Thanks for posting these. Really cool. I grew up using stuff like this. We had the next generation from the early 50's, i forget the models. They still could be had with their own power unit and the basic design was the same but they were for 50-60 horse tractors instead of 35. The pickup head for hay was revised with an auger to gather the infeed onto the apron chain. This probably enhanced land speed by reducing the "bunching" and high flying action stiff hay would do. We had a single row corn head too, they reduced the gathering chains by one in newer models. We had a direct cut head too. it was a real neat piece of engineering. It was completely made obsolete by the machines people call "green choppers" almost right away, and it sat unused for a couple decades before it went to scrap. Sort of a shame really, I have never seen another one. Later we bought a second identical unit at auction so we could stop swapping hay and corn heads. Dad built a tandem axle for the pick up side on the hay version and modified the blower chute so it could make it to the back of a 16 foot wagon. Later we bought a newer model pickup head with a four bar tine set up that was a 6 foot wide head vs the older 5 foot wide. And a two row corn head for the other. These units were built like tanks. We increased throughput with modification, but mostly by running more power on them at higher rpm. we had a mid 60's Case 1030. 540 RPM was at 1600 engine RPM. We pulled the throttle ALL the way back on the hay chopper down to 2100RPM, we estimated we were spinning that chopper at over 700 RPM. Faster RPM, more throughput. No it didn;t break down, the Fox units were built like tanks out of real steel. We cut with a 9 foot(probably 8.5 in reality ) 1950's Owatanna haymaster haybine. We used this equipment into the 1990's basically up till Dad retired and sold the dairy. We couldn't have done it without that combination of tractor and machine. We never updated our dairy from a transfer unit for milking(no pipeline) no bunker silo, no manure pit. We farmed like it was the mid 60's and had a very happy life of it and made high quality milk from cows that grew old and got retired. it didn;t resemble anything of what dairy had become by the time the farm was sold. i didn;t take it over because I would have had to change how we farmed. And the new way isn;t farming, it's managing a factory. I would go back to those days in a heartbeat. I want to point out the guy moving the 1100lb corn head on metal casters. Hard times made strong men. I grew up doing this type of work. I used to lift the back of my buddies Plymouth off the ground. People today can't fathom what real work was. It has made people soft. Soft men have made society much worse.
I was a kid when we ran the Fox choppers. 2 row, manual adjust spout, so the rear window of the Year Around Cab had to be taken off. JD 4020, then a Ford 9600 became the power unit. In 1981 my spoiled cousin wanted to keep up with the new stuff, and JD 4440 showed up with a 3940 chopper, electro hydraulic controls. But the old Fox's were easy to fix, and actually made better silage. I'm not sure what happened to them, but I took a liking to the New Holland choppers when Fox disappeared.
I always though that the old new holland choppers like the 800 from the early 60s and late 50s where pretty cool. They seemed like pretty huge capacity choppers back then from the promo films.
You load those monster sileage boxes up and that poor little Z would have all it wanted! Always heard some absolutely crazy stories about Fox’s “hospitality suite” at National Farm Show in Louisville! Good times!
I was thinking the same thing . . . just about every time we would grind what was “dry” hay bales, the resulting pile would heat. Seems cutting the stems and mixing it all up releases the evil spirits . . .
We had front unloading wagons, with a chain drag. The blower could not have been bigger than 24-30 inches in diameter with an 8 inch pipe. Really slow going. :)
It's amazing how generations before, they had to do everything by hand. Than they started using machines, that were "huge and heavy" nowadays 70,80+ years later machines are twice sometimes three times as big.. funny how things changed, it's amazing, but sad also. What I mean by that? I live on a small scale farm myself but lots of other farmers getting hay fields cut off but has been staving the plants out of cutting and cutting not put nothing back. So that's the bad part of having machinery easier for people to go over twice many acres for same amount of crops, instead of doing little extra work of maintain fields, cuz I even know some people who does that today. So that's showing me the only way for farmers today maintain their fields/ pastures, than forage crops today would been as tall as how it once is if machines would quit being used, or if people would respect their lands not stave them out. Other than that machines are nice to have, p,s wunderful video.
