October 11

Did you ever wonder why some of the cotton was shaped like loaves and some of it was round?  Here's an explanation, by guest blogger Melinda Williams Chapman, who lives on a cotton farm near Lorenzo, Texas:

The loaf shaped ones are what most everyone is making. They are built in the module builders. The round bales are something that is new in the past couple of years. There is a cotton picker that John Deere makes that actually makes these inside the picker as you are pulling the cotton. When the round bale is made it is wrapped in a plastic wrap and then dumped in the field where ever you happen to be. Case also makes a cotton picker that does the same thing, but the modules are square and look kinda like half of a regular module. These are very expensive and there aren't many out there yet, especially in this part of the country where we run cotton STRIPPERS instead of cotton PICKERS. It does save on equipment and labor costs though. Stripping cotton to make the big modules requires a stripper, a tractor to run the boll buggies (which is what the stripper dumps the cotton into) and a tractor to run each module builders (which is what the boll buggy dumps into) and someone to run the stripper, the tractor for the boll buggy and the module builder. With the new cotton pickers you could conceivably strip cotton alone. Steven has talked about buying one of the new module building pickers, but is waiting to see if John Deere will make a cotton stripper that will do it instead of the cotton picker. Cotton pickers are generally used where the cotton grows tall. The row units are tall and have little fingers that turn on a vertical shaft that actually "pick" the cotton out of the burr. Stripper row units are short and made to harvest shorter. Those row units have brushes that "strip" everything off of the plant and then they have what is called a burr extractor that separates the burrs from the cotton before it is blown back into the basket. Gins are having to modify how they move the round modules to get them into the ginning process. Our gin at Lorenzo has 1 farmer out here who has one of the pickers that makes the round modules and they had to figure out last year how to move the modules without spending a ton of money on equipment to handle just one farmer's cotton. 

And so now, thanks to that fine explanation, you know!

Arnett Gin

Hockely County, Texas