by Lucas Veale, Assumption, IL 

Great weather in the month of September has hastened crop harvesting in Central Illinois.  The corn crop has been well above average in most cases but is falling well short of the 2014 record.  Soybeans also are well above average but it is still too early to tell if we will eclipse the yield of last year as a whole. 

Cutting Down Beans with a Row Crop Head

If you are dealing with down, leaning, or tangled beans try to set your angle of cut as close to perpendicular to the lean of the crop as reasonably possible.  This will lead to the least amount of plugging and will also reduce the amount of beans that you run over.  With larger headers, make sure that your feed accelerator is on the high side to reduce the chance of plugging in this area.  We have also seen some benefit of running the feeder house chain on the larger sprocket if persistent slugging occurs due to large crop mass.  As always, make sure that the auger is adjusted closely to the floor and rear strippers to augment feeding.  Draper belt speeds seem to work the best around 200-220 in most cases.  Always calibrate your header before you start the season to insure it is ready for any ground condition.  Check out the help videos on Sloans.com under the AMS heading for help with the calibrations. 

You can view our Hydraflex Platform video here.

You can view our Flex Draper video here.

Also, don’t forget the call center to help with switching crops at 217 693 6209

Sloan Support is written by the product support team at Sloan Implement, a 20 location John Deere dealer in Illinois and Wisconsin.   Learn more at www.sloans.com