Chopper woes

We had 5 loads of hay left to chop last Saturday afternoon...........I made a round and had started in on the 2nd round around the small field when all of a sudden...............CRACK..............and everything stopped RIGHT NOW!!! (not motor, the chopper mechanism). We have an old self propelled Field Queen chopper; it's an old crutch but still gets the job done. Well, not that day it didn't. Brought it home and Spouse started digging around in the knives; one was bent bad, and there was a hunk out of the shear bar. He couldn't even turn the cutter bar all the way around, something was hitting and binding it up. I told him I knew I didn't run a big wad of hay in it, and besides, the crack sounded like metal. DS#1 went over to the neighbors' and "borrowed" his tractor and chopper to go finish. Son runs a combine for him in the fall and does some planting for him in the spring besides his own town job, so he can do that kind of thing. :>) So, we did get done that day, only not with our own chopper. Spouse torched a knife out of ours yesterday afternoon.........hmmmm.........seems like I tried to chop a barn cleaner paddle. At that point the knives must have been kinda sharp, as there is a slice out of the paddle.. Not anymore. I told him it was kinda hard to stop for something in the row I couldn't even see. I'm surprised it didn't take some knives out of the discbine when he mowed it. Oh, well.............I'm sure it will be quite costly to replace knives. He doesn't know yet if the spider on the cutterbar is shot; if it is I KNOW it will be pricey. Like, thousands.............several of them. *sigh*.............I was only trying to do my job and finish. Such is life on the farm.