Soil moisture: no more looking over the fence
Farm manager Bryan Mitchell describes as brilliant the SCADAfarm systems that allow him to remotely monitor and manage the irrigation of his 300ha of leased grazing land near Kirwee.
The Powerspread Dairy and Pro Series spreaders handle liquid manures or slurries, and more solid farmyard manures.
Side discharge to the offside of the machines is said to spread material evenly up to 18 m.
Ag and Civil says this layout helps reduce environmental damage near watercourses or field boundaries and enables material to be spread up and down inaccessible slopes.
Both ranges have broadly similar layout: a tapered, watertight body carrying a full length auger revolves at 13 rpm, bringing material from the front and rear to a central discharge area.
Here a guillotine style gate controls the delivery rate to the spreading rotor.
The gate, made from Hardox steel, also acts as a shear bar to break up material into small pieces for a more even spread.
The spreading rotor rotates in an overshot manner at speeds up to 700 rpm to achieve the required spreading width. The tapered body has an 8 mm thick floor, and heavy duty chain and sprocket drives are individually protected by a shear bolt overload system.
The Powerspread Dairy versions, in 7.0 and 7.5 cu.m capacities, are equipped with brakes and road legal lighting kits as standard.
The Powerspread Pro models include several extra features -- shear bolts on the auger paddles, a wide angle PTO shaft, hydraulic drop down rotor floor, front and rear slurry canopies and a rear ladder.
They come in four sizes. The 1800 and 2300 models (8000 and 10,500 L capacity, respectively) are short wheelbase -- 6.1 m long overall and very manoeuvrable.
The larger 2400 and 3200 models (11,000 and 14,500 L respectively) are 7.5 m long and can have optional tandem axles.
