John Deere Presents 227 Corn Picker and 50 Sheller Attachment

This is another very neat film from JD about the mounted 227 picker with the optional 50 sheller unit. I greatly enjoyed watching it & learning about the great new technology from 1961. Really like the cartoons in this one. There have been several times that I thought I would have to stand on my head to reach a grease fitting. Had to make that one the thumbnail for this feature as it's my favorite.
The conversion for this one was easy again. Good filmstrip, good record.
Would also like to mention here, that we are in a close countdown to the end. The last four filmstrips look to be very neat & can't wait to get them posted for everyone to enjoy.
Regards!!

[@dmc3742]

My dad had a 227 picker on a John Deere 620 back in the mid 60's. Dont let this promotional film fool you. It took the better part of a day from start to finish to get this beast mounted and ready to go to the field. The operator had to be vigilant during operation because the danger of fire was always there. Aside from that it was an excellent machine. Had to laugh though...only 36 daily grease fittings. 🤣🤣

[@ikonseesmrno7300]

I haven't seen a mounted corn picker that didn't take forever to mount & dismount. I heard the NI pickers were the easiest, but still took a better part of a day.

[@outdoor044]

I thought the same thing about ONLY 36 grease fittings haha.

[@ArmpitStudios]

I’d rather see those in the field than a gigantic combine,

[@jefffirefighter12106]

You don't want to forget that at the time mounted corn pickers came about they were only around for about 5-10 years. It still beat picking by hand as was still done by a-lot of farmers. Once the unit was on the tractor it stayed on until the corn was off the field, and then you would go help out the neighborhood farmers. Combines with corn heads were still being thought up. We still run a 227 combination ear/sheller. Takes about 2-3 hours to put it on, some are quicker some are longer mounting times. I've run almost every type all do a great job, beats hand picking!

[@ikonseesmrno7300]

I agree. It does beat shucking by far.

[@pinesedgefarm1155]

Looks like a nice rig.

[@ikonseesmrno7300]

It is indeed a sharp outfit!

[@williamhalpin6713]

We picked many of acres and many of corn cribs filled with those pickers operations

[@kswaynes7569]

I always thought these might be nice BUT a pull type picker was much more convenient to hook up and use. I/we had both a New Idea and JD one row picker, would have preferred a two row narrow New Idea (still think they were the best picker). Still the cheapest way to store corn, is on the cob in a narrow tall corn crib, let Nature dry it and animals won't mind the cob when ground up.

[@ikonseesmrno7300]

Yep, pull type is the way to go, same with cribbing corn. Newfangled methods may save time, but are not always best.

[@lukestrawwalker]

