V8Aggie said:

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This is such a racist thread... staph please delete!

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I know you're trying to be funny, but the only people I ever saw hand pick cotton were legal laborers from Mexico, bracereos. When I got to A&M, I found out that my Hispanic roomate's dad had a summer job driving the buses of laborers to my home town. The dad was a school teacher (later principal) the rest of the year.

And I never picked cotton, I stripped it.

Local JD store has a request and buyers for 23 BRAND NEW strippers from the factory. Sold 23 brand new ones last year.

My neighbor bought a new one this year - put 150hrs on it and sold it to your country AT A PROFIT.

Centerpole90 said:

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My neighbor bought a new one this year - put 150hrs on it and sold it to your country AT A PROFIT.

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That is wild.

My AGEN senior design project was developing a system to cut/unwrap the round bales once they arrived at the gin, while also still allowing the feeder to handle conventional modules. I think we did a decent job, and last I heard I believe our system was used at a few gins along the coast. (I might have imagined that last part... )

I should explain that a little better. There's some government math involved.

Commercial rates for pickers strippers is anout $400-$450/hour. He sold it for what he paid for it and harvested his crop with free use of the machine. That would be a $60-80k lease expense but nobody will lease you a new machine without a minimum of $100k commitment in hoursbor $ and the commercial rate for picking the equivalent amount of cotton could have been $150k+ or more on 2,000 bales.

So. His checkbook may have stayed the same as it was before harvest but he recorded an operational gain in the use of the machine that would be considered profit by any congressman.

Never shed a tear when making that last round at midnight before parking one of dad's IH 422s to head back up to College Station.

Centerpole90 said:

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Round bakers combined the process of harvesting and moduling cotton all on the harvester itself. tjis eliminated some equipment and a lot of labor, but it comes at a tremendous up front cost and the ongoing expense of plastic wrap for the round modules.

https://instagr.am/p/BXbztZCgfEh

The round modules are smaller and must be handled in the field, organized is a better term, so they can be picked up and transported. They are denser than conventional modules and they are better protected. So as long as they aren't standing in water round modules are considered more weather resistant than conventional. Keep in mind that ALLLLLLLLLLLL OF THIS is preferable to the cotton trailer or wagon of Canyon's and my youth.

Yes on the cotton destruction date. Every growing region has a mandatory destruction date for the purpose of managing the Cotton Boll Weevil. Then I'll weevil is a notorious and invasive peat and has a tendency to 'overwinter' in hostable food sources - namely cotton. As part of the cooperative Boll Weevil Eradication effort growers pay an assessment per acre for monitoring and treatment of boll weevils and part of that process includes a mandatory planting and destruction deadlines. These are intended to eliminate late volunteer cotton stalks that wil host weevils through the winter.

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$600+k and one can be yours!

Out of curiosity, what's the annual maintenance cost on a CP690 or similar?

Does it count as handpicked cotton if some idiot stuck his hand in the path of the picker duct before it went to basket...

Asking for a friend...

Mr. AGSPRT04 said:

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Out of curiosity, what's the annual maintenance cost on a CP690 or similar?

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It can add up. Spindles alone can run upwards of $15000. Usually unless you're custom harvesting that won't be an every year expense.

A&M is working on 3-d modeling with drones to get accurate yield in grain and cotton.

Imagine watching your harvest grow (or shrink) on a daily basis.

Three years dude and 10 posts??? You had to reboot that account- Mr. Mayo has been gone longer than that.

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Every growing region has a mandatory destruction date for the purpose of managing the Cotton Boll Weevil.

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Is this date online somewhere ? I am just curious. My neighbor planted part of a field.... probably 30 acres, really late this year and that cotton is still in the field. It looks pretty good but very ready to pick. That is the only field around here like that. Most picked 3 to 4 weeks ago.

That guy (a friend also) is a very good farmer. And the cotton looks "short". So I am betting he is trying out something...... maybe variety, or maybe planting time, which in this case was about mid-summer.

There's a map with plow up dates on page one of this thread.

It depends on where you are. You will more on the map I posted the plains don't have destruction dates - it's because it gets so freaking cold nature takes care of it - farther south cotton can grow into a tree (seemingly) if left unchecked. The Texas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation and Texas Dept. Of Agriculture actively look for hostable cotton in those areas past the deadlines. Penalties for being out of compliance can be assessed. Keep in mind- cotton can be chemically treated. So you may see standing stalks that are dead but not hostable because they don't A. Dead, and B. don't have fruiting structures. Non-hostable does not always mean 'plowed under'.

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farther south cotton can grow into a tree (seemingly) if left unchecked

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Cotton is a perennial bush, so.....

The seeemingly was covering my literary license for use of the word tree rather than bush.

ETA years ago there would be a picture in the county paper on occasion where someone would drag a monster out of a drainage ditch somewhere. 8 feet tall or taller, with hundreds of bolls on it. That always made me wonder; if volunteer cotton hosted so many weevil- how the hell did it set all that fruit???

CanyonAg77 said:

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There's a map with plow up dates on page one of this thread.

