DRIVING IMPRESSION: Now that Vaderstad has made itself comfortable with the former Thyregod mechanical weeding division, we caught up with one of the first machines to leave the Danish factory in its new red livery. The hoe’s double-wing concept is certainly a bit different.
One of the last of the big name drill/cultivator makers to have access to a mechanical weeding line-up, last year Swedish company Väderstad bought out the weeder division of Danish manufacturer Thyregod. The Swedes have stuck with the heavy-duty Thyregod models but given them a change of clothes … from their previous green livery to a red-yellow-black colour scheme. There are also new model names, the Extract V8-36 and Extract L16-48 series. The V denotes folding, fully mounted machines (6.0m and 9.0m working widths), while the L identifies the semi-mounted series, which is what we look at here.
Trailed
A speciality of the Extract L hoe (formerly called Swingking) is that it provides a large working width from behind a small tractor, courtesy of its trailed attachment design. For instance, our 24-row inter-row hoe model on a 45cm spacing was content with 150hp. The hoe attaches to the K80 ball and requires load-sensing and one double-acting spool to handle the main frame. More on this later. If you go with the optional ISObus system including a separate task controller, it can also carry out GPS controlled lift-out at the headland. The controller is currently a Topcon job computer, which mimics a sprayer with 11 boom sections.
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