Are fert spinners that bad?

[Against_the_grain]

Never owned or even used a fert spinner before. We have been using a mix of a boomed 24m machine and liquid fert through a sprayer for the last 10 years.

Recently we have come back to the boomed machine for a variety of reasons one of which was application interval between liquid n and pesticides. A good example at the moment is we have n+s to apply to 1000acres of ww as well as spring herbicide to the same 1000acres of ww. This is without the other bits of spraying on other crops. Its a massive workload on the machine and operator. All this on wet heavy soils.

The boomed machine is fine but ageing and not in production any more.

Liquid fert is also fine and good for fixed costs but the sprayer is heavy, busy and I have a spare man and tractor which could be better utilised.

As I see it my options are stick with liquid fert or buy a spinner.
From looking at various spinners technology seems to of moved on massively in the last 5 years including auto sections, weigh cells and automatic headland adjustment.

So are spinners a step backwards?

 

[tullah]

We used to use a boom spreader like you but too much wear and tear. Now we're using a basic KRM with no weigh cell or electrics. Just manually calibrate it and put first top dressing on all wheat at same rate. A bit of arithmetic required when bringing pto speed down to 450 for the headlands and that's all. Just get the pitch right as per the spirit level and book. Of course no means of adjusting on the move other than changing gear. Set the lower link balls at 75cm above the crop.
Been spreading today at 24m hardly a breath of air. Forecast the same for next couple of days.

 

[Andrew K]

Would you gain much from the sprayer if you gave it bowser support ?
I think modern spinners are much improved but they require still conditions ideally and there is much more scope for headland overlap /misses compared to the very steady boom on the Horsch. Like the sprayer, a spinner would normally benefit greatly from forklift backup so i see it as a choice as to which system you decide to go with, and ideally put both men on it?

You could use a stronger mix of fert to get more sprayer output if you wanted?

One thing a spinner can do well is run on a frost! If you do alot of TSP,MOP etc it can help out with that, or do slug pellets if required.

 

[Chae1]

If your at 24m. I think a fert spinner is a good option. I bought a new 1 last year with no weigh cells, section control or fancy stuff for about 12k.

If going wider I would want section control. Did some grass at 36m and I wasn't very accurate in ins and outs.

 

[Andrew K]

If your at 24m. I think a fert spinner is a good option. I bought a new 1 last year with no weigh cells, section control or fancy stuff for about 12k.

If going wider I would want section control. Did some grass at 36m and I wasn't very accurate in ins and ours.

Width is a very valid point Chae1, I agree that 24m or possibly 30m are easily do-able, but I dont know many farms putting on cheap urea with a spinner at 36m. That is still a strong area for liquid, or at least a pukka priced solid material, esp when breezy.

 

[Two Tone]

Width is a very valid point Chae1, I agree that 24m or possibly 30m are easily do-able, but I dont know many farms putting on cheap urea with a spinner at 36m. That is still a strong area for liquid, or at least a pukka priced solid material, esp when breezy.

Not had any issues spreading Granular Urea at 24 metres with a Kuhn 40.1.
Gave up with Prilled Urea years ago. Granular seem to be the same price.
A weigher is very handy, especially if spreading anything with Sulphur in it.

But agree that 36 metres might be pushing it!

 

[ollie989898]

If you have a spare man and tractor use them to support the sprayer. Also invest in a better or more highly specced sprayer when it comes for replacement. Find more output from it however you can.

 

[ajd132]

I’ve bought a trailed Amazon after being liquid for a long time but we have added a big area to what we are doing. In your situation I would get a bowser.
We were doing 1200ha of liquid fert and chemical through a sprayer with bowser support and frankly it was a complete doddle, only doing about 500hrs a year on the sprayer.

 

[Standy]

Wait a couple of years for the relaunch? https://rauch.de/en/company/news/next-level-in-der-exaktduengung-mit-dem-aero-321-erreicht.html

 

[Against_the_grain]

Wait a couple of years for the relaunch? https://rauch.de/en/company/news/next-level-in-der-exaktduengung-mit-dem-aero-321-erreicht.html

Perfect

 

[ewald]

You could buy a used trailer sprayer just for the fertiliser at busy times - probably cheaper than a good spreader, don’t even need to test it if you aren’t putting chem through it

 

[Against_the_grain]

Would you gain much from the sprayer if you gave it bowser support ?
I think modern spinners are much improved but they require still conditions ideally and there is much more scope for headland overlap /misses compared to the very steady boom on the Horsch. Like the sprayer, a spinner would normally benefit greatly from forklift backup so i see it as a choice as to which system you decide to go with, and ideally put both men on it?

You could use a stronger mix of fert to get more sprayer output if you wanted?

One thing a spinner can do well is run on a frost! If you do alot of TSP,MOP etc it can help out with that, or do slug pellets if required.

We do use a bowser when away from the farm. We brought AN this year with the intention of strengthening the fert mixtures but it seems a bit pointless buying expensive AN (compared to urea) when the whole point of buying and mixing ourselves is to reduce costs. We then had a discussion and decided that instead of mixing all of the AN and urea with water and carting that around why not just apply it straight with the boom spreader. I guess by the end of the season we will either remember why we went away from it in the first place or not!

Width is a very valid point Chae1, I agree that 24m or possibly 30m are easily do-able, but I dont know many farms putting on cheap urea with a spinner at 36m. That is still a strong area for liquid, or at least a pukka priced solid material, esp when breezy.

