Taege Drills
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Spring is in the air, farming atmosphere is positive and questions are being asked about different options of seeding systems. Taege drills can help you turn ‘dirt and dust into dollars’…
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Taege Drills
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- Computerised calibration system is simple, fast and accurate
- New sponge cover system means sponge bars don’t need to be removed when not in use
- Broadcasting system lets you spread seed close to ground to eliminate rows
- Work well on rocky and smooth ground
Contour following, individual seed depth and seed bed issues are the same for all tyne drills in cultivated soil, and the difference really comes down to what happens before and after that. Before, being calibration and seed metering; and after, being broadcasting option, harrows and roller.
Taege drills use a computerised system developed in-house for calibration, which matches up with electric motors that drive sponge rollers at varying speeds to meter the seed. It is simple, fast, accurate, and none of your expensive seed is damaged from crushing as in peas, fodder beet or maize.
When it comes to small seeds Taege drills have a unique system that only requires you to put in a small amount of seed in each drop for it to run successfully, even on steep ground, and it will run accurately right to empty, without leaving seed in the box after it has finished metering.
The sponge roller system is an area that is constantly attacked by other drill manufacturers, and also the odd vermin, however it is very manageable, and up till now the practise has been to spend a few seconds removing the complete assembled sponge bar. For the later model drills with the new collector tray system (which can be retro fitted) there is an optional new sponge cover system which seals up the sponges when the drill is not in use. This means the drill can be parked overnight with seed in it and the sponge bars don’t need to be removed.
The new broadcasting system, harrows and tyre roller are systems that can improve your results from seed drilling in all situations. The broadcasting system allows you to spread the seed close to the ground to eliminate rows, and it also has an option of channelling the product on top of the ground. The adjustable Taege tyne harrows then cover the product if desired and the tyre roller provides the final touch with cover, seed to soil contact, moisture retention, compaction, and in cultivated soil no bow wave or missed unrolled areas.
In a direct drilling situation the broadcasting system allows you to put product down the spout from the front box and broadcast from the back box, which is great for grass and clover. In a single box drill the collector tray system for the broadcasting unit allows you to have two options of seed depth. This means that when direct drilling brassicas you can have the advantage of great contour following, more tilth, better seed bed, access to extra moisture and all the while retaining a shallow seed depth. All this can make a huge difference on the strike rate and results, which at the end of the day is money in your bank.
Customer feedback
Taege Seed drills are able to perform well in hard, rough and challenging conditions, but what about when it's easy-going? And how well do they work in cultivated ground or as a conventional drill?
To answer these questions Taege talked to the end users. Taege called on Francis Hammond (aka Pecker). Pecker’s farm "Hayland" is 490ha out the back of Oxford in Canterbury and is a mixture of downy, flat, and some heavy areas with the odd stony paddock. While most of his drilling is direct with Kale, Rape, and Italian for his stock of sheep and cattle, he also does a degree of cultivation to tidy up rough paddocks, and eventually it will be all direct drilled.
When asked what experience he has had with drills, Pecker told us about the five different seed drills he has owned in the past. Like the majority of New Zealand farmers he started with an old 701 and progressed with various drills including triple discs and even a highly rated New Zealand-made complex drill requiring bucket loads of horsepower. He didn’t rubbish any of his previous drills, but when asked his thoughts about his Taege drill and tyre roller, the accolades poured in. "I’ve tried the rest and now I have the best!"
He continues, "At the end of the day I’ll be straight up with you: I quite enjoy drilling paddocks but I tell you what, since I’ve had the Taege drill I absolutely love it. I love drilling because I love watching that machine work, the simplicity of it is absolutely fantastic. When I walk around and look at other drills, and then look at the Taege the simplicity is just the ultimate.
"I’ve used the drill in various conditions since I’ve had it and whether the ground is hard or not the penetration is just brilliant. We have a bit of stony land as well and when you go across it you hardly pull a stone out of the ground. The whole operation is b****y awesome really!
"The maintenance costs are no comparison to the disc drills I’ve had, and to be honest with you I’m a pretty fussy sort of a person, and if I do something I like to be able to do it properly. I get very dissatisfied if a crop doesn’t come up properly, and I was having a few of those issues with a disc drill. With pugged ground and if it was a bit hard, I just wasn’t getting a satisfactory job. At the end of the day you’re paying good money for seed and you want it in the ground instead of on top.
"I’m pretty proud of this drill and Taege should be proud of what it has built too, because it’s a fantastic machine. In fact, the day Trevor (the sales and support person from Taege) brought the drill up to show me, he told me to put it into the road that has had logging trucks on it for years. I didn’t alter a thing from where I was using it in the paddock and it just ripped up the road. My neighbour was watching and his mouth fell open, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He was complaining because he only gets 100ha out of a set of tips from his well-known NZ made drill, but I reckon I’ll get 10 times that amount from my Taege. I can drill into cultivated ground and get a perfect even crop and then go into hard pugged ground after the winter and get the same results."
When asked if there was any tyne bounce or uneven seed depth in cultivated ground Pecker’s answer was: "Not at all. The seed that came up in worked ground all came up even as even, neat as a pin. We are doing more direct drilling now than cultivated, and the fact is, the efficiency of doing it [direct drilling] and getting the results that we are getting now makes us very comfortable with using this machine. I drilled some trashy old paddocks for a neighbour down the road and I was a bit apprehensive when I saw it, but I just drilled it and it all came up absolutely perfect.
"The computer side of it is just 100%, again it’s just great. I had a bloke come around just after last spring and I took him around all my crops and he was dumbfounded and couldn’t believe the results. He said that when he leaves here he’s going straight to the bank to sort out a loan, and is going straight around to Taege to order one."
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