WE WON'T GIVE THE "SILVER FOX" BACK!
How does the Obstraupe work in practice? What are the experiences of users of the fruit and nut harvester Obstraupe Silver Fox, who have used it for at least one season? Here you will find customer feedback, directly from other users from different years. You can find the download links below the report.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES WITH THE SILVER FOX ARE FLOWING INTO ONGOING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND OPTIMIZATION
The Obstraupe has been continuously optimized thanks to customer feedback and of course also based on our own tests and experiences, as you can see at this comparison of the different fruit pickers of the Silver Fox series. It also means that feedback from older reports doesn't necessarily apply to newer models. For example, the leaf brush for the Obstraupe was only introduced later, after many customers made the experience that when collecting with the harvester, a lot of leaves and grass ended up in the box and the effort involved in sorting it again was correspondingly high:
It worked surprisingly well, even on very uneven ground. It would be desirable if fewer leaves were picked up.”
Andreas Nüesch
The Silver Fox 02 model already had a leaf brush, but it didn't work optimally. A customer gave us the idea to use the Leaf brush to be mounted at an angle from above - this was then implemented from the Silver Fox 03 model and is also supported by our Upgrade Kits retrofitted.
It would be better to mount the leaf brush at the top, so that the dirt (leaves and branches) fall down more easily. I had to clean the leaf brush again and again."
In the following video you can see the new version of the leaf brush with a lot of hay - It enables pre-cleaning of over 90%.
WHAT'S YOUR EXPERIENCES WITH THE OBSTRAUPE SILVER FOX ON UNEVEN TERRAIN?
"It is difficult at first to set the correct height by tilting the device (distance between rubber roller and floor), but it gets better after longer use."
Tobias Schaible, model SF02
The handling on uneven terrain has also changed since the launch of the model "Silver Fox 03", after we introduced the parallel guide plate. That makes a huge difference, the driving feel is much softer and the adaptation to the ground contour is much better. The new guide plate in combination with the gap was even patentable. Here is the enthusiastic feedback from a Silver Fox 03 customer:
"Didn't think that even most of the apples will be taken out of the mouse aisles. I am very satisfied and have not regretted the investment."
WHO ARE CUSTOMERS OF OBSTRAUPE?
On average, Obstraupe customers harvest around 8 tons of cider fruit per season, and cultivate around 100 trees in yield. Some customers have harvested up to 30 tons in one season with one harvester. Farms with larger quantities but high flexibility and/or quality requirements have also invested in several harvesters and sorting tables. In principle, "typical" fruit tree customers have an annual harvest of approx. 2-8 tons of pome fruit. Some are now able to harvest more fruit thanks to Obstraupe:
"Otherwise, most of the fruit that has now been harvested would have been left lying around and rotted because we didn't have enough time to pick it up by hand and our backs wouldn't be able to take it either."
H. Messerschmidt
"Despite health problems, my wife (72 years) and I (77 years) were able to pick up 9.8 tons of apples (...) Without Obstraupe we would not have been able to accomplish this amount.”
Peter Sommer
In addition to cider producers, orchardists and farmers, there are many clubs and orchard projects , which are particularly enthusiastic about the versatile and simple use of the Silver Fox harvester and sorting tables. Here Mr. Pillichshammer speaks of the experiences within their association:
“Several people in our club have used the harvester and everyone was surprised at how well it worked. The sorting table really is its best friend. I didn't want to buy it at first, but I have to admit that the two only work perfectly together. We used to be 10-12 people harvesting, now 5-6 are enough, with only the crate unloader having to bend down.”
Johann Pillichshammer, Stehrerhof open-air museum
And the members of this fruit and gardening association were also enthusiastic:
The Obstraupe is a great product, which makes work a lot easier. Our members loved it too. We were particularly impressed by the sorting table, which also made things a lot easier for us."
Ralf Gabrich, OGB Wieseck
We are particularly pleased when the next generation can be inspired to harvest fruit:
Our grandchildren, 7 and 5 years old, were also very enthusiastic about the work and were very enthusiastic about the Obstraupe."
Gottfried Quinz, Seckau
Because when we were kids, we didn't really enjoy picking the fruit - or as one customer put it:
The Silver Fox healed my childhood trauma from fruit picking!
HOW REALISTIC IS THE PERFORMANCE OF UP TO 1T/H? WHICH FRUIT COLLECTOR IS SUITABLE FOR WHICH OPERATION?
Collection performance is like top speed. Even if your car can drive 60 m/s, you need the right conditions for it to really keep this for an hour. It's the same with picking fruit. The amount of harvest per hour depends on how dense the fruit is, how well the area is prepared. Of course, this also applies to other manufacturers. The important question is always, is comfort at work and flexibility more important or the harvest volume per hour? Is my orchard more of a traditional orchard with many types of fruit (apples, cider pears, walnuts, chestnuts...) or a cider plantation with uniform types of fruit and ripening times? Are the trees being shaken, or am I going for a high quality where only ripe fruit are harvested in several harvesting passes?
Large pick-up machines such as the well-known models from Feucht Obsterntetechnik, Bäuerle, Krauss, Tuthill or even the large models from AMB-Rousset or Monchiero can make sense for plantations. Depending on the version, the ride-on pick-up machines in particular have a high harvesting capacity of several tons per hour. The smaller devices are available for just under €10,000. With the larger ones, with an investment of several tens of thousands of euros, a corresponding utilization is necessary, which can almost only be achieved in contract operations or on very large cider farms.
Here is the summary of a customer who invested in the Obstraupe Silver Fox after studying the fruit harvesting technology market in detail:
Super price-performance ratio. A niche product for small farmers, which is not served by the "well-known competitors".In the beginning I was rather skeptical because the collection principle is based on the usual competitive products, but differs greatly in some points.In general, I imagined a poorer picking result in terms of cleanliness and quantity, but I was pleasantly surprised for a while. The specified pick-up performance of 1 ton per hour is a little optimistic, but with good logistics (picking up and delivering the boxes) and perseverance I was a solid 600-800 kg per hour. Of course, it also depends on the number of apples per square meter and the soil conditions / topography...
Tobias Schaible, Silver Fox 02
Here you will find the evaluations of the customer survey from 2018-2021 and even more customer feedback - unfortunately only in german: