The Ultimate Buyer's Guide for Purchasing corn head for down corn

Corn Head Market: Buyer's Guide Tips.
It’s not that long ago that the corn head on your combine by default came from the same company that built the combine. But today, there are an increasing number of choices for producers looking for additional or different features with their corn head.

For many years, corn head designs changed very little. In recent years, an increasing number of growers have looked for alternatives to the standard options available through the companies building the combines. Drago, Harvestec, Oxbo....lots of information.


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North Liberty and South Bend, IndianaMy buddy bought a Drago last year. Hands down the best head I have ever seen or run. Absolutely nothing going in the machine but ears. Very little shelling and those are low profile heads, we picked up some down corn with ease. You can't beleive it until you actually see it. Now as far as the price tag, hang on to your wallet... of course any newer header costs roughly the same.Ran a new Drago head last year. Put the chopping action on it, I found out real quick how under sized their outside end drive shaft bearings are and how screwy they put stuff together. I had all kinds of problems with the right side. I get a kick out of their latest ad in the farm mags bragging about how heavy their gearbox shaft is..............start at the beginning and not at the end beefing stuff up.

I did like the way the head worked and I think if you don't have the choppers on it should work fine.


North Liberty and South Bend, IndianaAh yes! Luckily my buddies head is non chopping. I have heard of the drive shaft being too small and actually our local NH dealer has just become a Drago dealer. They had their customer appreciation day last week and had two Drago reps there. I questioned them about that shaft and they claim that since they put a lovejoy coulpler in there to take some stess off the shaft due to possible mis-alignment. I laughed knowing that when you need a 1 1/2" shaft a 1" won't work no matter what you do! Silly engineers!

Cambridge, southwestern NebraskaI'm looking to buy a Gerringhoff for my next header. I like the ease of changing gathering chains. The edge they put on the stripper plates which I know work well because Gleaner has that feature on their Hugger heads and I've ran those for years. The large front sprocket. And an aggressive spiral point out front.
I would like to see an Oxbo with the rubber gathering belts but I don't know of any dealers around here so my first choice would be Gerringhoff and my close second would be a Gleaner Hugger. They are very good cornheads.

MNRan a Harvestec C last year. The best chopping head on the market. Could run at 5-6 miles in hour in 150-200 bushel corn and the stalks would be completely shredded with no long ones sticking up. Chops much better than the Drago but as far as bringing in the corn I think the Drago beats it. John Deere chopping head's probably could compete chopping wise but there was a lot of issues with them around are area when it came to keeping them going. When it comes to maintence, the Harvestec has to be taken care of. A couple times a week the oil needs to be checked in the gearboxes to see make sure there not leaking out the bottom. It's a real pain during the busy times of the season. If I was going to buy a head for chopping I'd buy a Harvestec but if you don't need chopping then I wouldn't.

West Central ILI went for parts, service, and re-sale. I bought a 608C Deere. I don't know if it is the best but so much better than the 893 I had. The 893 is such a poor head not as good as the Case I had prior.We ran the same Geringhoff for the last 8 years and had nothing but good things to say about it. Decided to trade for a 612C becaise we wanted the option to not chop for no-till and the was alittle too big for a 8 row.

00:00 Hey everybody, it's Lee Lubers, the Extreme Ag, and here I am with our corn head today. I know we could trade for a new folding 12 row head, 00:07 but that'd be at least 130,000 to boot. And in times like these, when margins are tight to non-existent, you always gotta look at 00:15 how are we gonna pay ourselves? How are we can going to conserve working capital? And that's what we're doing here. 00:22 Uh, we're saving 130,000 and we're paying ourselves. We have a great corn head and we're rebuilding it. So our snouts, we're getting worn 00:30 through on the sides and places. So we won't put the kits on for stainless steel strips. And uh, we can do that for about 00:40 well pennies on the dollar. Uh, maybe, uh, less than 10% of what new snouts would cost. We can do this. So that's great. 00:48 Uh, we're going through all of our rows and all new sprockets drive chains. We've got the nice deep tooth chains on the newer 00:57 style corn edges. They last a long time going through deck plates, checking them out. We're gonna go through and all new seals in every 01:05 gearbox on every row. And uh, we're running through everything on it, taking our time, fine tooth comb, philosophy, 01:14 preventive maintenance, and then we're coming around and all 12 rows. Everything's getting a little bit of love. 01:21 And then we come over here, all new floor in the center. Was it totally shot? No, 01:28 but it's time to update going through the drive shafts, going through everything. And that's the one key point that I wanted to make is like, 01:36 are we anti trading equipment? No, we're trying to spend smart money. And that's how you get through tougher times. 01:42 Working capital is key. And here we can have a corn head that's gonna perform just like a new one, all rebuilt 01:49 that we know we're familiar with. Works great on our machine, gets the job done, and there's 130,000 01:56 that we did not have to spend in a trade. And we're gonna spend about 8,000 in parts and we're gonna pay ourselves 02:02 because if we would've traded, they would go and they're gonna charge, they're gonna factor into the trade, a hundred dollars an hour plus 02:10 to have their people do it. Let's pay ourselves. That's the whole thing. So are we anti trading equipment? No, absolutely not. 02:19 You can see in the background there almost new skid steer because we got the right trade, it made sense 02:27 and loader tractors, uh, it was time to update. We got the numbers that we wanted, but on the corn head to get to the numbers that we wanted. 02:35 The best way we could do it is redo it ourselves. Keep running it. So, uh, that's the thing. When we're in an era of slim to no margins, 02:46 it's all about the smart money, paying yourself and, uh, working capital. You need that every year. 02:53 And it really shines in years like this. So just wanted to stress to people, look at all your pieces of equipment and look, is it time to trade 03:02 or do you better to pay yourself?

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