An increasing range of high capacity tedders are now on offer, and it’s not just contractors snapping them up, suggests Krone product manager, Ben Davies. “Mower capacity has increased in recent years, and where dairy farms for example are using a contractor for their mowing, they may have a larger tractor that has been purchased for slurry tanking and feeding but could pull a tedder in the harvest season. A wider tedder helps them get uniform tedding ahead of the rake and forager and achieve the desired 24 hours between cutting and clamping.”
As a rule of thumb if looking for a tedder it should be between one and a half to two times the width of the mowers running in front of it, he says.
“Realistic driving speeds are 10 to 20km/hr for mowing, although our Big M self-propelled mower can work at up to 25km/hr, tedding 6-10km/hr and raking 8 to 14km/hr, which is how we arrive at this figure.
However, the more uneven the terrain, the slower the travel speeds of the machines.”
An example would be for a mower outfit with a total working width of 6.0m, the optimum working width of the tedder is 9.0 to 12m. Krone offers a useful comparison table showing tedding options for different mower combinations.
Matching the tedder to the width of the mower is slightly less straightforward than it appears because of the overlap between the swaths, suggests Kverneland and Vicon product specialist, Dave Perry, and will also depend on whether you are spreading or swathing the crop.
“A 7.6m tedder will match three swaths from a 3.2m mower, but if you are spreading with this mower, you’ll need 9.0m.”
He also notes that while tedders need lift capacity rather than horsepower, ease of handling means that trailed machines rule for wider spans.
“Smaller machines have traditionally been popular and 9.0m really was the top end, although we sold a few largerpoints out Dave. “The 11.2m mounted 85112 took over from a 9.0m version as tractor size increased, and now contractors in particular are looking for higher outputs, hence the introduction of a 15.6m and most recently a 13.4m model.”
