Machines Used for Cotton Picking

Early Mechanization

• As early as the late 19th century, inventors tried to build a machine for picking cotton. Unfortunately, early machines failed because cotton's characteristics make harvest mechanization difficult. Even within the same field, cotton can become ready for harvest at varied rates, so there was demand for a machine to harvest ripe cotton bolls while leaving other cotton plants unharmed till later harvest. Early machines were also ineffective in removing the field debris that can cause discoloration. Some early models were pneumatic, looking like large vacuum cleaners. Others attempted chemical or electrical methods of removing cotton. An improved prototype using spindles was introduced in the 1920s. But the Great Depression and need for labor jobs put development on hold. By the mid-1940s, improved machines became widely available. When the federal minimum wage was extended to agricultural workers in 1967, hiring human labor became too costly and the conversion to machinery for harvest was complete.

Cotton Pickers

• Cotton harvest machines widely used in the United States fall into two categories: picker or stripper. Cotton pickers, also known as spindle machines, use prongs to push into the cotton boll and then twist to cleanly remove the cotton, leaving behind the burr attached to the stem. The machine has doffers -- metal bars or cylinders with teeth -- that pull the cotton from the prongs and drop it into the machine's conveyor system, which then uses air to transport the cotton into a basket on the machine. After the basket is full, the cotton is dumped into a trailer or other container for transport. Cotton picker mechanisms were developed specifically to allow machines to go over fields repeatedly without plant damage.

Cotton Strippers

• Cotton strippers have been around as long as cotton pickers. Unlike cotton pickers, cotton strippers remove the entire boll from the plant, ripe or not, and are used in regions where weather enables only one trip through the field at harvest. Traditional cotton strippers are equipped with rollers that use interchanging brushes and bars to physically knock the open bolls into the conveyor system. Some types of cotton stripping machines look and operate like the grain head on a combine, tearing the boll from the plant. Like cotton pickers, cotton strippers use an air conveyor system, coupled with a basket and trailers for transport. In recent decades, cotton strippers have come equipped with a mechanism for removing the excess stems and other debris.