All the major brands now have Class 10-plus combines on the market — and those machines have a big appetite. Winnipeg-based MacDon has introduced a massive header that can feed those machines fast and keep their hunger satisfied.
The new 61-foot wide FD261 FlexDraper header will be available in limited quantities for the 2025 harvest season.
“It’ll fit any of the combines our current FD2 (series) will fit on, as long as they have the lift capacity and auger length,” Russ Henderson, product manager for the FlexDraper line, says. “That was one of our goals, to keep it as common as we could with the FD2, just make it larger.
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“We tried to minimize the amount of change on it, so all your wear components and replacement parts are the same as the FD2 series, other than the sickle will be longer.”
As part of that common component strategy, the new FD261 is built on the same frame design as other FD2 headers.
“The FD2 was our first major frame change in 20 years,” Henderson adds. “And part of the thinking and development was to build a better platform to allow us to go larger. That meant when we went to develop the 61-foot, we already had the right frame structure and foundation we could build on to bring it out to that size.”
The FD261 was designed primarily for controlled-traffic farming operations that are common in Australia and South America — hence the 61-foot width. It allows one extra foot for overlap in those systems.
But with the recent growth in combine size, Prairie farmers here have expressed interest in it as well.
“Surprisingly, we’re seeing a lot of interest in North America,” he adds. “It won’t be huge numbers, but there’s more interest than what we expected. That’s primarily due to the new, larger combines that are out there, whether it’s Deere’s X9, Claas’ 8900 or the new AF11 from Case IH and the CR11 from New Holland. The Ideal 10 has been around for a while, but it’s in the 775-horsepower range as well.”
Transporting the FD261 down the road will require a trailer. It can’t use the same EasyMove transport system some of MacDon’s other headers do.
“That helps keep the weight down,” Henderson says. “It helps keep the weight fairly close to a fully loaded FD250.”
There are three sections across the header that allow for a total of 46 inches of vertical wing range, allowing it to contour over terrain. Even the centre section has some oscillating ability.
“We can still use ContourMax (contouring wheels), which we have on all our FD250s, available as an option,” Henderson says. “And we also still have our stabilizer wheels. The difference with the 261 is you can put two sets of stabilizer wheels on it. You can adjust them zero to 18 inches.”
Draper belt depth is the same 50 inches as on the other FD2 models, The upper cross auger behind the drapers extends almost the full width of the header.
“Most of the competition, on their 61-foots, have about an eight-foot gap on each end of the upper cross auger,” Henderson says. “With that, we noticed you get canola hanging up in the corner and lump feeding. We ran our auger almost to the end and have a small piece of shielding there to cover it, so there is nowhere for crop to hang up.”