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I dont see it, but I looked it up myself as I should have done in the first place.

This guys crop is in the Map Zone 4, which says Destruction Deadline is October 10th. As I said before, he planted pretty late and now he has a decent looking crop ready to harvest, but almost a month after the map destruction deadline.

That is kind of what I suspected but I am sure there are exceptions and a process for those exceptions.

Edit: BTW, I have thoroughly enjoyed this thread. When I was growing up (farming) nobody grew cotton around here. Now they have been growing it here for maybe 25 years and it seems to be on the increase. Therefore I never learned anything about cotton because I was long gone from the farm when the trend started coming back to planting cotton in Medina County.

Allen76 said:

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CanyonAg77 said:

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There's a map with plow up dates on page one of this thread.

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I dont think so, but I looked it up myself as I should have done in the first place.

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So I imagined the map on page 1?

I think there's an error with a picture loading. I don't see the map either, but I assume it might be in this post?

CanyonAg77 said:

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Allen76 said:

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CanyonAg77 said:

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There's a map with plow up dates on page one of this thread.

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I dont think so, but I looked it up myself as I should have done in the first place.

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So I imagined the map on page 1?

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Haha, I guess so, I still don't see it. BTW, you are fast..... I reworded "dont think so" to "dont see it" and you already caught it!

But I have looked again and again, still no map. No matter, I can google with the best of them.

Weird. It shows for me.

CanyonAg77 said:

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Quote:

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farther south cotton can grow into a tree (seemingly) if left unchecked

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Cotton is a perennial bush, so.....

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Which is why it gives the Boll Weevil Control folks fits down south. Lots of "cotton trees" around fence lines and out on ranches where they feed cottonseed.

Having seen some of the calculations in this thread, Wilkes, Parnell, Sweat, Stark and Faulkner (RIP) would be very proud of your skills!

Plastic (walmart bags, etc and bale wraps) is the new "big issue" for the textile mills. I think the ginners have had several senior capstone projects related to plastic removal prior to and at the gin recently from talking to some of the TCGA folks.

Sorry, I didn't see the map was not showing up for everyone. The Texas Dept of Agriculture is where most of the teeth in stalk destruction lies - so some of the information is over there on their website too. This is the page where you can download a form for getting an extension for not having your cotton out. I have never applied for one because you have to be waaaayyy out of the pack to need it - but I have been in situations where I've been under blanket extensions; namely after hurricanes. You can see on this page there are blanket extension now for several zones affected by Harvey, but I don't see one for Zone 4 - Wintergarden.

http://www.texasagriculture.gov/RegulatoryPrograms/CottonStalkDestruction/CottonStalkDestructionDeadlineExtensionsInfo.aspx

Usually the planting deadline gets everyone who is dryland in well before the destruction date. I have however seen irrigated cotton planted in the window get harvested late when someone is swinging for the bleachers and running water while everyone is picking. The problem with that in RGV is that the same rain we usually get Sept 1 that drives the whitewing and dove away is the one that puts a damper on all that cotton.

Interesting thread to go through for me. Growing up on the Willacy/Hidalgo line (La Sara) as kids we picked the short and point rows by hand with the women. I remember graduating at age 13-14 to a JD 99 2 row and thinking I had really cut a fat hog square in the a$$. 2 rows, a crazy wheel and no umbrella.

$5.00/day if you stuck around to clean spindles and grease at 1-2am

Late 1990's we bought a farm in Dona Ana County NM and tried a few years of the poverty weed on existing circles. COuldn't make it work even with the "pop"

Amazes me that growers in S Texas can make it work now.

The equipment and technology is awesome to see

If anyone knows where there's a restorable 1 row tractor mounted picker (not stripper) on a JD 2 cylinder, or even a Farmall....

Let. Me. Know.

my username @ yahoo



For those who've never seen them - that's a tractor mounted cotton picker attachment on a JD 60 tractor. The tractor going backwards; that same picker can be seen picking cotton in this Facebook link -

https://www.facebook.com/542029195876638/videos/1489389481140600/

Enjoyed this thread! Brought back memories of my one time "picking" cotton more than 60 years ago (I was 5 or 6). It was "only" a 30 acre field, but we did it by hand, dragging a long cotton sack down the row. That was the last time Daddy planted cotton, switching to milo thereafter. This was in far western Live Oak county.

Thirty years later, I leased a farm near San Patricio that had some cotton stubble that hadn't been plowed up. (This was Sep-Oct) Got a call from a neighbor wanting to know when I was gonna get it plowed up. Unfamiliar with the law/policy, I remember being non-committal, and he let me know I had an obligation to "take care of it". That was a good black land farm along the Nueces River.

The evolution of farm technology over my lifetime has been a thing to behold. I still have the old Farmall H my dad started farming with 70 years ago.

How far are you willing to travel? I've seen some variations of that setup in the recent past (18-20 mos) but a) I don't know if they are for sale and b) what your tolerance for "restorable" is.

I will be passing back through where I last saw one on Friday. If it's still there, I'll get you some pics and contact info.