Pix: Dr. Jim Ansley, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station rangeland ecologist, at left, and Richard Frailey, look over the new harvester and the mesquite pile which was dumped out after making a swath through a felled pasture of trees. (Texas Agricultural Experiment Station photo by Kay Ledbetter)
When the U.S. is dependent on foreign oil and the problem for producers is growing, here is a good news for harvesters engaged in felling, picking and getting mesquite off the land – making their work easy with a new mesquite harvester.
Dr. Jim Ansley, Experiment Station rangeland ecologist has been working with private industry for the past year and a half to build the harvester prototype.
Unlike the conventional brush-cutting machines — like the Barko 775C or HydroAxe — the new harvesting machine is not self-powered and is pulled through the felled trees, powered by the HydroAxe with a hydraulic system.
The wood, from there, can be dumped into trucks for carrying them to an ethanol plant for further grounding them into sawdust and enter into the ethanol-production system.
Pix courtesy: AgNews
