question on small plot small grain harvesting

Heck, for Id buy onna them for that money. Id find a junk AC ALL CROP, take off the gather mech, and the bin mech, build a trough to feed the bundles in, and just make a stationery thresher outa it. Probably a Cub Farmall could power it

A large combine will cost you $100,000 or more. If you can build one at half the price it would cost you $50,000. Unless you can build one for 3 or 4 thousand you will not have a market for them. Their are several foreign builders of combines that may have something used but it will cost you more to ship it here than it is worth. I think that Kobota has one that is used for test plots.

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God must have loved stupid people because he made so many of them.

yes I have seen the grass stripper and that is what a lot of what I am thinking about, I took the one I made out to the water hole that still had some wheat standing in it, and tried my custom made grass stripper on the wheat, it did a good job, like said it would need further cleaning,
the wheat has been standing since July and not harvested,

I went out and tried the stripper on the water hole that did not get cut during wheat harvest, this is to day "before",



this the stripper working



after the stripper passed



this is what was in the box after wards, I think there would be way of lessing some of the chaff, as I had the screens over the boxes to catch it all




there are some Ideas I think that would improve it and cut the cost some, some would be changing the lift system and would like to make it dump(blow over) some of the light chaff.

note: the date formate is day, month, year, on the camera,

did it actually thresh any grain out?

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

i have thought, esp in the past when i used to bake a lot of bread, to do that..but I'm watching carbs so right now it isn't a necessary thing for me to do..however, if i had animals that I was required to have grains for them to eat i would probably consider it again...maybe allow them to eat it as standing grain rather than to combine it? don't know....the DNR plants rye fields here for the deer and the deer eat on the rye fields in the winter time..and probably other times. However, i supposed that harvesting enough for your animals is a good idea if you have the space, time and inclination ..but only really if it does save you enough money to make it worth it, or if you are concerned about the quality of the grains that you would otherwise have to purchase (chemicals, etcc)

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Brenda Groth
http://restfultrailsfoodforestgarden.blogspot.com/

cattle on ripe grain can be a waste. It's a lot more delicate than corn. Where I milk we ran the herd on a patch of barley. They stomped a lot of it in the ground. And it really didn't do anything to help the milk production.
Small grains are probably better off harvested ripe and used as part of a ration or grazed when green so that the cattle also receive the benefit of the plant.
I have read of guys that scythe and bundle their grains then feed the bundles. The cattle eat what they can of the grain and the rest is bedding.

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

I did a search for foot powered thresher after reading one of the post. Check out this video of a exercise bike powered thresher from an inventive college student:

http://www.hampshire.edu/news/media/pedal.htm

I also came across this document which has construction plans for a variety of people powered farming implements. The last set of plans is for a foot powered thresher (starts on pg 58)

http://www.ibiblio.org/london/agriculture/06-232.pdf

I planted a small plot (less than 1/10th acre) of wheat this year. Thinking of harvesting with a scythe then threshing by hand. Shouldn't be too work intensive seeing how small the plot is. Might consider building one of the foot powered threshers in the future if I expand the plot.

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CJ

Older used combines are the cheapest equipment you can buy. Around here one could buy a 4 row machine ( able to pick 4 rows of corn) for under $2500. Check out farm sales in your area. That being said, maintaining or even owning a combine for 1,5 or even 20 acres or wheat is not cost efficient.
You live in Colorado, a lot of wheat grown there. Do some investigating, find a farmer who grows similar to what you want and buy a few bushel straight off the combine. He may think you are a bit weird, but hey your live in Colorado so he would be right (joke).

yes it did, it end up shattering very Little on the ground, all the heads and grain ended up in the box, yes it would need additional threshing or some what different stripper, but I think that could be easily addressed in some modifications that many make it easer to use. or separate stationary machine