Once upon a time if you had a Fox chopper especially a 6600 or 6650 you were the big enchilada around your area. But Fox simply faded away like Papec, Owatonna and others.
When I was a kid doing this it didn’t seem that dangerous at the time. How is the world did we survive? Guess that was bc working around all those chains made you get common sense quick. I remember being deathly afraid of those corn heads. I remember pulling a full loaded wagon down a steep hill & the H popped out of gear & we went for a ride. I couldn’t have been more than 9 or 10 & I remember my butt bouncing off the seat which pulled my foot of the brakes - not that they worked anyway. Somehow made it to the bottom without wrecking or killing anybody. God was with me.
Am only in my mid late twentys and I kinda understand where you are coming from. In framing life today I think it's humorous, nowadays they want framers to wear a seat belt on tractors now, where when me and other siblings were young kids we were riding and driving a open cock pit tractors quite often, and they never had a seat belt. Even to very day still drive them up down steep hills, to field to field. But it's like what I was taught "If you respect the machine, the machine will respect you". Thought that was odd but I guess it's true.
there were a lot of old farmers with all sorts of aliments from operating the new equipment, lots of deaf farmers too, the harvester engines the tractor engine were loud, hearing conservation was not a consideration back then.
Thanks for posting these. Really cool.
I grew up using stuff like this. We had the next generation from the early 50's, i forget the models. They still could be had with their own power unit and the basic design was the same but they were for 50-60 horse tractors instead of 35. The pickup head for hay was revised with an auger to gather the infeed onto the apron chain. This probably enhanced land speed by reducing the "bunching" and high flying action stiff hay would do. We had a single row corn head too, they reduced the gathering chains by one in newer models.
We had a direct cut head too. it was a real neat piece of engineering. It was completely made obsolete by the machines people call "green choppers" almost right away, and it sat unused for a couple decades before it went to scrap. Sort of a shame really, I have never seen another one.
Later we bought a second identical unit at auction so we could stop swapping hay and corn heads. Dad built a tandem axle for the pick up side on the hay version and modified the blower chute so it could make it to the back of a 16 foot wagon. Later we bought a newer model pickup head with a four bar tine set up that was a 6 foot wide head vs the older 5 foot wide. And a two row corn head for the other.
These units were built like tanks. We increased throughput with modification, but mostly by running more power on them at higher rpm. we had a mid 60's Case 1030. 540 RPM was at 1600 engine RPM. We pulled the throttle ALL the way back on the hay chopper down to 2100RPM, we estimated we were spinning that chopper at over 700 RPM. Faster RPM, more throughput. No it didn;t break down, the Fox units were built like tanks out of real steel.
We cut with a 9 foot(probably 8.5 in reality ) 1950's Owatanna haymaster haybine.
We used this equipment into the 1990's basically up till Dad retired and sold the dairy. We couldn't have done it without that combination of tractor and machine. We never updated our dairy from a transfer unit for milking(no pipeline) no bunker silo, no manure pit. We farmed like it was the mid 60's and had a very happy life of it and made high quality milk from cows that grew old and got retired. it didn;t resemble anything of what dairy had become by the time the farm was sold. i didn;t take it over because I would have had to change how we farmed. And the new way isn;t farming, it's managing a factory. I would go back to those days in a heartbeat.
I want to point out the guy moving the 1100lb corn head on metal casters. Hard times made strong men. I grew up doing this type of work. I used to lift the back of my buddies Plymouth off the ground. People today can't fathom what real work was. It has made people soft. Soft men have made society much worse.
I was a kid when we ran the Fox choppers. 2 row, manual adjust spout, so the rear window of the Year Around Cab had to be taken off. JD 4020, then a Ford 9600 became the power unit. In 1981 my spoiled cousin wanted to keep up with the new stuff, and JD 4440 showed up with a 3940 chopper, electro hydraulic controls. But the old Fox's were easy to fix, and actually made better silage. I'm not sure what happened to them, but I took a liking to the New Holland choppers when Fox disappeared.
