increase font size
The 250,000th CLAAS mower – a Disco 3200 FC – rolled off a production line in Germany recently.
Claas has recently celebrated the 250,000th CLAAS mower – a Disco 3200 FC – rolling off the production line in Bad Saulgau, south-west Germany.
Front mowers play a key role in boosting the productivity and quality of forage harvesting, says Dirk Röhrich, global product team manager Greenline.
“Our mowers have evolved from a simple side-mounted mower to the front-rear mower combination with or without conditioner, that virtually doubled the area mown, while reducing the number of passes. The next step to a triple mower combination paved the way for enormous increases in quality and productivity.”
The current Claas Disco product range comprises of around forty different models with working widths from 2.2 to 10.7m.
Since 1996, Disco disc mowers have encompassed innovations like the Max Cut mower bed with its wave-shaped profile, the hydro-pneumatic Active Float suspension or vector folding. Starting out initially with a working width of 2.6m, Claas were quick to respond to growing demands, unveiling its first Disco butterfly mower in 1999.
Meanwhile, at Agritechnica 2005, it showcased the Cougar self-propelled mower with a working width of 14m – the widest and most powerful mower on the market at the time. In 2007, the vertical 90-degree transport folding previously used in rear mowers was superseded by the 120- degree transport position with the centre of gravity shifted inwards. Since 2021, diagonal vector folding in the Disco 4400 has enabled safe, legal road transport for working widths of 4.2m, an innovation which was extended in 2021 to the Disco 1010 with working widths of up to 9.9m.
For more than 15 years, Disco large-scale mowers have been available with Auto Swather swath grouping with cross conveyors, with 2023 seeing the launch of the flagship Disco 9700 RC Auto Swather with roller conditioner for highly productive biomass crops yielding over 60 t/ha.
Last year, Direct Swather technology combined with a tapered swathing auger has enabled swath grouping to be performed without a conditioner, making it an efficient option for lighter four-cylinder tractors.
Having already hit the headlines for recycling broken 2.4 metre vineyard posts into 1.8 and 1.6 metre, half and quarter posts for agriculture, Repost recently hit the milestone of one million posts recycled, diverting the CCA treated posts from landfill.
New Zealand-based company Robotics Plus, a specialist in agricultural automation, has announced an agreement for it to be acquired by Yamaha Motor to form Yamaha Agriculture.
Among the regular exhibitors at last month’s South Island Agricultural Field Days, the one that arguably takes the most intensive preparation every time is the PGG Wrightson Seeds site.
Silage making is both a science and an art, but Claas says it offers onboard technology featured in its Claas Perfect Partners to help farmers make silage more efficiently and effectively.
Since Donald Trump’s import tariff announcement, the world has been on a wild economic ride.
Among the regular exhibitors at last month’s South Island Agricultural Field Days, the one that arguably takes the most intensive preparation every time is the PGG Wrightson Seeds site.
Two high producing Canterbury dairy farmers are moving to blended stockfeed supplements fed in-shed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to boost protein levels, which they can’t achieve through pasture under the region’s nitrogen limit of 190kg/ha.
Buoyed by strong forecasts for milk prices and a renewed demand for dairy assets, the South Island rural real estate market has begun the year with positive momentum, according to Colliers.
The six young cattle breeders participating in the inaugural Holstein Friesian NZ young breeder development programme have completed their first event of the year.
New Zealand feed producers are being encouraged to boost staff training to maintain efficiency and product quality.
OPINION: The world is bracing for a trade war between the two biggest economies.
OPINION: In the same way that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, economists sometimes get it right.
OPINION: The proposed RMA reforms took a while to drop but were well signaled after the election.
