One customer to take early delivery of the new Krone Big X 1100 forager is Leicestershire contractor Julian Birch (pictured).

He has had the 1031hp pre-series machine since the beginning of this years’ silage season and has chopped 650ha (1600acres) of first cut grass, 300ha (750acres) of second cut and 180ha (450acres) of wholecrop.

Before buying the Big X 1100, Mr Birch ran a Claas Jaguar 900 for five years from his base at Worthington near Loughborough. “What Claas has at the moment wasn’t quite what I wanted – I didn’t want a twin-engine machine.”

But the change came with a few conditions. “If we changed make, we wanted to be guaranteed that the dealer network would be able to cope with any breakdowns.” This went for the size of the engine, too he adds. “We figured that opting for the larger engine would result it being under less strain. Although we’re not the biggest contractors, we like to be able to do the job comfortably.”

Mr Birch expected his usual forager driver to be fairly negative about changing makes. “But the build quality and cab was enough to win him over pretty quickly.

“Because of the size of the engine, you don’t hear the characteristic engine droop, just the cylinders,” he adds. “We’ve always had to hammer foragers in the past to get through the acres, but we’re hoping not to have to do that with the bigger machine.”

Mr Birch reckons he’s using no more fuel than he did with the 605hp Jaguar 900. “True, Eco Power has been quite satisfactory so far, but I am sure that during maize we will be using the X Power setting.” With X-Power engaged, he quips, 50ft grass could be chopped at 30kph. “Not that we’ve tried it.”

An X Disc header is used on the wholecrop, and Mr Birch has purchased 3m and 3.8m headers for grass. A 14-row maize header stands ready in the shed ready for the autumn harvest.

There are three drums available – one with 20 knives, one with 28 knives and a Biogas version with 40 knives. Mr Birch has opted for the Biogas drum which can offer both shorter and longer cut lengths. “We have two clients with biogas plants who will need a chop length of around 5mm – so that’s where the benefit comes in.”

So far, two wheel motors have gone on the right hand front wheel, but Krone has had the forager up and running within 12 hours in both cases and there hasn’t been any serious downtime. “As it’s a pre-production machine we have to expect glitches, but according to Krone this problem has now been resolved. It gave us confidence in the back-up.”

• Read more about the Krone Big X 1100