Justifying ever increasing machinery prices can be tough when there are plenty of other outgoings to consider. Add to this an enthusiasm for building farm equipment and developing his own min-till drill was a natural choice for Mike Morley.
KEEPING IT BRIEF
- Kockerling Trio cultivator was the foundation of the homemade drill.
- The different coulters were sourced from Bourgault.
- The project has cost substantially less than £10k.
M R and S A Morley farms 160ha of arable and 80ha of grass including SFI leys near Pickering in Yorkshire. Since Mike Morley joined the business alongside his mother and late father, he has expanded the livestock interests to 120 store cattle raised from 150-500kg, of which 90 are wagyu plus 2,000 ‘bed and breakfast’ pigs.
“It keeps us busy,” he comments. “My wife also runs a glamping and group accommodation business on our own farm, and all told there’s not much time for sitting on a tractor.’
With soils varying from heavy clays to gravel, the farm has been min-tilled for some 25 years, Mike explains.
“Some land will plough but just doesn’t work down. We use a Väderstad Carrier to chit, but as we don’t plough, any compaction is just below the surface so we rarely need to subsoil. When considering a new drill, the aim was to go towards direct drilling where possible and to take out any pans left by the Carrier.”
Sowing change
After trying other min-till drills, a Horsch Pronto was acquired in 2010 and Mike built a toolbar based on a He-Va Combi-Lift to go on the front to lift out compaction, but the downside of this machine is its complex operation.
“I really wanted something very straightforward that I could put my tractor driver on and leave him to it if I was busy with the stock, so I began to look into the options for building a drill.”
This would seem to run in the family – Mike still has an old Massey Ferguson drill for which his father fabricated a set of points.
So where to begin with the min-till drill? “
I’d bought a Köckerling Trio stubble cultivator in a farm sale and was impressed with its generous leg and underframe clearance, plus it has a clever curved harrow ahead of the press to cover the seeds,” he explains.
The build
Mike had worked on a number of projects – including building a grain dryer from a kit won at Cereals – with local drill specialist and engineer Craig Avison so he approached him with his idea. “Part of the specification was for a hydraulic driven fan due to the tight frame layout on the cultivator.”
Craig agreed to source a hopper and metering system from his own extensive stocks, so the next step was to choose the right tools.
“I found Bourgault during my research and after a discussion with the company’s sales manager Stuart Aldworth, he offered to send me a selection of tools to try,” he says. “One challenge was to get the point and seed boot at the right angle to fit on the Köckerling leg and go into the ground level. Bourgault offers a wedge to go between the point and the leg which makes it sit just right.”
While the aim is to work as shallow as possible on the better ground, the Bourgault point can also be set deeper using the depth wheel and press, for example for beans. The winged share can combine with either a seed boot for beans or with a band sowing coulter; both can work at a good forward speed due to the generous clearance between the ten legs spread across three rows. The curved harrow, ring press and following harrow are part of the Köckerling Trio design. Mike points out, “Everything is really well made and thought out, down to the scrapers on the press. It’s built more like a drill than a cultivator, so although I didn’t know that much about Köckerling, it’s no surprise to find that they build drills as well.”
Keep on moving
All of the farm’s straw is baled for the stock so trash is not too much of a problem, but the soils can soon turn tacky so the free-flowing design is important, while the press leaves a level finish. “I would say we can go an extra day when the weather starts to turn with this harrow and press,” he notes.
The hopper came from a Lemken Solitair 9 along with its drill computer which works alongside a retrofit Topcon GPS guidance and steering wheel motor system. A set of steps which look to have been salvaged from a Sulky give safe access to the hopper. “The hopper looked pretty rough on first sight but certainly does the job.”
And the results?
Mike reckons that the first set of points lasted 38ha, which included direct drilling on hard ground after oilseed rape.
“It was about £5/ha which is similar to power harrow tines.”
The speed and ease of changing, alongside the wide choice of points, has made an impression on him. “Bourgault’s Speed Loc system means that the points can be swapped in minutes without tools; the seed coulter is just a single bolt, too,” Mike comments. “We’re using around 7 litres per hectare of fuel to drill and considerably less labour than a plough-based system and we’re achieving better seedbeds.”
In the most stop-start of seasons and when stock duties rule out an early start, the ‘new’ drill has made an important contribution alongside the Horsch Pronto, clocking up 2.4ha/hr.
“We’ve never got into the habit of drilling late – although there is blackgrass pressure – because once this land is wet, that’s it. Even in 2023 we managed to get drilled up and although we flooded afterwards, I still believe that the seed is better in the ground than in the shed.”
He reckons that the project cost £1,800 plus the value of the cultivator: £1,000 for points and £800 for the Solitair.
So, what’s next?
That old MF drill that has been sitting in the hedge. “I’ve got a Simba Toptilth and will add a single row of Bourgault legs and tines, before Craig fits the drill,” Mike explains. “Plus, there’s the option to modify the Köckerling drill for direct drilling – we’d need to add a knife leg or a toolbar similar to the one we’ve made for the Horsch.”
It’s good to have a plan to keep busy over the winter.
POINTS TO MAKE
Bourgault Tillage Tools UK was established in 2021 as a subsidiary of Canadian manufacturer FP Bourgault Tillage Tools to offer products specifically for the UK market. The business supplies both OEMs and end users.
“Choosing the right tool is a matter of trying to understand what machine is being converted, and what the farmer is wanting to achieve in terms of drilling,” explains Stuart Aldworth, UK and European technical manager for BTT UK, explains. “The first question would be, is the leg / tine suitable for the application, will our equipment fit (in regard to bolt hole spacing and tine angles), and which seed boot holder will fit.
“Once this is established, we use an adaptor to take a sweep, spoon or knife. The angle of the adaptor can be changed using wedges to run the sweep etc. at the correct pitch. This is important to obtain the required soil disturbance and seed placement and this angle also has an influence on wear – too steep, the more disturbance and the higher the wear. We then move on to what the farmer is drilling, although once he has the adapter and seed boot holder fitted the system is adaptable.”
Typical examples of different seeding options.
- Sweeps are used with a splitter boot and band type boot, generally for cereals.
- Spoons would be used with a short square boot, either for rape or spring beans.
- Knives would be used with bean boots, for the deeper planting, normally winter beans.
The tillage range is known as Speed-Loc and has a release tool to move the sweeps etc, so no nuts and bolts are required. The seed boot system is also designed to be quick to change with just a single nut and bolt retaining it.
Jane Carley
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