Agricultural baler with conditioning rotor and shear bar for feeding baling chamber

An agricultural baler, comprising:

• a chassis;
• a pickup carried by the chassis and comprising a plurality of rotatable tines configured to pick up crop material;
• a baling chamber carried by the chassis and configured to form a bale from crop material;
• and
• a feeding assembly carried by the chassis and configured to receive picked up crop material from the pickup and supply crop material to the baling chamber, the feeding assembly comprising:
• a rotatable rotor carrying a plurality of projections configured to feed crop material to the baling chamber as the rotor rotates;
• and
• a shear bar disposed between the pickup and the rotor and configured to cooperate with the projections carried by the rotor to condition crop material before the crop material is fed to the baling chamber by the projections, wherein the shear bar comprises a plurality of tine slots that allow the tines to pass through the shear bar during rotation.

A method of feeding crop material to a baling chamber of an agricultural baler that is configured to form a bale from fed crop material, the method comprising:

• picking up crop material with a plurality of tines of a rotating pickup;
• feeding the crop material to the baling chamber with a feeding assembly comprising a rotating rotor carrying a plurality of projections that feed the crop material to the baling chamber and a shear bar disposed between the pickup and the rotor such that the shear bar cooperates with the projections carried by the rotor to condition crop material before the crop material is fed to the baling chamber by the projections;
• and
• activating an actuator to move the shear bar from (i) a conditioning position where the shear bar cooperates with the projections to condition crop material to (ii) a non-conditioning position where the shear bar does not cooperate with the projections to condition crop material.