Finnish drill gives Victoria family fine finish
Victoria farmer Robert Hooppell and his sons Andrew and Lachlan spent years looking for the perfect seed drill. They finally found it in Finland – The TUME Agri Nova Combi 3000.
Together the Hooppells farm 500 hectares about 100 kms north of Melbourne, where they run prime lambs and breed first-cross ewes.
Andrew says they have always been fussy with machinery and spent the past five years trying to find a drill that was robust enough for their conditions, and also had the right working width and spacings.
“We did a lot of Internet research and visits to field days but we hadn’t found what we wanted,” he says. “Then, in a search one day, Tume-Agri Oy popped up. We asked some questions and went through the process of talking to them and they were fantastic. Mum and Dad were in Europe in October and they went to Finland to look at the drill and confirm it was what we wanted. Now here it is.”
The Hooppells wanted a twin-disc seeder with large-capacity seed and fertilizer boxes. lt had to be 3 m wide so it could be towed anywhere on their district’s busy roads without causing havoc in traffic. Discs were the preferred ground-engaging method due to the volcanic soils and associated natural rock burden where they farm. ln their area, tine seeders tend to bring lots of rocks to the surface, even in ‘clean’ paddocks. Those rocks then have to be removed, whereas a disc seeder tends to keep rocks below the surface and simply rolls over larger stones.
The Nova Combi is a multi-purpose seed and fertilizer drill for ali cultivation methods and soil types. lt is suitable for direct sowing into very hard ground, drilling after minimum harrowing and traditional sowing into fallow s0il. Robert says another bonus of the Nova Combi seed drill is that it has an additional small seed box, which was not offered on some machines with similar configurations.
Recently the Nova Combi 3000 arrived into Australia, and when this article was written it had sown about 24 hectares of ryegrass. So far, it has met every expectation the Hooppell family had, and then s0me.
“lt is making our life so much easier. Germination has been far and above what we achieved with our previous machine or other machines we have used,” Andrew says.
“lt is staggering. lt has reduced our manual handling considerably. lt’s working speed is much faster and we do not have to stop.”
“We sow faster and it is a very simple process to get it set up in the paddock. lt is a one-minute job. You get out of the tractor and engage the ground wheel and go.”
The consistent sowing depth and even metering improve seed germination. “The drill follows the ground exceptionally well. The depth gauge wheels are very broad, s0 they don’t sink into the ground. We have done some direct drilling with it and s0me drilling into heavily fallowed country, which is like powder.
“lt has maintained the sowing depth really well in both conditions. Most machines can’t handle both tilled ground and direct drilling as well as this machine can.”
Andrew says operating the Nova Combi 3000 can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. “You can drive it like a conventional seeder that s0meone in the 1950s would have used, or you can monitor sowing and fertilizer rates and increase fertilizer or s0wing for different parts of the paddock.”
The Tume-Agri Oy Nova Combi 3000 is heavy, strong and easy to calibrate and use.
ln addition to ryegrass, Robert, Andrew and Lachlan pian to use the drill to sow oats and pasture seed, as well as rape and fodder turnips in the spring.
Alkuperäinen juttu (englanniksi): Ag Contractor magazine (July/August 2019 edition)
Lue lisää: Nova Combi seed drill
Lue lisää: Super Nova Combi kylvölannoitin
