A new 6m Close Coupled Toolbar (CCT) from Grange Machinery has been purchased by the Stracathro Estate, located on the Aberdeenshire/Angus border.
Owned by the Campbell Adamson family, 1,600ha of crops are grown yearly, with 1,000ha of grass, wholecrop rye, arable silage and fodder beet for its anaerobic digester. The rest is winter and spring wheat, winter and spring oats and oilseed rape.
Iain Wilson, farm manager, notes that compaction and tight weather windows are major challenges for the firm. “Traffic is a constant issue: we spread all the digestate from the AD plant on the farm, mainly in spring and autumn and it’s not always possible in perfect conditions. Plus we have four cuts of silage and the fodder and sugar beet harvest traffic to deal with.”
He started looking for a high-capacity tool that could offer deep soil loosening while keeping passes to a minimum. “I’d moved from another local estate which used a 3m Grange toolbar in front of its Vaderstad drill, so I could see what an effective tool it is and the flexibility offered. I’d also experienced Grange Machinery’s excellent build quality, so I knew it was an implement that I could rely on.”
He arranged a demonstration of a 6m unit from local dealer Sellars and says that he was quickly convinced that it would fit within the system.
“An important task for the CCT is to attach to our existing 6m Lemken discs, allowing us to deep loosen and cultivate in one pass, working down to 20-25cm to take out compaction,” he explains. “But I can also drop off the discs to use it as a stand-alone subsoiler, while the folding design means it can work at 3m behind the tractor to take out tramlines.”
The 6m CCT has 12 Grange low disturbance legs spaced at 50cm and capable of working down to 30cm. As the name suggests, it couples close to the tractor, with just 1.1m from the hitch to its rear link arms. The Estate also specified auto-reset legs.
“We also have to contend with large amounts of trash, from the grass or chopped straw, so the front discs help to cut through this, while the generous clearance avoids blocking,” Iain comments.
The CCT and disc setup can be pulled by the farm’s existing 370hp and Iain notes that they are doing more in one pass, and getting more use out of the discs. The machine can also be used as a track eradicator in its folded configuration, with Cambridge rolls on the back ahead of fodder beet drilling, or as a one-pass grassland subsoiler with a set of heavy rolls.
“We may find even more uses as we go on, but we’re confident that it will do a good job and solve the issues of needing to remove compaction without extra costly passes or more equipment,” he concludes.
For more information go to www.grangemachinery.co.uk