@@ikonseesmrno7300 Yeah it's like the first one-row cotton pickers were all tractor mounted... IH invented them during WW2 as a labor saver over hand picking when all available hands were going into the service. They were complicated and expensive and didn't catch on until well after the war. You had to convert the Farmall for use under a cotton picker, by removing the shift plate and seat off the top of the transmission case, taking the differential loose, and flipping it over on top of the bull gears on the ends of the axles. That gave you five speeds in reverse and one forward, since the tractor was operated backwards under the picker. You had to remove the steering wheel and throttle and reverse the "pickle fork" single front wheel (or get a pickle fork single front wheel and remove the tricycle double front wheels-- they didn't work worth a rip in bedded land anyway as they were always trying to take the wheel away from you, particularly operating in reverse). Then you rolled the tractor under the picker. Usually the picker was propped up on top of 55 gallon drums with wood blocks, so to get the axles past it you had to roll the axles up to the drums, jack the picker up, and remove the drums and move them to the other side of the axles, then roll the tractor back to the mounting plates on the picker frame. Oh, one step I forgot-- usually the picker rode on a huge ball bearing on the axle itself, so you had to remove the rear wheels, slide the bearing with its huge pillow block on, and then put the wheels back on. Most farmers just left the bearing on after that to freewheel along the rest of the year because that was such a PITA. Then you had to line up four bolts with the pillow blocks and install mounting plates from the engine side frames to the picker's 4 inch channel iron frame, install a gearbox (on most pickers) in where the belt pulley or corn picker drive on a Farmall was located (in a top cover under the gasoline tank), though some one-row pickers IH built eventually just used a big cast iron pulley that slid onto the PTO and then belt drives to turn the picker unit and blowers to convey the cotton to the big overhead basket. Then you had to hook up the controls-- a rod pinned to the clutch pedal and two more rods pinned to the brake pedals, which went through a series of bellcranks and rods to duplicate clutch and brake pedals on the operator deck above the picking unit. The throttle rod on the tractor was joined with a double-plate bolt on joiner to a throttle rod from a duplicate throttle control lever on the picker operator deck, along with a gear shift lever that operated through a rod arrangement to couple it to the tractor's gear shift lever (after you put the top plate back on the transmission. Usually they started from the ground, though sometimes they extended the controls up to the picker operator deck. Then you had to mount a stalk shield and snoot over the LH rear tractor tire (which was now the RH front tire since the tractor was operating backwards under the picker) to keep stalks and stuff from getting smashed down as they went past the picker unit and under the axle. Usually you always turned to the right when picking so the row going under the axle was already picked, so cotton didn't get knocked out on the ground. Of course taking the tractor out from under the picker at the end of the season was the reverse of all this... Oh, nearly forgot-- you also had to clip on a big tapered angled screen over the radiator to keep cotton lint from plugging the radiator on the tractor, and take the muffler off and install another one with a 90 degree heat shield over it and an elbow that basically pointed it parallel just above the tractor hood horizontally and out over the radiator and screen, blowing straight out the back of the picker right over the radiator. It was SUCH a PITA that as soon as a guy could buy another tractor, he would just leave the picker permanently mounted on the old Farmall H or M (or Super C, or whatever, which is what they were usually mounted on) and just treated it like a self-propelled machine. By the time they came out with the double-row pickers in the late 50's or early 60's, those were all self-propelled, though they still sold single-row mounted cotton pickers for another half-dozen years or so for "budget minded" farmers... Deere single-row cotton pickers were even more of a pain... since the Deere tractor couldn't be reversed like the Farmalls by flipping the differential over on top of the bull gears, they mounted the picker on the old Poppin' Johnnies much the same as the IH, but you still had to drive the tractor forward by squeezing onto the regular operator platform between the picking unit hanging off the "back" of the tractor, but Deere put their unit on the LH side rather than the right (in picking direction, ie "backwards" from a regular tractor point of view-- from the regular tractor "forward" direction, IH had their picker row unit on the RH side and Deere on the LH, in backwards picking direction, IH put their picker unit on the LH side and Deere on the RH), and of course the basket was right in front of your face so you had to kinda hunker down to see under the basket to drive the tractor, or look through it LOL. You'd drive the tractor down the road to the next field, get off the tractor, throw the PTO In gear to drive the picker unit and blower, and then hook up a clamp-on thing over the hand clutch and a coupler plate to the steering wheel with some "J" hooks that tightened it up to the steering wheel of the tractor, and coupled it to a duplicate steering wheel and hand clutch on the tractor. I don't remember if they had a clamp-on rod to connect up to the brakes or throttle or anything, I've only ever seen ONE Deere single-row picker decades ago at a farm show, they're THAT rare! You had to shift the tractor into reverse before you got off it, and you did all your picking in the one reverse gear on the tractor. IH, since you had all five gears at your disposal just with the tractor going backwards, you could pick in first OR second gear... First gear was considered "picking gear" for first pick, and then second gear was "scrapping gear" for picking the cotton the second and sometimes third times as the crop finished ripening and was picked again later. We pretty much always ran in second gear, regardless, unless the cotton was amazingly good that year. The picker unit was synchronized to ground speed so the spindles rotated straight into and out of the plants without raking or dragging them in first gear, via the gearing calculations and sprocket sizes and tire size and tractor gearing calculations when they designed the thing at the factory. Second gear was NOT synchronized and so the picker was turning slightly slower than the forward speed of the tractor, so the spindles were slightly "dragging" through the stalks as it picked, but honestly that made it do a better job since it would pull the bolls up against the spindles as it drove through the field. The Deere, of course, was designed with the reverse speed ratio of the tractor vs. PTO speed in mind and so it was always synchronized since you could only pick in tractor reverse gear... Deere was pretty quick to switch to double-row self-propelled cotton pickers, needless to say. Then of course there were cotton strippers, which worked much more like a corn picker... basically instead of the snapping rollers and gathering chains, they used rotating rollers with rubber flaps and brushes to pull the bolls off the stalks and throw them into an auger that moved them back through some cleaners and a cross-auger to an elevator that dumped the cotton into a wagon, like a corn picker, they were usually two row mounted on a tractor almost identically to a corn picker, but strippers were only used in certain areas like the high plains-- most areas used "picked cotton" versus "stripper cottons" or "stormproof cotton" which was worth less money than picked cotton. We had a 77 Deere cotton stripper on an old JD B (which was too small for it actually-- it was made for like a 60) and WAY back in the 50's or early 60's Grandpa had an old single row Dearborn cotton stripper that was designed to mount on a Ford 8N... those were kinda weird-- You had to move the RH rear tire and front tire of the 8N all the way in to minimum spacing while leaving the LH tire and front axle all the way out at maximum spacing (cotton was always grown on 40 inch rows until basically the 80's). The single stripper unit mounted on a beam that was attached to the 3 point hitch, which also carried the blower to suck the cotton out of the stripper unit, which was carried OUTSIDE the RH rear tire, so to lift the unit you raised the three point arms. A PTO shaft drove the gearboxes and chain that went over to drive the stripper brushes and batt rollers in the stripper unit, and instead of augers it sucked the cotton out of the stripper unit and then blew it up into an overhead basket which also mounted on the tractor and was dumped hydraulically... it attached to the front and rear axles somehow... it was crazy but it worked. Dad said it did a good job almost as good as a picker, but again not many were around. Grandpa did a lot of custom work with it hauling it around back in the old days... Sadly it's long gone but I wish I could find out more about them... Later! OL J R :)

