Nov/Dec 2008
Alberta grower tries CR and CX combines, side by side
“We were wrong,” says central Alberta grower Don Ferguson, who thought he’d know for sure which combine was best if he just tried the New Holland CR Twin Rotor® and CX super conventional combines side-by-side for a season. “We had a hard time deciding whether we’d go to two conventional or two rotaries after running one of each. We thought we’d come out with a clear favorite, but they’re both awesome!”
On the wide open, rolling Prairies east of Three Hills, Alberta, the Ferguson family has been committed to New Holland equipment for three generations. Don Ferguson recalls his father bringing home a combine from the New Holland dealership in the late 1960s.
Today his sons, Matt and Mark, are starting to farm. Matt has his own family. Their sister, Sarah, teaches nearby while her husband, Steve Richardson, farms. Don often drives one of the harvest trucks.
“We have 4,900 acres planted to mostly wheat and canola,” Don says. “Most of our fields have a bit of a slope and fairly good drainage thanks to some coulees that flow off into the Red Deer River.”
Don and his wife Krista live only three miles from his own home farm, where a brother still lives.
“I farmed with my Dad when I was young,” he recalls. “We had neighbors with New Holland combines. I remember, as a kid, watching those guys work. They went day after day and never had trouble. It seemed like everybody else was broken down, sitting, or whatever. Eventually we went to New Holland combines and we’ve run New Holland combines ever since. That’s probably 40 years now.”
When New Holland introduced Twin Rotor® combines in the 1970s, they purchased one of the first. About 15 years ago, he recalls, they had a lot of cattle and needed the longer straw. They switched to a pair of New Holland TX super conventional combines.
Things changed again about five years ago. They got out of the cattle business, except for Matt’s 80 cows, and no longer needed long straw. Don thought it was time to go back to the rotary combines in 2007, but held on to one conventional CX880 while trading the other for a new CR9070.
“We ran one of each last year,” he says. “We thought we would come out of that year with a clear favorite for all of us, and we didn’t. We were all surprised!” he says. “At the end of the year, the three of us said, ‘Boy, I don’t know which one we should get. They’re both doing a beautiful job!”
Pushed hard
The two combines are very similar in performance, he says. “They have the same engine, same shoe, same cab, same chassis. Other than threshing components, there’s not a lot of difference.”
“We’re very impressed with both. They’re both real quiet. They’re just so nice to run, and they’re trouble-free.”
The Fergusons push hard, he admits, in order to get the highest grain quality that each field produces. “Every year, we push the harvest window all we can,” he says.
The family crew starts a little early in the morning and goes late lots of nights. When there’s moisture in the air, or its trying to rain, they stick with it.
“There are some real adverse conditions. We go as long as we can keep going because the quality is huge, and the only way you can get good quality is to get it off in good time,” he says. “So we’re combining tough grain on some days and we’re combining in tough straw.”
Both combines performed very well in the tough conditions during the harvest. Conditions were very good about 80% of the time, but “really tough” the rest of the time. For instance, they hit the maximum capacity on some of the long slopes. When they found it, they were in 70-bushel wheat, straight cutting 30-foot swaths in damp conditions, and running the straw choppers at the back to spread crop debris the width of the swath.
In those conditions, the monitors said 105% engine load at about 5 miles per hour.
“I think, between the big straight cut header and the straw cutter on the back, you’re using all your power with those combines,” he says. “We found that if you swathed it ahead and just had a pickup header on so you were dropping the straw to bale for the cows, all of a sudden you’ve got lots of power for threshing.”
Some differences between the two combines did show up under the harvest pressure.
They agreed that “the rotary doesn’t like tough straw as much as the conventional.” They were getting a little more capacity with the CX880 when both combines were processing very tough straw.
On the other hand, they also agreed, the rotary CR9070 did a bit better job of threshing and didn’t crack any grain.
“In wheat, we were cracking probably less than 1% with the one conventional combine, or around 1%, and cracking nothing with the rotary, or next to nothing,” Don says. “Cracking is huge to us,” he says. “Even a very small percentage of cracking in canola can add up to a big dollar loss on a field.”
Awesome support
Happily, New Holland engineering helped them choose. In 2008, they operated the 2007 CR9070 beside its newer sister, the 2008 CR9070.
Last fall, they learned that the Model Year 2008 New Holland CR combines would get a bump in rotor speed. Engineers had bumped up the rotors from 1150 RPM to about 1340 RPM.
“That’s a big bump, especially on that big a diameter rotor,” he says. “The peripheral speed is a huge change. Having the extra rotor speed is a big advantage.”
Whatever their choice, Don says, they have full dealership support. It’s a 20-mile drive between home and the dealership. He says only one word describes the support from the New Holland dealer: awesome.
“The service is awesome, it truly is. Whenever we want something, if they don’t have it sitting there for us, there’s always a 100% effort to get it to us as soon as possible. If a combine is down for more than an afternoon, they have another combine out for us to use. We’ve had very little trouble in all that time, but when we have, they have been there to fix it or give us another unit while they took it in to fix it.
“We’re pretty demanding when it comes to service, too. The one thing that strikes me about the service manager is that he keeps his cool. When we’re pretty excited about something, he manages to calm us down and get us going. He does a tremendous job. And the sales guys are great. They certainly go out of their way to make sure we’re very satisfied with their product. They give us exceptional service.”