What's lo mic / hi mic cotton mean?

insulator_king said:

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What's lo mic / hi mic cotton mean?

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https://www.barnhardtcotton.net/blog/what-is-a-micronaire-in-cotton-and-why-does-it-matter/

CanyonAg77 said:

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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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Great thread, Don't know why I have neglected to see this thread for two months.....gin life

Check this out, I visited Longboat Key in May and they still had cotton "trees" on the resort property, pretty cool sight to see...

Centerpole90 said:

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For the right one that I could afford I'd travel anywhere we grow cotton in the United States. Variations in the condition and price are what would shrink the bubble. I know good prospects in Texas will either be barn kept or upper Texas backland. West Texas would have been strippers and the lower gulf coast is a killer unless it's been in a shed or barn somewhere. The one above is in Arkansas, I had one found in MS once but the guy backed out.

As far as condition - I'd be more concerned about the condition of the picker than the tractor because there just anything to draw parts from. Rusty wire in the basket is manageable - totally rusted out basket lid is not. Air pipes the same way; I can't bring one back completely from the dead. The tractor under it isn't a concern because they're much more common; having said that it's best to find one on a tractor. That's because there were bucketloads of parts: linkages, rods, and clamps that married the two and without them it would be tough to make it all work right. That's why you see in the video one guy shifting the gears and another steering - I'd bet they don't have the connecting linkage to put it in gear from the seat.

This 99 is in a barn down the road. I could probably have it for the asking - but I just don't know if I have it in me for that big of a project - and if I was going that modern there are probably better examples to be had.

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I have had my eye on refurbishing one of these pickers. I've located several in some remote areas of Texas. My family members used these pickers in South Texas back in the day.

You reminded me, I have some photos of wild Pima cotton, taken at the Arizona-Sonoran desert museum near Tucson.

CanyonAg77 said:

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You reminded me, I have some photos of wild Pima cotton, taken at the Arizona-Sonoran desert museum near Tucson.

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Three Lock Bolls pretty cool

Dale Earnhardts Stache said:

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If it's round bales, they do almost the same thing except they can haul 4 round bales at a time.

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Many are hauling 6,7,8 and 10 round bale modules on flatbeds.

I can't believe all the cotton fires. With more cotton here than ever before, the fire department is fighting several cotton fires a week.

One of the local firemen told me yesterday morning about one picker that catch fire the other day just driving down the highway.

Apparently there is little fire problem with the round bales. They are wrapped so tightly that any fire is quickly extinguished from lack of oxygen.

Some are saying that we'll have three times as much cotton in the county next year as we have this year.

eric76 said:

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Some are saying that we'll have three times as much cotton in the county next year as we have this year.

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I started working in Moore, Sherman, and Hansford counties in 1997 and I'm pretty sure we were 100 miles north of the nearest cotton field. This year cotton nearly passed corn as my number 1 crop in acres. Next year it will be number 1, and likely over 50% of my acres. I have had several long time corn farmers tell me they will not drop a single corn seed next year.

Apparently the reason for so many fires this year is because of low mic cotton.

txag2008 said:

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Apparently the reason for so many fires this year is because of low mic cotton.

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We have been over 90 days without a drop of measurable precipitation. Humidity is in single digits, and I can't take off a t shirt, touch a doorknob or light switch, pet my dog, or kiss my wife without a blue flash. Static electricity is likely making the situation worse.

Hah. Yes I'm sure that's not helping the cause.

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Apparently there is little fire problem with the round bales. They are wrapped so tightly that any fire is quickly extinguished from lack of oxygen.

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Yeah, I don't think so. Cotton fibers are hollow, aren't they? They contain their own air.

Dad worked in a gin as a young man, so late 1940s. He said that if cotton in the gin caught fire, they would just continue ginning, and bale the burning cotton. Then they would throw the bale out the door, and into the water tank for the engine running the gin. He claimed that the bale would continue to burn under water.

I wasn't smart enough to ask if it was a steam engine, or a stationary engine with a big reservoir for engine cooling water.

That's a Rust. Our neighbor had one; I haven't seen one in a VERY LONG TIME....

CanyonAg77 said:

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Dad worked in a gin as a young man, so late 1940s. He said that if cotton in the gin caught fire, they would just continue ginning, and bale the burning cotton.

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That's a hard and fast rule of ginning and of course it contradicts every natural instinct when you realize you have a fire. Stopping the gin when you have a fire is how you catch the whole gin on fire and and damage the equipment; stopping the module feeder/suction hand and ginning everything out and getting in a bale protects the gin.

When I worked for Continental it was the first year the 161 gin stand was in production and 3 of the very first units were in the Cotton Growers Gin @ Dell, Arkansas that I helped erect right out of school. We had an problem with one of the stands and had a saw fire almost every night but seldom had any more damage than the seal on the battery condenser.

So I have a question as a noob. Which is better, picker or stripper? What do you have CP90?

I noticed the JD picker was almost $215k more than the stripper.

Centerpole90 said:

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That's a Rust. Our neighbor had one; I haven't seen one in a VERY LONG TIME....

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My family ran Ben Pearson Pickers. Very few have been refurbished I'm certain parts are non existent. I found three maybe they can be consolidated into one refurbished unit

All depends on the quality of the cotton grown. The picker will harvest cleaner and quicker through heavy cotton, but it will leave a lot in the not so good cotton. Most dry land cotton in west Texas is stripper cotton.

