JD Model 22

Ran across a JD Model 22 hay conditioner or crimper maybe it'd be called.Are these a good machine worked good etc or not?

I have the one with the intermeshing rolls not sure if that is the 22 or 32. Dad had the other one with the crusher rolls. Both worked good to recondition hay that was ran thru a haybine. Rarely did either wrap but sometimes it would grab a bunch from the next windrow and then wrap. Both of ours were hyd raise which might have helped with less wrapping. A old friend told the story of having his wife crimp hay with a Cuttingham conditioner and a John Deere A. He came to check on her and she was crying because it kept wrapping up.The next morning he went and bought a brand new Deere 22 or 32(had the crusher rolls)and said she finished the field without a single wrap.He also bought a used no.10 side mounted mower for his 60 and then pulled the conditioner behind while mowing. Tom

The 22 is the crimper and the 32 is the crusher. 32 might have been good, 22 was poop on crimping, did nothing to crack the stems. The 21 was the one that would do a good job (21 had same style as orignal in rolls but has short commings taken care of). We had the orignal style think no 1 JD, gave up the gost and got an AC crusher, it did not do as good a job as thr Deere. Bought a 22 and it was such a poor job was not worth running over the crop, went back to the AC that we had kept and sold the 22. The 32 was more like the AC in way it worked. The 22 would do about the same as a tedder to just lift winrows to get air through for drying. We then got a Case mower-conditioner (same as a Heston PT10) and once in a while we would use that old AC to give thibgs a second crush; That was the only way we could get drying time the same as the No1 JD. The JD 22 was 3 days longer than the No 1. Never had much wraping problems with any of them. Red clover, red clover-timothy mig, alfalfa and alfalfa-timothy mix. This was 40 years ago so consider 40 years of use if used wear. If I was going to have one to use now I would want the No 21. The 31 was a crusher but made on same frame as the 21 crimper. Also used a McCormick crusher before we bought the JD NO 1 unit

If the grass was a thick stem grass it might have done the job but a thin stem no way.

Its at a farm that is being cleaned up guess I'll being it home otherwise it'll go to scrap.Appears to be complete and good shape,also getting a NH 404 conditioner and a nice
NH 455 trailer type mower,have 2 NH 456 mowers I use now.

Farm I worked on bought one, probably an Oliver because it came from the Oliver dealer, or may have been a short line. It kept wrapping up- had the dealer out a couple times, he made some adjustments, still wrapped up. Discovered the problem by accident- I had been mowing the field, then go get the conditioner. Started mowing one field and mower broke after only a round or so. Figured I'd condition what I'd mowed before taking the mower in to fix it. Wonder of wonders, did the whole round without a wrap. Turns out that when hay starts drying, it gets sticky, and that's what made it wrap. After that we'd either have one guy mow and the other condition, or I'd mow a couple of rounds then condition it.

I haven't seen one used in probably 40 years.

My NH 456 mower has a hitch for the NH 404 conditioner I use sometimes,can mow and condition at the same time works fine.

We had an Oliver mower with that conditioer hitch and pulld conditioner behind it over a lot of acres. The problem with the 22 conditioner was it was supposed to crack the stem every 2" and rolls were not close enough to do that in the hay we raised. The orignal crimper rolls cracked the stem every inch and rolls were closer together, top roll drove bottom roll and were very noisy. the 21 had the rolls both driving so rolls were close together but did not hit so were a lot quieter but that stem being cracked every inch instead of every 2" left it to dry faster, the crusher cracked stem full lenght. I dont know what tyoe of hay you have but if it is heavy and course stem it should work for you. Type of hay we raised was not that heavy and small stem.