Abstract: Equipment including a pick-up head arranged on an elevated trackway for automatically picking up increments of fiber from a plurality from fiber bales, and serially delivering such fiber increments to a feeder unit which feeds the fiber to a hopper. The hopper may become choked when an excess quantity of fiber is fed thereto, and a control system is provided which automatically energizes and de-energize the feeder unit after a predetermined number of fiber increments have been delivered to the feeder unit, the total quantity of fiber in such predetermined number of fiber increments, when added to the quantity of fiber in the hopper it signals for more fiber, being less than that which will cause the hopper to become choked. A fiber guide arrangement is also included in the hopper to prevent fibers fed thereto from taking a path of movement which could choke the hopper.