Chopper attachment to improve conditioning of bio-mass type crops

A harvesting header for use on a windrower operable to process crop material standing in a field, the header comprising:

• a cutter bed comprising a plurality of cutting elements, said plurality of cutting elements arranged transverse to the header;
• and
• a crop chopping and conditioning region comprising a crop chopping device and
• a crop conditioning device, wherein the crop chopping device is configured to chop crop cut by the cutter bed into smaller lengths and the crop conditioning device is configured to crimp the crop to aid in drying, the crop chopping device includes a first chopping roller having a plurality of chopper knives mounted thereon and a second chopping roller configured to interact with the first chopping roller to chop the crop as it passes between the first and second chopping rollers, the first and second chopping rollers being arranged in a stacked relationship for rotation about respective, vertically spaced transverse axes, with the first chopping roller being driven in a first direction and the second chopping roller being driven in an opposite direction, wherein the first chopping roller has a tubular, cylindrically-shaped body and a plurality of parallel knife-mounting lugs extending radially outward along substantially the full length of the body, and the plurality of chopping knives are attached to the knife-mounting lugs and arranged around the body, and wherein each chopping knife has a length that is shorter than the length of the knife-mounting lug to which it is attached such that each chopping knife covers only a portion of the lateral length of the first chopping roller, and wherein the chopping knives are each mounted on one of the knife-mounting lugs and offset laterally from the chopping knives mounted on adjacent knife-mounting lugs around the circumference of the tubular body and arranged along the tubular body on the knife-mounting lugs in at least an abutting manner to provide chopping coverage over the entire lateral length of the first chopping roller between chopping knives positioned on one end of the first chopping roller and chopping knives positioned on an opposite end of the first chopping roller.