Autumn 2017 EN

Biogas Journal | Autumn_2017 English Issue
Maize stover/sugar-beet silage after four months of storage. The silage looks outstanding.
Baye, a product manager at the Geringhoff company,
which develops and manufactures maize headers for
harvesters. The innovative MS Collect maize header,
which received the Biogas Innovation Prize 2016 in
Osnabrück last year windrows the maize stover.
The angled blades underneath the harvester chop the
rest of the plant after the maize kernels have been harvested.
Without touching the ground, the remaining
parts of the plant are thrown into a container mounted
at the back. A feed screw conveys the maize stover toward
the centre and deposits it into a compact windrow
beneath the harvester. The threshing system processes
the cobs. Following the threshing process, the spindles
and husks fall onto the windrow. They add energy to the
biogas substrate.
The advantages of this method are obvious: Windrowing
does not require an extra step which reflects positively
on recovery costs. In addition, more maize stover ends
up in the windrow, which does not happen with other
devices working separately. Fifty to sixty percent of the
stover in the windrow can be technically harvested later
as proven in practical experience. In places with a lot of
stones separate windrowing technology can practically
not be used because stones in the windrow can damage
the chopper or loading vehicle significantly; at least
increased wear will be apparent.
Harvest stover directly after thresher
Baye suggested that Pieper chop the sugar-beets into
the maize stover silage. And that’s what they did last
fall. According to Pieper, the grain maize was threshed
on 21th/22nd of October. An 8-row maize header was
mounted on the thresher. On the front axle, the thresher
was equipped with a rubber track roller unit, which
helped reduce the ground pressure of the thresher. “In
spite of the track roller unit, we had to harvest the stover
right away at the first turn because when you drive over
photos: Martin Bensmann
the stover, the material is pressed flat”, explains Michael
Klapprott, a contractor. Then it is nearly impossible
to harvest the stover.
The contractor chopped the maize stover with a Claas
Jaguar 970 with grass silage pick-up and loaded it onto
chopper wagons. Klapprott: “We always had to run the
chopper in the same direction as the harvester. Thus,
the maize stubble is already tipped in the driving direction,
so the pick-up can work more efficiently. The
maize stubble is 15 to 20 centimeters long. The maize
header splits the stalks, which is advantageous for controlling
the European corn borer”. Klapprott points out
that the ground should be levelled well by maize planting
time in order to harvest the stover efficiently later.
Baye adds: “The harvester with the 8-row header manages
about 3.5 hectares per hour. We harvested 14 to
15 tonnes of grain maize per hectare. Theoretically,
the chopper could be slightly faster than the thresher”.
From left: Dietrich
Baye, Product Manager
at Geringhoff, Contractor
Michael Klapprott
and Plant Operator
Hermann-Josef Pieper.
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