A 54m³ nurse tank has increased efficiency for Northern Ireland firm McConaghy Contracts as it looks to boost work rates on larger outlying blocks of ground and keep the road tankers, well, on the road.
With farming operations looking to expand whenever possible and take on more ground, land blocks will often become rather fragmented and out of reach of light-footed umbilical spreading set-ups — not ideal when the slurry spreading window is getting shorter, resulting in huge demand for contractors such as Andrew McConaghy.
Based near Bushmills in Northern Ireland, McConaghy Contracts is a three-generation family business, with Andrew managing the day-to-day agricultural operation while his father, Robert, focuses on digger and groundwork. Even grandfather and business founder, Bob, is still actively involved in the decision-making process and helping out.
It’s not just silage and slurry that keep the firm busy, but also crop establishment and combining; indeed, there aren’t too many jobs this contracting enterprise doesn’t tackle. Its latest investment is a bespoke nurse tank to make the slurry enterprise more efficient when operating its umbilical system on any blocks of land away from a customer’s main buildings and yards.
“There are two things that have meant we’re doing more slurry work,” explains Andrew. “The splash plate ban, which is already in place for certain stock farms, and, secondly, farmers are seeing that we can do the job much quicker. Also, farms are finding it hard to get in the help, something that I think is only going to become even tougher.”
Waiting game
Slurry spreading has always been one of the services on offer for as long as Andrew can remember, with a ground-drive tanker initially used when the going was soft. An umbilical system was the next step in the aim of light-footed application.
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