PRACTICAL TEST: Last season’s woeful conditions for maize harvest certainly proved a challenge for our test Fendt forager … as, to be fair, they would have done for any harvester. Apart from a few minor details, the 850hp Katana 850 put in a decent performance.
Back in 2019, Fendt pulled the pin on production of the Katana 85 with its V12 engine from MTU. Yet today, the competitive forage harvester market
sees the resurrection of the machine in the form of the Katana 850 with a six-cylinder engine from Liebherr. Last year, we tested the flagship model with a maximum output of 623kW/847hp in grass and maize.
Though giving the forager a new styling, Fendt sticks with the largest diameter drum on the market — 720mm in diameter, 800mm wide. It also retains the familiar six pre compression rollers, but the crop flow has been modified, adopting the same layout as the Katana 650 including the cracker and larger chute.
Our test candidate featured the following specification:
●40-knife drum in maize, which is standard fit in the UK.
●heavy-duty wear parts in the good flow system (just over £11,300),
●NIR sensor from IT Photonics (for moisture and nutrient measurement, with a cost of around £23,000),
●R-Cracker with 300mm diameter rollers, each with 148 teeth, 30% speed difference (standard),
●variable fan with reverse function from Hägele (just over £6,500),
●Kemper maize header 490 plus, 12 rows, complete with running gear (just under £175,500),
●Kemper P3003 Maximum pick-up, 3.0m working width (just over £33,500)
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