- Location
- Essex/Herts Border
So it’s been at least a few weeks since we had a ‘which sprayer’ thread on here so I thought I would put some of my bank holiday evening thoughts on our sprayer situation to you all to see what ideas you all have.
Still in early thoughts stages currently but thinking of possibly changing our JD 732 trailed sprayer in the next couple of years. It’s a 2007 model, 18m booms, steering drawbar, 3200l tank, spray mainly at 150l/ha so 20ha (50 acres) a tankful so makes life easy for adding chemical quantities etc.
We farm 500 acres of arable over 31 fields ranging from 3 acres to 70 acres, average field size 16 acres, no more than 2 miles roadwork to any field, currently on 18m tramlines. We have a 3m (new) and 6m (old) drill.
First question is do we go to 21m or 24m or stay at 18m? Think you’re all going to say 24m, only chucked 21m in as its 7 multiples of 3 so easy tramlining with 3m drill but makes the 6m drill redundant so probably scrap that idea. Any reasons to stay at 18m over going to 24m? Currently at 18m with a trailed sprayer we are turning into headland tramlines before the boom is onto the headland 18m so getting odd bits of overlap or missed triangles due to the boom starting to swing round.
Main question is, do we stay trailed or go rear folding mounted with a front tank?
Fields are fairly odd shaped, trees, telegraph poles etc to deal with in some and lots of corners, i.e a lot of shunting and turning with a trailed sprayer!
Would still want similar capacity of around 3000l, autosection control will be done using Trimble Field IQ (not purchased yet), ideally want auto boom height control as well.
Currently run our trailed on 130hp tractor with only lightbar GPS on it, use 600 tyres on tractor and sprayer in summer, autumn and early spring, switch to 220 rowcrops on tractor (what we had from previous tractor) and 300s on the sprayer for late spring, early summer work. Our bigger 155hp tractor has Trimble GPS in it and is on 650 tyres. Both have front linkages.
My thoughts are that if we go for a trailed machine we don’t loose any capacity, probably a bit faster to hook on and off and can run on both tractors but would have to move sprayer and GPS boxes about.
With a mounted sprayer and front tank we would probably put it on the bigger tractor to save moving the neatly fitted GPS about if possible and it would handle the weight of a mounted sprayer better, though we could still put it on the smaller tractor if the bigger one is busy. A mounted setup would be much more maneuverable in our fields but would take us longer to drop on and off? (How long does it take those of you with mounted sprayers using quick-hitch systems?) With the front tank we would maintain our 3000l capacity and have the option of using just the sprayer with a weight block on the front links is also a possibility.
We could stay on wider tyres all year round, otherwise we would have to purchase a full-set of 300s to put on the tractor when the crops get taller.
I’m assuming that a mounted would be considerably cheaper than a trailed machine, but add in a front tank and there might not be that much price difference?
Essay complete! all opinions welcomed.
Still in early thoughts stages currently but thinking of possibly changing our JD 732 trailed sprayer in the next couple of years. It’s a 2007 model, 18m booms, steering drawbar, 3200l tank, spray mainly at 150l/ha so 20ha (50 acres) a tankful so makes life easy for adding chemical quantities etc.
We farm 500 acres of arable over 31 fields ranging from 3 acres to 70 acres, average field size 16 acres, no more than 2 miles roadwork to any field, currently on 18m tramlines. We have a 3m (new) and 6m (old) drill.
First question is do we go to 21m or 24m or stay at 18m? Think you’re all going to say 24m, only chucked 21m in as its 7 multiples of 3 so easy tramlining with 3m drill but makes the 6m drill redundant so probably scrap that idea. Any reasons to stay at 18m over going to 24m? Currently at 18m with a trailed sprayer we are turning into headland tramlines before the boom is onto the headland 18m so getting odd bits of overlap or missed triangles due to the boom starting to swing round.
Main question is, do we stay trailed or go rear folding mounted with a front tank?
Fields are fairly odd shaped, trees, telegraph poles etc to deal with in some and lots of corners, i.e a lot of shunting and turning with a trailed sprayer!
Would still want similar capacity of around 3000l, autosection control will be done using Trimble Field IQ (not purchased yet), ideally want auto boom height control as well.
Currently run our trailed on 130hp tractor with only lightbar GPS on it, use 600 tyres on tractor and sprayer in summer, autumn and early spring, switch to 220 rowcrops on tractor (what we had from previous tractor) and 300s on the sprayer for late spring, early summer work. Our bigger 155hp tractor has Trimble GPS in it and is on 650 tyres. Both have front linkages.
My thoughts are that if we go for a trailed machine we don’t loose any capacity, probably a bit faster to hook on and off and can run on both tractors but would have to move sprayer and GPS boxes about.
With a mounted sprayer and front tank we would probably put it on the bigger tractor to save moving the neatly fitted GPS about if possible and it would handle the weight of a mounted sprayer better, though we could still put it on the smaller tractor if the bigger one is busy. A mounted setup would be much more maneuverable in our fields but would take us longer to drop on and off? (How long does it take those of you with mounted sprayers using quick-hitch systems?) With the front tank we would maintain our 3000l capacity and have the option of using just the sprayer with a weight block on the front links is also a possibility.
We could stay on wider tyres all year round, otherwise we would have to purchase a full-set of 300s to put on the tractor when the crops get taller.
I’m assuming that a mounted would be considerably cheaper than a trailed machine, but add in a front tank and there might not be that much price difference?
Essay complete! all opinions welcomed.