[@lukestrawwalker]

I've got a video about a one-row cotton picker that was restored nicely that I filmed up near Sikeston, MO on my way up to Indiana a few years back, which is on my channel... Later! OL J R :)

[@morganottlii2390]

Ear corn is great feed! Yeah, alot of work, but we could get 4+/lbs per day average gain on steers using it, without hay. Mounted pickers go back to the days of tricycle tractors, but pull type NI 325 was the best in later years

[@morganottlii2390]

@@lukestrawwalker we've come a long way! Ain't it great?

[@ncktbs]

grandpa literally left it on because it was such a pita to remove it bought a used tractor to leave it mounted until we scrapped it last year

[@glennspreeman1634]

perfect machine, how could there be any improvement? just noisy, dirty, shelling losses possibly

[@ikonseesmrno7300]

The only improvement I could think of is a cab for the tractor. Everything else was covered with that mounted picker. As for loss, I've seen a couple in action & they are pretty thorough. You might see some loss on the ends of the cob, but that's about it.

[@RoadRunnergarage8570]

What is the plan after you finish these John Deere videos?

[@ikonseesmrno7300]

Currently, there are two IH filmstrips to be copied yet. The records are in need of rehabbing & that will take some time. There's one like that for JD yet, but I don't think the record will produce anything as it's badly warped & the grooves are extremely shallow in spots. If I run across any more of the record/filmstrip sets from any brand, I will be converting them to post here. Next winter, I hope to redo these videos to get more color into them. Currently working on an IH filmstrip that still has a hint of color to it, so I can figure out what's what. That one has a color checker proof at the beginning of it before the focus frame. Have been able to figure out the pallette from that. It was difficult, as all the samples are essentially a different shade of red due to the dye layers in the old Ektachrome breaking down. Otherwise, I'll be getting a new camera at some point this spring or summer to record more of the goings on around the farm here.

[@Vieuxtracteurs]

@@ikonseesmrno7300 Do you know if there's same records+stripfilms for Massey Ferguson? Thanks a lot for your time used for copy them ;)

[@ikonseesmrno7300]

@@Vieuxtracteurs I haven't seen any. That's not to say there isn't. MF is old enough to have utilized that technology, but it's hard to say if they went that route or if they stuck to making movies. I'll certainly keep my eyes open for them.

[@Vieuxtracteurs]

@@ikonseesmrno7300 Thanks ;)