- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Compaction at depth, is my main reason for avoiding it.noted a couple times on here that tractor wheeling's are bad, but hooves are good to trample some crop in, why is this ?
Even cattle comparable in weight to a "pickup" , although it may have less psi in terms of ground pressure on the surface, it still operates like a roller: because it is continually in contact with the soil it can create a similar effect to a bow-wave from a ship, which disrupts the bonds that hold the soil aggregates together and apart (unsure if you read the several pages where @Clive had to defend his analogy about bridges?)
By contrast, the weight of your big friendly quadruped, is lifted up and down - and that's why a roller is just like a tyre, it is a perfect design for squeezing the air out and pushing aggregates together.
If you poke your finger into a birthday cake, the compaction is actually very minor to if you put the same pressure on your cake with a rolling pin and move it, which is why the roading teams use vibrating rollers and moisture to good effect
Or that's how I see it