Cutting off heads before they have a chance to seed is one last roll of the weed control dice, helping to reduce the weed burden in the next crop. Austrian firm DHM Engineering has devised the front-mounted BioCut for this very job, and we look at it here.
When weeds have poked their heads up above the crop it is too late for spraying with a herbicide or carrying out a pass with a hoe or weeder. Nests of thistles, wild grass, blackgrass or millet not only suppress the crop, but possibly more important is that, when they go to seed, the weed burden is going to increase in future years, depending on the rotation.
Christoph Deschberger, Georg Hanslauer and Martin Möseneder, from DHM Engineering, in Austria, have further developed a front-mounted weed cutter unit that was initially designed and built by Christoph’s father, along with a local farmer, about 10 years ago. This earlier predecessor of the DHM BioCut used the same principle of a double knife to cut off any weeds growing above the main crop canopy.
Pro and Light versions
DHM now offers the BioCut in three working widths: 6.20m, 9.20m and 12.20m in various specifications. The BioCut Light is mounted on the tractor’s front linkage. This limits the cutting height to around 1.20m, depending on the host tractor.
Alternatively, the machine can be attached to a front loader with the help of an adaptor plate. On the Light version, the operator sets the cutting height either via the front linkage or on the loader. For applications where the cutting height needs to be higher or lower than possible with the three-point linkage, DHM offers a parallelogram linkage system. This allows the lift height to be increased up to 1.60m or lowered to just 30cm above the ground.
For more up-to-date farming news and reviews click here and subscribe now to profi for just £3.99 an issue.
