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| Two downfalls to a rotary, which may not apply to your area. 1. Soil in the windrow. Sandy soils, gopher mounds, rocks. When you're chopping behind a rotary, you have accelerated wear of all the shields/bands, knives, stationary knife, and accelerator padels. 2. New seeding cut quality. With a fine stemmed alfalfa, you have to flat out fly to keep from shredding the stems. A rotary uses other crop to cut against, keep new knives on to help some.
Downfalls of our 896 (same head on A400) is it is more maintenance, not just time but money with removing the sickles, changing the knives, and just in general maintenance because of less productivity (acres/hour). If you're doing guidance, the ATU works a lot better on these machines at slower speeds, but I wouldn't weight this very heavily in my decision. Not sure how long you would be holding on to your new purchase, but it seems that the remarketing ability for a sickle machine is declining and a rotary traction unit may hold their value better, or you need to move your windrower to an area where they use them more.
One thing you should really look at though is the new V10 conditioner for either platform. These things will eat crop and do a great job of forming a windrow. If you have problems with the windrow not having square shoulders, considering changing direction on 2 and 9 (with 16') or adding some of the "footballs to these discs to help with the airflow and crop feeding. | |
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Looking at a used JD 2010 R450 disc conditioner or a A400 sickle conditioner