Picker cotton is typically longer season, has taller plants, and is looser in the boll.

That does not work too well up here where we have a limited growing season and frequent wind storms.

Cotton pickers pull the cotton out, whereas strippers take the whole boll, and then spit the trash out.

You usually get higher grade and quality with picker, but more pounds with stripper.

Where are you from? Does your username check out? Just curious.

Centerpole90 said:

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Where are you from? Does your username check out? Just curious.

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Yes, I'm a Gin Manager in West Texas

Are you from west tx? I'm 7/8 drunk now and trying to figure out if you're who I suspected based in username. Pardon the directness. Blame it on Beef Club bbq.

Centerpole90 said:

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Are you from west tx? I'm 7/8 drunk now and trying to figure out if you're who I suspected based in username. Pardon the directness. Blame it on Beef Club bbq.

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I am not from West Texas, but I've been living/working here off and on since '94

Are you from/lineage near Rio Hondo?

Centerpole90 said:

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Are you from/lineage near Rio Hondo?

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Seguro que Si

Es que to pensava. Yo creo me' conose su familia guey.

ETA. Nombre. Seguro que lo conosen.

One gin fire I heard about this year was on Olton. They got a fire in some cotton that fell below the bale press, into the pit with the hydraulic ram. They couldn't see it because it was below the work floor. Apparently a combination of the heat and pressure on the ram warped the ram, and it had to be replaced.

Back in the day Imwould have joked that was a cover story for another bent ram on a Lift-Box press.

Hey! I heard the story fourth hand, so it has to be totally accurate!

Corps_Ag12 said:

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So I have a question as a noob. Which is better, picker or stripper? What do you have CP90?

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Others have given bits and pieces, so here's an attempt at a more detailed answer, corrections welcome. And it's not a case of better, it's a case of what tool you need for the job.

Cotton develops inside a closed boll. When mature, the boll opens, the bracts spread apart, and the cotton inside is revealed. Picker cotton varieties have more open bracts, and the cotton is very loose, almost falling out of the bracts. Stripper varieties, sometimes called "stormproof varieties, don't open as much, and the cotton is held in more tightly. The bract is often referred to as the "bur".

A picker will use spindles on a rotating drum to grab the fiber, and yank it out of the bract. This will leave the leaves and unopened bolls on the plant.



A stripper uses a rotating set of "bats and brushes" to strip everything off the plant, leaving just a stalk. It pulls the bract and the fiber off together. Because of the way it works, the plant has to be dead, with the leaves already dropped. If there are unopened bolls, they come off, too, but get separated before the cotton in blown into the basket. Older strippers blew the bur and the cotton into the basket together. The bur got removed during ginning. Newer strippers have onboard saws that remove the bur and throw it back in the field.





Cotton is indeterminate, and will set bolls as long as the weather is good. So in someplace like the Brazos Valley, you could pick the cotton more than once before the season ends. Sometimes they will come back with a stripper for the final pass of the year.

In the Panhandle/South Plains, the growing season is barely long enough for cotton, so you get one shot at it. We let cotton grow as long as possible, and either wait for a freeze to kill it, or use a chemical defoliant. Then we make one stripper pass to harvest everything.

Not to mention that a stripper is cheaper and less complex than a picker.

I think that some pickers are in use on the plains now, but I think that's because the first baling harvesters were pickers, not strippers.

The other consideration is weather. In case you didn't know, it tends to get windy up here. Were we to use picker varieties, a lot of cotton would get blown out before harvest. Thus the need for stripper/stormproof varieties.

I'll tell this story from memory, again, corrections accepted. When the Panhandle/South Plains was settled in the late 1800s/early 1900s, cotton was one of the many crops brought in from other areas. So, of course, all the varieties were "picker" cotton. In the fall of 1926 (perhaps even on Thanksgiving Day) there was a terrible windstorm in the Lubbock area. All the cotton was blown out of the burs and scattered on the ground. One farmer (near Tahoka?) was walking his destroyed field the next day, and found one stalk of cotton that still had all its cotton.

He saved the seed from that plant, and it became the first of the "stormproof" cotton varieties.

I heard this same story 3rd hand from a producer in the area, he really had no good reason to fib.

For the record, I wasn't accusing anyone of fibbing. I was making a funny based on a now 25 year old spell where Lummus had multiple press ram failures. hence the winkie.

In case anyone has never seen a press ram changed - it comes out through the roof. The press deck for up-packing presses are usually elevated to give some relief (5-8 feet), but80% of the press is below the working floor. The upper platen of the press is only the height of a bale from the floor but it's decieving - the boxes where the bale is pressed may be 10' tall (below floor) the ram has to be that long and be able to retract UNDER the boxes; so now you're a good 25+ feet or more under the deck. In most places not named 'West Texas' the bottom of the ram in well below the water table. Changing a ram meas getting a crane and taking some metal off the roof; or at least it did in the 90s.

And I misspoke in that original post, that should have read DoorLess press, not Lift Box. The lift box was a down packing press.

https://www.facebook.com/TexasFarmBureau/videos/10157060913804167/

Pretty neat video about Adobe Walls Gin and panhandle cotton

and another

http://abc7amarillo.com/news/local/inside-the-countrys-largest-cotton-gin-in-spearman

So what's the best way to get into cotton?

I'm in the drone agriculture scene and want to apply some of that knowledge.