“We’d never done our own drilling before, and I’ve been surprised by how easy it has been to set up and use the Kverneland ts-drill,” explains David Pineo of JD & JM Pineo and Partners, Laurel Farm, Edingworth near Weston-Super-Mare. “And from drilling cover crops after maize, I’ve now progressed to sowing our own wheat and barley, plus a peas and barley mix for whole crop.”
“And I really like what the drill has done so far,” he says. “When you input the seed type into the Focus 3 control box, it tells you what seed rollers to use – it’s very straightforward and very accurate.”
Supplied by Read Agri Services, the 48-row ts-drill arrived on standard coulters at 12.5cm row spacing. Mr Pineo also opted for the low disturbance, narrow tine option, which he says will be much easier to pull on his heavy clay land using the farm’s Deutz-Fahr 6.185 tractor.
“Seed placement and establishment is really good, but with the narrow tines, it should become even easier to direct drill straight behind the forager, as soon as the maize comes off,” he says. “This means lower cost establishment, and with less fuel too, which will add to my efficiency.”
Better efficiency has also been put into operation at Laurel Farm with the switch from two 3m NG-S power harrows to one 5m folding NG-H F30 model.
“Historically, we had been using two 3m models for ease of transport around our narrow lanes, but as tractors have increased in power, we ran the power harrows using economy pto settings,” he says.
Having finally made the decision to go wider, he says efficiency has been given a boost.
“Swapping to one 5m folding model now means the same work can be done using one tractor and one operator,” he says. “And with GPS, there’s very little overlap, which again, all adds to my overall efficiency.”
Want to speak to a specialist?
E-Mail Simon Wills, Kverneland seeding specialist: info-uksales@kvernelandgroup.com
