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West Coast dairy farmer and inventor Jock Nolan with his Hose Runner.
Rakaia-based equipment manufacturer Pluck’s Engineering will soon start production of a new machine designed to simplify the deployment and retrieval of temporary water troughs used in winter break feeding.
The trailer-mounted Hose Runner – unveiled at the South Island Agricultural Field Days where it was runner-up in the Innovation Awards – was invented and patented by Jock Nolan, from Hari Hari in South Westland, where he runs a 200-cow dairy farm.
“It’s just me and my partner Jade and the kids on the farm,” said Nolan. “So everything we do on farm we like to make it easy and simple, so we’ve come up with this system.”
The Hose Runner consists of a small, specialised trailer that carries a portable water trough and a 300m reel of 20mm diameter alkathene hose. Plugged into a permanent water supply, the unit is towed out to unwind the hose and the trough placed where needed by the stock.
Water delivery is via a fitting at the hub of the reel, so the hose stays on the reel and the full length doesn’t have to be unwound. The reel is also dismountable so it stays with the temporary trough, meaning a farmer with more than one mob can have several reels and troughs serviced by a single trailer.
Nolan says “the cunning bit” comes when it’s time to move the trough and wind the hose back in. The reel is lowered in its trailer until its rims are on the ground and the trailer’s wheels are in the air. Then towing the trailer back along the run automatically winds the hose back up.
“It’s extremely quick and extremely efficient, taking around two minutes to roll out or roll up 300 metres of pipe. If you tried to do that manually, you’ll probably be there for three hours,” said Nolan.
Nolan built his prototype in 2023, while the new production version on display at SIAFD, incorporates some Plucksuggested refinements such as a friction brake that stops the reel overrunning, and a ratcheting screw jack to raise and lower the reel in the trailer chassis.
With the first public unveiling at Kirwee, Pluck’s Engineering owner Neil Pluck says, “We’re yet to find out if anyone wants to buy one, but the vibes have been bloody good”.
“There’s a long way to go but we wouldn’t have got this far down the track had we not been confident that they would sell, a lot.”
Pluck suggests it will be of great value under new livestock rules that say farmers must not leave stock to congregate in a paddock and turn it into a “puggy quagmire”. This means cows on a feeding break should be confined to the current break rather than having access back to a permanent water trough in an area where they’ve already been, so they need to have a portable water trough accompanying them across the paddock. Pluck also points out that there’s also the health and safety aspect top consider, regarding the effort required to manually roll out and retrieve a 300m hose of alkathene.
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