It’s everything a farmer can do to keep their harvest free and clear of contaminants and detractors that might lower its overall quality or make portions of it unsuitable for sale. For hay, moisture and UV bleaching can be major detractors; for corn it comes down to pestilence and drought; and for cotton it’s all about keeping debris out of the harvest itself.
Keeping debris out of your cotton crop means keeping it away from your cotton harvester, which ultimately means having a clean field. And while this is nearly impossible as the acreage of your land climbs, there are some things you can do to help keep the quality of your harvest high and, in turn, the quality of your crop yield near its maximum potential. Take a look at five of them:
First and foremost, clean and thoroughly wash all of your cotton picking equipment and all machinery that’ll be used in the harvest. Debris from years past or simply contaminants that have piled up during the offseason will be the biggest detractors of your harvest—make sure they’re dealt with right from the get-go. Proper cleaning and maintenance of your harvester is also good for the machinery’s longevity.
Create a watch list for known harvest contaminants that you may have previously spotted in your fields and be sure to have all eyes on alert to remove these things during the harvest. This can include things like plastic bags, organic debris and other items that have no business in your harvest.
Inspect equipment between runs to make sure any hydraulic fluid or other lubrication isn’t leaking. Fluid leaks can quickly come into contact with cotton seed, leading to deterioration on a large scale! Worse yet, fluid leaks can create mechanical failures that lead to breakdowns, creating setbacks that complicate the harvest even further.
When baling or building modules, do it in an area where they can quickly be covered or stored. Baling and transporting is a great way to expose large sums of your harvest to more contaminants! Baling smartly will not only keep formed modules safe, it’ll expedite the process.
Harvest in optimal conditions whenever possible. Avoid high winds or blistering sunny days, where the elements could negatively impact your crop yields. Instead, try to do the bulk of your harvest on calm days with good cloud cover and no sign of inclement weather.
When it comes right down to it, the moment you fire up your cotton picker and head into the field, you’re making a run at your future profit—preserving as much of your crop as possible and ensuring its condition means putting money in your pocket! And, while you can’t save every cotton seed, you can follow the above tips and use best practices to minimize the overall loss of yield from external variables.
Cotton picking equipment and techniques have come a long way in a short time, with annual innovations continuing to push the efficiency of harvests north of 95 percent on average. When you consider crop yields in terms of revenue, this is an astounding prospect for cotton farmers and one that rides very heavily on the overall efficiency of cotton pickers. Simply put: if a picker isn’t optimally functional, yield will suffer.
In order to maximize cotton picking efficiency, a tremendous amount of emphasis needs to be placed on the individual cotton picker parts themselves. With so many integral components to a cotton picker a compromise can occur virtually anywhere, at any stage of the picking process, driving inefficiency that is ultimately preventable with routine and regular maintenance.
Take a look at some of the breeding points for yield inefficiency as they pertain to a cotton harvester’s many points of interaction with the crop:
If the spindle tip clearance or picker head height is too high, you’re not going to have the seamless flow of stalks into the harvester, leaving margins for error and loss. Make sure to calibrate these things as a foremost approach.
Doffers and spindles need to be properly aligned to prevent loss during the transfer. If the relative position of your doffer is askew of your spindle, you’re likely to experience yield loss.
If the spindles themselves are worn, broken or damaged in any way, harvest rates will suffer. Spindles should be checked thoroughly before and after harvests, and replaced where needed.
Even spindles that are intact require cleaning to function at an optimal capacity. Plant buildups can cause a myriad of issues that impact efficiency at the point of harvest.
Moistening systems need to be checked and cleaned to ensure proper lubrication of spindles. Failure to maintain these parts can result in missed harvesting opportunities.
The maintenance of all the above components and beyond is essential in not only maintaining high crop yields, but in realizing the preventable loss that can be attributed to the harvester itself! According to independent studies done regarding harvester maintenance in relation to crop yield rates, it’s estimated that up to 20 percent harvest loss can occur on fields being harvested by improperly maintained pickers!
While harvest yield can also be affected by the status of the crops themselves and the current climate of the region, the impact of these variables pales in comparison to the effects of subpar cotton picker parts.
If your next harvest leaves behind traces of open bolls or you measure a drop in harvest efficiency, turn your attention to the maintenance of your cotton picker—namely the individual cotton picker parts that are responsible for ensuring the fluidity of your operation. Even if you’re diligent in your maintenance, it’s essential to inspect every component individually, as well as in relation to its peripheral components, to make sure that the system as a whole is optimized to perform at the highest possible levels.
Year in and year out, cotton pickers experience a tremendous degree of wear and tear as they navigate thousands of acres of crops, diligently picking bolls off of millions of stalks. And while the modern marvels of machinery have made it possible for harvesters to do this seemingly with ease, there’s still a high degree of maintenance that’s required to make sure harvesters are kept functional and efficient.
Preseason is the time to take a proactive approach to maintaining the functionality of a harvester. Cleaning, calibrating and replacing John Deere cotton picker parts before the harvest season is a great way to ensure yet another year of efficient harvesting, while also ensuring your investment in a picker remains sound. Take a look at just some of the maintenance items that should be making the list each preseason:
Tires: Checking for optimal PSI in each tire means rolling out into the field ready to harvest effectively. Low PSI can result in tilts to the row units, creating inefficiency across an entire harvest. Low PSI can also create turbulence as the picker drives forward, creating a bouncing effect that will also decrease the harvest rate.
Row units: You row unit should be properly positioned to capture stalks as they’re fed into the harvester, which means optimizing its height to be as low to the ground as possible without the potential for bumping or skipping. About one inch is usually standard. Along with height, tilt is another factor that needs to be adjusted, to create a seamless transition for stalks as spindles harvest the boll.
