Showing off his invention at the Innovations Show Place at Canada’s Farm Progress Show in Regina last June, Steve Kastning described how he and his wife came up with the design of the Duck Foot header finger, which was designed to solve a problem on their own farm.
“I found in lentils, it was stripping or it (crop material) would just sit there and take two or three bats from the reels to get it to go through,” he explains. “(With the Duck Foot tines) you can slow the reel down, and I found it fed so much better. It clears the cutter bar way better.”
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The plastic Duck Foot fingers simply snap onto a reel’s existing tines to better sweep short material off the cutter bar and keep it moving toward the feeder house.
“You don’t get any of that grain loss, and guys are finding you can increase speed ½ to ¾ of a mile per hour,” he adds. “They’re easy on and off. They fit right over the existing finger. Just pull it on and pull it off. You can further secure it with a zip tie if needed; we recommend that in lentils and soybeans. If they do come off, they come out the stone trap or right out the back. They don’t hurt anything.”
The Duck Foot fingers are designed for the MacDon FD and D Series. But they also fit some Case IH, John Deere and New Holland header reels. And they are made out of the same type of plastic as OEM tines, so they are durable and can be left in the sunlight without breaking down.
Kastning says he is currently looking for dealers willing to retail the tines, but at the moment they can be ordered online from agsolutionsonline.com and other web retailers.
“They’re selling for US$8.50,” he adds.
