# impeller or roller conditioning for orchard grass



## robert23239

Hello All
So I thought I would ask the question, I am it has been talked about. 
I tried out a new deere MoCo with the impeller conditioning. It cuts good, the speed is better but wasn't impressed with the conditioning of the impellers. Should there be a limit on the speed for the impellers. I usually just cut orchard grass. 
Its either that or the 472 haybine. Of course some people think some grassing don't need conditioning.

Robert


----------



## BCFENCE

I used to own one for about a year, I didnt like mine at all but i bale alfa/ grass mix, They tell me that with grass hay its supposed work alot better. I traded mine in on a new holland with rollers and never regreted it. The settings dont work either , The hay is never the same all over the field so what do you do about thick and thin spots.
THOMAS


----------



## Customfarming

We use impeller conditioner's in all of our hay or silage. We cut bermudagrass, triticale, wheat, rye, sorghum or anything that needs need to be cut for silage or hay. We use krone and kuhn. We run our impeller's at the fastest speed setting for grass. The impeller's are as tight as they can go on both machines. This is for thick grass or thin grass. In our grass the tractor has to be at least 10 hp above the min hp requirement for the mowers. It takes some power but it dries it quicker than without conditioning. Make sure you run the tractor at pto speed or a little over.

The difference from impeller and roller is the impeller strips the wax off the stems while the roller is suppose to break the stems. So in grass hay I don't the see the roller conditioner helping you out as much as the impeller will.


----------



## Production Acres

I'll amen Thomas' remarks. We own an impeller conditioner, and our next conditioner will not be an impeller! You can never get it adjusted properly! Better than nothing, but never again!


----------



## Customfarming

What mowers did yall try to run? The krone I think is best but I am bias because I have ran them over a many of acres. The krone is the easiest and quickest in my opinion on setting impellers. We bought a kuhn this year because of the bigger and better merging belts on the back than krone. The kuhn with the fixed nylon fingers are the biggest piece of crap ever. Its a little hard to get set right because you have two things to adjust. One the combs and then the baffle plate. Since on the kuhn its all fixed you have to adjust in thick hay or light hay which is a pain.

When getting an impeller conditioner make sure they are metal tines and swing freely. Set your baffle plate (or whatever its called) where you want it and forget about. The swinging ones will condition the same in thick or thin spots due to the flexibility.


----------



## Production Acres

We run a Krone Big M and I think the impeller stinks. We had a Kuhn with the comb and ball bat looking impellers- it did a much better job - just a little too agressive if you weren't careful. The big M does a better job than the JD as the JD has a smooth backing plate and the krone has a diamond plate.


----------



## BCFENCE

I owned a JD , some people like em but i dont, I cut hay now with rollers and dont have to worry because i know the stems are smashed and its going to dry, Just one on the long list of mistakes ive made that i wont do again.
THOMAS


----------



## Customfarming

Yeah the kuhns you can pulverize the hay. I don't like it because the fingers are fixed and when you get into good thick hay it doesn't want to go through the mower. We adjust our krone with it running at low idle while tightening the screw until it hits then turn it back a quarter of a round. This is for grass not alfalfa and never have cut alfalfa. I know this isn't the safest way to do it but it gets set the way we like it.


----------



## MikeRF

In the past we have had experience of both impeller and rubber roll conditioners but now run a Hesston 9635 swather with 2 sets of steel rolls and would not be without it. 
When cutting young, moist alfalpha for dairy customers we have to open the roll gap and reduce pressure to stop the hay fromgetting over conditioned. (This machine will almost chop the crop if allowed). The remainder of the time in slightly coarser horse hays we have minimum gap and maximum roll pressure to crack stems every 2 inches. 
This makes a huge difference both to dry down time and to the texture of the hay. 
It also consistently makes a more even, smooth windrow than any machine we have run before. This is the case regardless of whether the pre cut hay was standing nicely or laid over (as often seems to be the case here in Ontario) 
From a purely cutting point of view this is an expensive machine to run/acre but I don't know of a pull type that can come close to matching the conditioning job.


----------



## kingranchf350

I currently run a Kuhn with the fixed poly impeller........it does us a good job on bermuda, fescue, orchardgrass & teff. The way I have always understood it.......In legumes you would need a roller conditioner..because it is not as agressive as flails and you have a stem tthat you need to break......In grass hay you need to strip/scuff the waxy layer of the material to allow moisture to escape and grass hays are not as fragile as legumes so they can stand up to a more agressive conditioning action. I agree with the earlier post about the free swinging flails..I think they would be better than the fixed type. In orchardgrass I think the key will be to get that swath laid out as wide as absolutely possible. On my Kuhn I have removed all the shielding so that we are only about a 8-10 inches shy of the cutting width.


----------