Spindles: Spindles need to be thoroughly inspected and replaced where missing or damaged. Be sure to also look at the wear of the spindles to ensure they still remain rugged and have not been worn smooth by last year’s harvest. Spindles generally wear quicker at lower heights, however wear can occur at any height where picking is plentiful.
Doffer: Doffers should be thoroughly cleaned to remove any excess debris and calibrated to run in conjunction with the spindles—general clearance is usually about two tenths of an inch from a spindle row.
Moistening system: Cleaning out your moistening system should be a routine task in the preseason. Be sure to use only specially formulated solutions to protect the integrity of the system—these formulas will target gums, sediments, resins and other buildups cause by green plant matter. Replace damaged pads over time if they present blemishes.
The preseason list goes on and on, also encompassing routine systems such as compressor doors, plant lifters, picker ribs and air conveyance systems. Inspection and maintenance of every part is critical in the preseason and will absolutely prevent costly setbacks and damages come the harvest time. Moreover, paying attention to John Deere cotton picker parts in the preseason allows for more time spent assessing damages or operations before the harvester needs to be functional.
As a business that sells cotton harvester parts to farmers all over the country, we know that it can be difficult to stay on top of maintenance and cleaning, especially when many parts require daily care. But maintenance is key to keeping your harvester effective, saving you money and hassle and ensuring you get the most productive crop possible.
While cotton harvester maintenance might seem like a convoluted chore, in truth, it can be broken down into a handful of steps. With that in mind, here are six key tips for maintaining your cotton harvester, and ensuring your parts last for a long time:
Use caution: Before you attempt any sort of maintenance on your cotton harvester (or operate it at all, for that matter), you need to fully educate yourself about the different cautions and safety procedures. Read the specific owner’s manual that comes with your cotton harvester, and follow any and all caution stickers on the machine itself. This is one step that is well worth the effort.
Maintain the header: Your cotton harvester’s header is one of the most crucial parts of the machine, which means that it is also one of the parts that is most prone to maintenance issues. Keep your header in great shape by taking the time to clean it of any debris at the end of every workday.
Care for the row units: The row units are the part of your cotton harvester that actually connect with the cotton, making them a key part of your daily job. To ensure that you yield the highest and most high quality crop possible, make sure you clean and lubricate each row unit at the beginning of each work shift.
Lubrication and cleaning: While the header and row units are perhaps the most important parts of your cotton harvester, they are certainly not the only parts that need routine lubrication and cleaning. Your rear axle, cooling package, steering linkage and universal joint housings all need some regular TLC as well.
Clean the engine: Though the engine does not directly interact with your cotton harvest, it can still easily become clogged with debris, which can reduce the effectiveness of the machine. That means you should remember to clean it out at least once a week. And as with any type of vehicle engine, make sure it is always well lubricated, too.
Ask a professional: Finally, if you are new to cotton harvesting, or if it has been a while since you got your last brush-up on cotton harvester maintenance, remember that there is no shame in asking for help. The next time you buy new cotton harvester parts, take the time to ask your dealer if they have any advice or warnings about routine cotton harvester maintenance.
If you are in the market for new cotton harvester parts and are looking for the best in the industry, we hope you will get in touch with Certi-Pik, USA soon. We fabricate and sell replacement parts for many of the top brands in the industry.
As a company that sells cotton picker parts around the world, the team here at Certi-Pik, USA is well versed in the importance of the cotton industry, as are the farmers we proudly sell our products to. But in today’s fast-paced, tech-obsessed world, the humble cotton industry does not always get the respect and recognition it deserves. If you do not know much about cotton farmers and the global cotton market, we hope you will take the opportunity to read over the following interesting cotton industry facts and figures and cotton picker parts:
Interesting Fact About Cotton
When accounting for everything from the cotton farms to the textile mill, the cotton industry in the U.S. alone is a $25 billion annual market, and supports about 400,000 American jobs.
American cotton farmers receive a subsidy of $230 per acre of cotton crop. To put that into perspective, that is about five times as much as farmers receive per acre of cereal crop. Americans value their cotton very highly.
In 2003, the top states for cotton production were Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, California, Arkansas, North Carolina and Louisiana. These seven states produced 80 percent of the nation’s total cotton crop for that year.
In 2006, cotton farmers in the U.S. produced the third largest crop in history, despite the fact that there was a severe drought that year. The record crop is attributed to advances in genetic modification, as well as improvements in cotton pickers and cotton picker parts.
The U.S. produces 20 percent of the world’s cotton. We are second only to China, which produces about 24 percent.
People have been wearing clothes made of cotton for over 7,000 years, thanks to its lightweight yet durable consistency. To this day, it is the most popular non-synthetic clothing material.
Sixty percent of all women’s clothing contains some amount of cotton, and 40 percent is made entirely of cotton. For men, 75 percent of all clothing contains some cotton. Of that portion, 85 percent is made with 100 percent cotton.
Cotton is typically measured in 500-pound bales. One bale of cotton can produce about 800 men’s button down shirts, 850 women’s blouses, 325 pairs of jeans, 350 dresses, 3,000 diapers or 1,000 pillowcases.
S. currency is not actually made from paper. In fact, it is about 75 percent cotton, and 25 percent linen. That means that a typical bale of cotton can produce over 313,000 $100 bills.
All of the cotton the U.S. produces is grown on 3,500 different farms, most of which are located in 14 key cotton-growing states.
At first glance, the cotton industry might not seem that exciting. But in truth, cotton has a strong cultural presence, rich history and important economic impact on the U.S. and the entire world. If there is a cotton farmer in your life, take the time to show your respect and appreciation for them sometime soon. And if you are a cotton farmer, remember that you can always count on Certi-Pik, USA for quality cotton picker parts at affordable prices.