I always though that the old new holland choppers like the 800 from the early 60s and late 50s where pretty cool. They seemed like pretty huge capacity choppers back then from the promo films.
fun to see those MMs at work!
My Grandfather would be proud.... That was his entire fleet in the 50's through the 80's.
You load those monster sileage boxes up and that poor little Z would have all it wanted!
Always heard some absolutely crazy stories about Fox’s “hospitality suite” at National Farm Show in Louisville! Good times!
I'm getting tired just watching these guys work 🙂
Thank you
THANKS FOR POSTING I can remember the neighbors having one back in the early 60s. PS That chopped hay was sometimes a real barn burner kind of a feed.
I was thinking the same thing . . . just about every time we would grind what was “dry” hay bales, the resulting pile would heat. Seems cutting the stems and mixing it all up releases the evil spirits . . .
@@nschelling6420 I know what you mean. Neighbor's barn burnt back in the late 60s because of chopped hay. Never dry enough for chopping.
Part 2 of a 16mm film The Fox Forage Master Fox River Tractor Co 1949.
We had front unloading wagons, with a chain drag. The blower could not have been bigger than 24-30 inches in diameter with an 8 inch pipe. Really slow going. :)
I wonder what that little song is called at 16:15
It's amazing how generations before, they had to do everything by hand. Than they started using machines, that were "huge and heavy" nowadays 70,80+ years later machines are twice sometimes three times as big.. funny how things changed, it's amazing, but sad also. What I mean by that? I live on a small scale farm myself but lots of other farmers getting hay fields cut off but has been staving the plants out of cutting and cutting not put nothing back. So that's the bad part of having machinery easier for people to go over twice many acres for same amount of crops, instead of doing little extra work of maintain fields, cuz I even know some people who does that today. So that's showing me the only way for farmers today maintain their fields/ pastures, than forage crops today would been as tall as how it once is if machines would quit being used, or if people would respect their lands not stave them out. Other than that machines are nice to have, p,s wunderful video.
Once upon a time if you had a Fox chopper especially a 6600 or 6650 you were the big enchilada around your area. But Fox simply faded away like Papec, Owatonna and others.
They refused to change their feed chain , and New Holland and Gehl ran right over them
When I was a kid doing this it didn’t seem that dangerous at the time. How is the world did we survive? Guess that was bc working around all those chains made you get common sense quick. I remember being deathly afraid of those corn heads. I remember pulling a full loaded wagon down a steep hill & the H popped out of gear & we went for a ride. I couldn’t have been more than 9 or 10 & I remember my butt bouncing off the seat which pulled my foot of the brakes - not that they worked anyway. Somehow made it to the bottom without wrecking or killing anybody. God was with me.
Am only in my mid late twentys and I kinda understand where you are coming from. In framing life today I think it's humorous, nowadays they want framers to wear a seat belt on tractors now, where when me and other siblings were young kids we were riding and driving a open cock pit tractors quite often, and they never had a seat belt. Even to very day still drive them up down steep hills, to field to field. But it's like what I was taught "If you respect the machine, the machine will respect you". Thought that was odd but I guess it's true.
Helmets b the next thing😢@@randymaylowski2485
Now I know why the front unloader silage box was invented. I can't imagine standing there with a rake and pulling out crop
Wow, are you lazy!
We did it that way for years. Dad finally bought one power unloading wagon in 1973 or 74. We still used the old box wagons too until 1980.
If one corn harvester works great think what 20 of them can do
Blowing dry hay into the mow and you better have some masks available for unloading, if you like your lungs.
there were a lot of old farmers with all sorts of aliments from operating the new equipment, lots of deaf farmers too, the harvester engines the tractor engine were loud, hearing conservation was not a consideration back then.
@@benscoles5085 huh?
Man, the auto-steer really sucks on these models