Yes, I wondered about that. Right now its gone 9am. The ground is still soaked by a heavy dew. The last few days have been the same. That's not untypical of mid to late August. At 11am yesterday the moisture was >20%. By 2pm it was down to 17%. Then the dew came again at 10pm. These aren't days when a combine and driver can cover 50 hect plus.Spot on.
One question though is how are you getting crop into the drum at 8am and 10pm because we can’t get anything to feed in as it just wraps around the header auger and then we just spend time stationary with the reverse header clutch engaged. Admittedly it’s a standard header and not a macdon etc but even the new claas convio doesn’t like it as shown in Olly Blogs video yesterday in spring barley.
I'm intrigued by the relative costs of a combine vs a large drying plant. The combine is 35-40k per annum depreciation, plus some overheads. But that's not all savings as there will be incremental depreciation and costs associated with running one large combine harder. Then there is the capital tied up in the grain plant and the drying costs. Finally there may be some upside from non ag uses for old sheds freed up by the new silos. Lots of moving parts.