Patent ID: 7716904

Claim:
A specialty crop harvesting header for seed bearing crop for longitudinal forward movement across a field of standing crop comprising an elongate front opening oriented generally transverse to the direction of forward movement; a rotary cutterbar disposed along a forward-facing bottom edge of the front opening for severing the standing crop from the ground, the rotary cutterbar having a plurality of rotary cutters and at least one drive cutter, said at least one drive cutter being positioned at an end of said cutterbar; a drive mechanism to direct drive power to the cutterbar for operation thereof, said drive mechanism having a drive device being connected to said at least one drive cutter through a vertically-oriented exposed rotating shaft spanning between the drive device and drive cutter; the specialty crop header not including a rotatable drum around a portion of the shaft above the cutterbar; and a shield for enclosing said shaft and directing crop around the shaft of the drive mechanism towards said front opening, the shield extending in a lateral direction from the sidewall past the shaft and sloped rearward with respect to the direction of forward movement of the header, and wherein the bottom edge of the shield directly forward of the shaft is adjacent to a top edge of the at least one drive cutter.