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Mud-Proof Forage Chopper
Here's a "made it myself" idea that saved the day for New York dairyman Merlin Atwell during the unusually wet summer and fall of 1977. Unable to green chop corn at all with a one-row New Holland 707 chopper mounted on his 2 wheel drive tractor, he took the 3 pt. hitch arms from a Deere 520 tractor and used them to hang the 707 chopper on a 23-year-old International TD-9 crawler tractor. He and a neighbor, Robert Perry, had purchased the New Holland 707 chopper several years before, keeping it on standby for a wet season emergency when larger choppers normally used can't be operated.
During the wet '77 season, they ran their one-row chopper until it finally got so muddy that their conventional two wheel drive tractors couldn't go anymore. Putting the chopper on the TD-9 saved the day, says Merlin. "We were able to keep green chopping everyday and got by until it finally dried up enough so we could go back into the fields with our 2-wheel drive tractors. But, when it was real muddy, our crawler rig and neighboring 4-wheel drive tractors all equipped with one row choppers - were the only rigs able to do any chopping at all.


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1979 - Volume #3, Issue #1