I think the days of cheap urea are numbered. Im not sure if we will even be able to buy untreated urea for home mixing. Using urea with inhibitors will bring the cost roughly to AN at which point a 32m spreader would be capable of spinning decent AN to, and not actually cost anymore than urea at this point. Wind is still an issue which is where the mounted boom spreader looks great, although not to 32m.

I’ve bought a trailed Amazon after being liquid for a long time but we have added a big area to what we are doing. In your situation I would get a bowser.
We were doing 1200ha of liquid fert and chemical through a sprayer with bowser support and frankly it was a complete doddle, only doing about 500hrs a year on the sprayer.

Agree its fantastic for machine utilisation. Why the move back to solid? Purely down to too much workload? How are you finding it compared to liquid. What do you prefer?

You could buy a used trailer sprayer just for the fertiliser at busy times - probably cheaper than a good spreader, don’t even need to test it if you aren’t putting chem through it

We have a 4yr old horsch which we could use as the fert machine and invest in a new one for chems, as its due a change anyway.

 

[Two Tone]

Wait a couple of years for the relaunch? https://rauch.de/en/company/news/next-level-in-der-exaktduengung-mit-dem-aero-321-erreicht.html

I’m not so sure. I’ve had a Kuhn 2224 (Rauch). It was a beautifully engineered bit of kit, but very fragile and an absolute pain to fold up to move fields. And a pain to wash out at the end of the day.
Spinners are so much easier and a lot cheaper!

 

[Brisel]

Never owned or even used a fert spinner before. We have been using a mix of a boomed 24m machine and liquid fert through a sprayer for the last 10 years.

Recently we have come back to the boomed machine for a variety of reasons one of which was application interval between liquid n and pesticides. A good example at the moment is we have n+s to apply to 1000acres of ww as well as spring herbicide to the same 1000acres of ww. This is without the other bits of spraying on other crops. Its a massive workload on the machine and operator. All this on wet heavy soils.

The boomed machine is fine but ageing and not in production any more.

Liquid fert is also fine and good for fixed costs but the sprayer is heavy, busy and I have a spare man and tractor which could be better utilised.

As I see it my options are stick with liquid fert or buy a spinner.
From looking at various spinners technology seems to of moved on massively in the last 5 years including auto sections, weigh cells and automatic headland adjustment.

So are spinners a step backwards?

Spinner technology has moved on a lot since the wagging spout Vicon. As above, at 24m you have a good product choice if you are careful with blends of N+S where the AS grade can spread differently. Ours has section control, GPS switch and weigh cells. For 3500 ac well spread out and in small fields at 24m it works hard but even with 2 sprayers we struggle to justify a move to all liquid. The biggest downside of liquid was scorch due to fertilising when we couldn't spray and the issues it caused when wanting to spray products that could cause crop stress. Prills don't scorch much at all except on a wet leaf or at the base of the leaf if they lodge on a damp plant. Liquid bought in is priced the same as top quality N.

Spinner weights are much lower and telegraph poles are no problem without booms. With good tramlines you can get decent outputs too. You've got the issue of shed space, handling and bag disposal.

 

[snarling bee]

We do use some liquid UAN, but most of fert goes through a top spec spreader.
BUT we do have a large number of in-field obstacles and a lot of small fields (as well as some really decent ones) so a spinner will get a lot done in a day where booms would be a huge hinderance.
Hydraulic disc drive, section control and weigh cells have revolutionised spinners IMO. I run an Amazone TS on a Fastrac 4220

 

[teslacoils]

Kuhn 1131. Still going. 19 years old.

 

[ajd132]

We do use a bowser when away from the farm. We brought AN this year with the intention of strengthening the fert mixtures but it seems a bit pointless buying expensive AN (compared to urea) when the whole point of buying and mixing ourselves is to reduce costs. We then had a discussion and decided that instead of mixing all of the AN and urea with water and carting that around why not just apply it straight with the boom spreader. I guess by the end of the season we will either remember why we went away from it in the first place or not!



I think the days of cheap urea are numbered. Im not sure if we will even be able to buy untreated urea for home mixing. Using urea with inhibitors will bring the cost roughly to AN at which point a 32m spreader would be capable of spinning decent AN to, and not actually cost anymore than urea at this point. Wind is still an issue which is where the mounted boom spreader looks great, although not to 32m.

Agree its fantastic for machine utilisation. Why the move back to solid? Purely down to too much workload? How are you finding it compared to liquid. What do you prefer?

We have a 4yr old horsch which we could use as the fert machine and invest in a new one for chems, as its due a change anyway.

Solid mainly for agronomic reasons and we got a really good deal on this spreader. It also helps workload massively. The output is insane.
I did 300ha the other day by myself on 4 farms running back to the yard. With decent logistics 400ha+ day is easily achievable

 

[T Hectares]

13 year old Kuhn spinner here, really good nick and reliable
We were both busy today, one spreading granular Urea to 30m, one spraying off stubbles
I like solid

 

[Spencer]

Sulky X50 EcoNov here. Section control is simply brilliant on it and works straight out the box on Isobus. Very underrated spreader imo in uk! @Robt

 

[Bob lincs]

First 100kg/ha of N applied here as liquid , everything else as solid with a sulky x40 econov . The x40 is an excellent spreader , the only thing I would say against it is it’s harder to wash down than the Kuhn it replaced .