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Sandy Fleming pictured with daughter, Violet and son, Lucas, with the Agrispread AS65 spreader.
With a focus on producing their own on-farm dairy feed requirements, it would be safe to say that the Fleming family are no strangers to a fertiliser spreader on their North Canterbury farm, near Culverden.
Together with his father Mark, Sandy Fleming milks about 1,050 mainly Friesian cows on a 400 hectare property, while raising 300 yearling replacements, 300 rising two-year-old replacements and young bulls on a 230ha support block. Some of the 130 bulls reared, including Speckle Park’s, are used over the cows, while Jerseys are the preferred choice to cover first-calvers.
AR1 ryegrass is grown for the cows, with pea and barley cereal crops are grown for silage production. Some straw is bought in, with some hay and grass bales occasionally produced on the support block.
The regime sees fertiliser applied monthly on grass from September through to April, with cereal crops receiving a single application post-establishment.
Applications include nitrogen, super phosphate and ammonium sulphate products, with the former capped to a maximum 190 units each season.
Much of Sandy’s day was previously spent on a tandem-axle fertiliser spreader, but a decision to upgrade around two years ago saw the arrival of an AgriSpread single-axle spreader, and with it, multiple benefits.
Built in County Mayo, Ireland, where the AgriSpread business was established in 2006, the AS 65 was supplied by Power Farming Canterbury at Rolleston. The machine, weighing in at around 2.8 tonnes unladen, holds 4 tonnes of nitrogen and up to 9 tonnes of line, usually pulled by a 280hp tractor.
In practical terms, the upgrade has allowed the Flemings to increase their spreading width to 24 metres, compared to the 15m width of their previous spreader, helping to significantly reduce spreading time, with the ability to go as wide as 36m, depending on weather conditions.
“All my time was spent spreading fertiliser, now I have the time to tackle other farm jobs,” Sandy said.
Utilising a hydraulic drive system, compared to the friction drive of the old machine, the AS 65 also features hydraulic control of the spinners and drop point adjustment, while load cells ensure accuracy of spreading across the full working width.
The hydraulic-driven spreaders are also compatible with most ISOBUS GPS systems for monitoring and control of spread rates from inside the cab, and they come ready for variable rate applications and with the option of section control.
“We’ve always been fans of load cells. The accuracy is brilliant, and the spread pattern is very good,” Sandy said. “Every time I spread something different, I do 5ha, write the weight down, then I run the numbers, and once I know, I just keep going.”
Sandy says that the spreader is a quality-built machine that still “looked like new” and included standard equipment such as hydraulic brakes, transport lights, load drive monitoring and a 120mm x 120mm section axle.
Opting for oversized tyre equipment and working in conjunction with the standard damped drawbar coupling, the set up was ideal for traversing over irrigator pivot ruts compared with the previous tandem axle spreader.
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