Biodrill

[Shropshire Farmer]

If you could feed grain to a biodrill similar to alpego sending from front tank to holding hopper. Would it be feasible to sow wheat behind a carrier.

 

[Andy26]

If its dropping seed behind the discs in front of the packer not sure the wheat would be sufficiently covered.

Vaderstad did sell a Carrier Drill that dropped the seeds at the rear of each disc.

If you adjusted the drop point to the disc area then I'm sure it would work.

 

[Brisel]

How wide is the Carrier? What seed rate?

 

[Banana Bar]

I can’t see why not. Only needs the slightest covering of soil.

 

[David_A]

If you could feed grain to a biodrill similar to alpego sending from front tank to holding hopper. Would it be feasible to sow wheat behind a carrier.

We set up our carrier with a front hopper to do this a few years ago. Sowed some winter oats with it this year as well as rye once gd eather closed in... works a treat. Crops emerging nicely. Does leave a lot of seed on surface, but we use untreated seed here. In the Autumn is works well as always plenty moisture up here. 5m carrier with a lenkem front hopper. Will likely sow our remaining wheat after spuds with it too if it dries up sufficiently.
Biggest trouble is fitting all the pipework without fouling any of it during folding etc. We haven't quite perfected that yet. We just trundle along at about 8k. Can cope with high seed rates too.

 

[ajd132]

I put a bio drill on the 12m joker we used to have to do cover crops. It didn’t really work very well because it was so hard to route pipes but the actual bio drill can do high rates and has enough oomph in the fan: think it should work fine if set up properly on a carrier.
If you have the front hopper do you even need the bio drill though if the pipe work set up properly?

 

[Tiptoe Ted]

If its dropping seed behind the discs in front of the packer not sure the wheat would be sufficiently covered.

Vaderstad did sell a Carrier Drill that dropped the seeds at the rear of each disc.

If you adjusted the drop point to the disc area then I'm sure it would work.

I had a Carrier Drill and loved it - very simple and cheap to run. Also, I liked the very narrow row spacing to the point where you could only just see the rows as the seed pipe delivered the seed in a band on 125mm centres.
Only sold it as needed to go wider and they only do 3m. But no reason why the principle wouldn't work on wider carrier if you can get the seed there ok.
Agree re drop point of seed - this photo shows the best place IMO. You might even be able to fit those seed pipes to a standard carrier, they just bolt onto the disc arm.

 

[Shropshire Farmer]

We set up our carrier with a front hopper to do this a few years ago. Sowed some winter oats with it this year as well as rye once gd eather closed in... works a treat. Crops emerging nicely. Does leave a lot of seed on surface, but we use untreated seed here. In the Autumn is works well as always plenty moisture up here. 5m carrier with a lenkem front hopper. Will likely sow our remaining wheat after spuds with it too if it dries up sufficiently.
Biggest trouble is fitting all the pipework without fouling any of it during folding etc. We haven't quite perfected that yet. We just trundle along at about 8k. Can cope with high seed rates too.

That’s great to here ... I don’t suppose you’ve got any pics of your set up.

 

[David_A]

That’s great to here ... I don’t suppose you’ve got any pics of your set up.

Let me dig around... there will be some

 

[Brisel]

I put a bio drill on the 12m joker we used to have to do cover crops. It didn’t really work very well because it was so hard to route pipes but the actual bio drill can do high rates and has enough oomph in the fan: think it should work fine if set up properly on a carrier.
If you have the front hopper do you even need the bio drill though if the pipe work set up properly?

What kind of speed and seed rate were you doing? The only reason I ask is that mine struggled with 150 kg/ha of peas + barley seed on a 6m cultivator. As you say, plenty of fan power but getting it through the single metering unit fast enough was a bit of an issue plus we were filling it up regularly. 360 litres of hopper only held about 2 ha of seed.

 

[Clive]

We have drilled with our carrier bio drill in he past

if i was doing higher seed rates via front hopper i wouldn’t feec the bio drill hopper though - i would pipe straight to the distribution head from front hopper

Got a Iso horsch front hopper sat doing nothing if you need one