keep the header as high as practical without losing wheat heads. (Had to stay above the clover, too) Then we'd come back with a sickle mower and mow what was left. We called it "stubble clover". The only problem I remember is that the sickle mower plugged up frequently where the stuff had fallen out of the back of the combine. But other than that it worked fine.

Thanks boss hog, We have a discbine so pluging the cutters I'm hopping will not be problem. But I keep hearing that a combine needs a certain amount of straw to make the threshing work. Can anyone coment one thatIJ Buglyd

Wheat isn't exactly a major crop around here anymore (western MO),but we always clipped just the heads with our Deere conventionals. If we baled straw, we went back with the disc mower and cut it down. Our straw always turned out pretty clean.

All you can do is try it by just taking the heads and check behind the combine periodically. I know with a straight header the heads would hang up on the cutterbar if you didn't have enough straw coming in. Sometimes in real short stuff the paddle type elevators wouldn't feed very well either. This is before were even worrying about threshing. I would say you would have to take the head and then 5 or 6 inches of straw for the best results.