Growing maize for seed is big business in many European countries. The crop is harvested by dedicated machines, such as this Bourgoin B410 corn picker.
The Dutch Ploeger Oxbo Group acquired all the shares of French manufacturer Bourgoin in 2013, and while Oxbo’s expanding portfolio of self-propelled machines includes the modern day B620 seed corn harvester, there are still lots of red and grey Bourgoin B410, B510 and B610s at work.
We stumbled across this contractor owned B410 deep in southern France close to the Pyrenees mountains where many thousands of hectares of maize are currently being chopped for silage, combined for grain or harvested for seed.
The six-cylinder John Deere Stage III engine develops 245hp at 1800rpm and drains diesel from a 600-litre tank. Mated to a three-speed hydrostatic transmission, this provides field, intermediate and road speeds of 0-10km/hr, 0-15km/hr and 0-25km/hr, respectively.
Up front is a six-row Dominoni header. Cobs are stripped using a combination of conveyor belts, stem extraction rollers and two large-diameter fans. All debris is blown out through a side chute, while cobs end up in the 10m³ bunker. This was being unloaded into containers for trucking to the processing plant.
Growing maize for seed is a different process than silage and grain. For example, the field is drilled twice; first with two rows of male seed, and a week or so later the gaps are filled with two rows of female seed. The male plants are harvested when pollination is complete, followed 10 days later by the female plants when the DM is between 25-40%. The cobs from the field we saw were destined for a local cooperative and yields of around 5.0t/ha of dry seed are the norm.
Incidentally, there are numerous used B410s for sale on the internet. We found a 2011 (6,500-hour) machine listed for €78,000, while the asking price of a 2013 made and 3,000-hour example is €150,000.
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