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Home Made Forage Harvester
John Tomlinson's family operates a 450-acre dairy farm in England (near Holt, Wresham, Clwyd) while he looks after the farm's custom silaging business. He wanted a high output, self-propelled forage harvester, but wasn't prepared to saddle him-self with the costs of buying and running a new factory-built unit costing about $140,000.
His answer was to build his own self-propelled forager with two engines. A 280 hp Cummins engine sits just below the front axle and powers the front-mounted forager through a nine-speed gearbox. Meanwhile, an 80 hp Perkins sends power through a second nine-speed gearbox to the forager's rear wheels. It also powers steering and operates the chopper's hydraulics. The home-built machine performed with flying colors last year on 1,200 harvested acres. Tomlinson figures he spent 120 days and about $30,000 to build the powerful machine in his own workshop.
(Farmers Weekly)


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1994 - Volume #18, Issue #1