Pillar of strength for stubble handling

Now Michael thinks he has finally found what he has been looking for – a bar that can handle high loads of stubble.

Burning is not an option for Michael on his wind-prone farm.

According to Michael, who crops nearly 2100 hectares of canola, wheat and serradellas, while retaining stubbles is an upside, handling it dictates so much of what he does on the farm and consumes a lot of labour and resources.

“I had gotten to the point of slashing stubbles in both cereals and canola crops,” Michael said.

“We had got to 12 inch (30cm) spacings but I really wanted to go narrower for weed competition.

“Even at 12 inches there were still times when we slashed and still were forced to burn.

“Along with this we also graze our stubbles flattening areas, which makes slashing less effective.

“Discs didn’t answer a lot of our needs and we were keen to avoid hair-pinning which seems almost unavoidable with discs.

“Talking to many disc owners they say that if anything, your straw needs to be better prepared than for a tined machine, but that would have been a step backwards for us.

“We also wanted some soil throw for Treflan incorporation and some sub-seed cultivation.”

Michael’s answer to his problems came with a Canadian-made bar called the Pillar DH-4010 disc/hoe drill, a 12.2m (40ft) three row machine set on 25cm (10in) spacings.

It weighs 14 tonnes and is designed to spread the weight across the bar to provide more uniform penetration in his typical duplex sands through to gravelly clays.

According to the manufacturer, Pillar Lasers, the DH4010 is a tworow toolbar with parallel lifting sub frames to lift and lower the double shoot disc/hoe openers, equipped with a single disc.