steel vs rubber conditioner rolls

Have always had rubber rolls on my haybines. heston PT10, nh 479 and now gehl 2345.{Had a JD 530 with flail conditioner one year but didn't like it} the cows are gone and the weather has been so wet the past few years have virtually no alfalfa left. do mostly grass hay for the horse folks. Considering a new discbine for next year and was wondering if one with steel on steel rollers would do a better job of crimping the grass. I bought an old NI crusher this spring with steel on rubber rolls and ran that over a couple of fields a few hours after cutting and it really seemed to speed up the drying. What are you alls experiences with the different roll types? I know massy makes a steel roller unit. Does anyone else? Thanks

In grass or alfalfa there is not much of an advantage in steel rolls. You can get a good condition with the rubber rolls set correctly. The trouble with steel rolls is IF you pickup a rock or steel post they can be bent. Then they do not mesh correctly then. So while they can crush the hay they can be expensive to repair.

Truthfully the Impellers will do as well as any type of conditioner in the hay types your talking about. They HAVE to be set correctly for the crop conditions. Going from one field to another in the same cutting may need adjusted differently. I have never had one I could not get to work. The only crop I ever had an issue with was some real tall sudan/sorghum grass. It was over six foot tall and real coarse stems, it would wrap the impeller.

With fine-stem grass there isn't much stalk there to crimp or crush so neither type of roller conditioner does much. In crops like this the more important thing is laying an even, fluffy swath so air can circulate.

The big advantage of steel rolls is that they are tough and will last far longer than rubber. This is why all Hesston/Massey rotary headers for self-propelled windrowers use steel - rubber rolls simply won't last with the volume of crop going through them and the acres these machines cover. In my experience rocks aren't too much of a concern. I've picked up countless rocks while running in places like Idaho and if they're too big to fit between the rolls they are very likely too big for the steel bars to grab so they just bounce around on the cutterbar until you can get stopped. Rubber rolls aren't immune from being bent either and the grippy surface is more likely to force rocks through. I've seen a bunch of stuff pass through the steel rolls of a rotary header without any damage - rocks, fence posts, tree limbs, car tires, deer (not personally but I saw the pictures - yuck), handline irrigation pipes, well casings, and all kinds of other junk you find hidding in the crop.

I had a Hesston that had one steel and one rubber. That one would dry the hay a day sooner than my new Kuhn with a flail conditioner.

I had an IH 990 that had one steel and one rubber. If anyone is interested in longevity I don'r believe that this set-up can be beat. The rubber, rather than molded is the type that looks like sections of rubber belting with the edges exposed.

Kuhn makes a discbine with steels rolls, looked at a new one at the Farm Machinery Show back in Feb.

I don't have the hp for a discbine but I bought a Kuhn trailer disc mower, 3 years without a single issue, love that Gyrodine swivel hitch.
Models ending with TLS have steel rolls, TLR have rubber, TLD are flail units.

We have a old Hesston PT10 with the steel rollers (slick on the bottom roller, steel bars on the top roller). Good machine but if you get into a section where the crop is short the rollers don't seem to want to pull the short stuff through. It starts throwing the short stuff over the top of the reel so you have to stop until it quits throwing what you are cutting over the reel (the short stuff does eventually goes through the rollers).

This was a problem of the old non-intermeshing style of rolls that your PT10 has. The newer ones
have intermeshing bars that are a lot more agressive in feeding the crop.

My PT10 did the same thing. I remember the top roller was rubber, but can't remember what the bottom one was. Tried to make it more aggressive by routering grooves in it, Didn't help much.

(quoted from post at 17:01:14 11/16/17) This was a problem of the old non-intermeshing style of rolls that your PT10 has. The newer ones
have intermeshing bars that are a lot more agressive in feeding the crop.

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We have the PT10 as a backup mower now, we have a JD 1209 we use now where both rollers are rubber coated with the intermeshing chevron pattern, and it grabs everything. A relative of ours bought a new 13' JD disk mower/conditioner that has steel rollers top, and bottom with angle iron welded to both of them. The are welded on with a twist in them instead of being just straight across, they are some very evil looking rollers.

Thanks for the comments. I was hoping there would be a consenses of opinions, but its like so many things. What works good for one, is poor for another. Just going to play it by ear and see what happens.

Question: do you use a Tedder. I purchased a 4 star Tedder 2 years ago. I always used a Grimm reel type and still do on raked windrows. The star tedder makes a big difference here. I mow in the late evening. Try to tedd 2x the next day. 1 time in morning 1 time early afternoon. I run a NI 5209 discbine, rubber rolls. To me the star Tedder makes more difference than conditioning.

No don't use a tender. We run a tandem nh256 rake hitch. We rake a pair of single windrows first time over, starting really before the hay is ready to rake, then come back the next day with the rear rake shifted over and double up for baling. I remember a long time ago using the old 4 wheel rakes you could shift the reel into reverse and do a fine job of tedding. With modern techknowlogy [sp?] you need 2 machines to do the same job. the few fields I used the old NI crusher on this year, I think the fluffing action of the crusher did as much as the actual crushing. And like everything we do it all depends on the weather.

I don't have a conditioner and we tedd behind the mowers or early the next morning, tedd again the morning before baling to fluff the hay, lets air in so it will dry quicker.

(quoted from post at 20:51:40 11/19/17)
I don't have a conditioner and we tedd behind the mowers or early the next morning, tedd again the morning before baling to fluff the hay, lets air in so it will dry quicker.

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Here in the Northeast pretty much everyone tends twice even after mowing with the moco. If the ground gets good and dry we can go with just Ione time.

Lots of guys seem to be tedding. Educate me on whats available in tedders. Any dual purpose machines like the old rakes that will ted or rake?

(quoted from post at 20:54:04 11/20/17) Lots of guys seem to be tedding. Educate me on whats available in tedders. Any dual purpose machines like the old rakes that will ted or rake?

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Doug, here in the northeast we have to tedd, and almost always twice, unless the ground gets really dry. There are many guys making excellent hay without tedding in other parts of the country. I have been tedding with a Kuhn 440 GST for many years. They are a very solid machine. Recently the Sitrex, was characterized here as a lighter unit. When I first started haying thirty years ago. My partner and I intended to tedd with his reversible Allis Chalmers rake, but we quickly found that due to its length it missed a lot, so I picked up my first Kuhn. Kuhn is recognized as a world leader in hay tools and builds or used to build for most of the "long line" manufacturers.

I've worked with a couple of the combination tedder rakes but wasn't impressed, they seemed to require a fair bit more maintenance, but the biggest issue for me was they where only available in 8-9 ft width's, so it takes just as long to ted the hay as it took to cut it.
I've had my Sitrex folding 4 basket tedder for over 20 years, although it's showing it's age and needing a little more maintenance it's been a pretty good machine for one of the cheaper models. It will ted 2 mower swathes per pass allowing me to ted the field in half the time it took to cut, a tedder is also a excellent machine for spreading out rained on windrows for quicker drying.
I looked at several models of tenders lately in preparation of replacing my aging Sitrex, although I run Kuhn disc mowers and highly recommend them I consider the Claas and Krone tenders to be better than most other brands.
I plan to purchase a 4 basket Krone within the next few years.