BOEKEMAN Machinery group sales manager, Ben Boekeman, said sales have slowed a little due to limited rainfall in the past six months but it wasn't all doom and gloom.
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"We've still been busy with handovers and set ups of new machinery," Mr Boekeman said.
He said Boekeman Machinery was especially busy with getting new seeding rigs organised, tractors pre-delivered, and making sure their customers were ready for seeding.
In addition to selling Case IH machinery, Mr Boekeman said Boekeman Machinery's Northam and Brookton branches had recently received stock for sale of New Holland machinery, with Northam being a New Holland dealership since April 2024.
"Our other seeding products include Ausplow, Simplicity and Flexi-coil (brands), which sell seeding systems, seeding bars and bins," he said.
"We've also taken on the new franchise K-Line Ag, which does speedtiller disc machines to prepare soil for seeding, along with hydraulic deep rippers."
Mr Boekeman said they were now focusing on gearing up for seeding demonstrations on farm which will take place in the next few weeks.
"We'll run the seeding demo for probably around a month, in Dalwallinu, Wongan Hills, Northam and Dowerin."
The Case IH 600 Quadtrac, 60 Series Flexi-Coil air carts and Ausplow DBS D300-61 air seeder bar will be the machines in action across Boekeman Machinery's branches.
Boekeman Machinery sales and precision ag consultant, Ewan McLintock and machinery sales consultant Alastair Crookes, gave the lowdown on these three machines.
"We received the Quadtracin a few weeks ago; at the minute, the 600 Quadtrac is the biggest machine being brought in," Mr McLintock said.
"The 645 and 715 models will be coming in later in the year."
Mr McLintock said one of the big drawcards to the 600 Quadtrac machine was its cab, really solid undercarriage and driveline.
"Case IH have really upped their game with their new cab, which was introduced two or three years ago: AFS connect, telematics communication, as well as a whole new user interface on the display," he said.
He said the Quadtrac would be demonstrated with RTK, which has two centimetre accuracy on the GPS system.
"The undercarriage hasn't changed too much; however, it was proven 40 years ago, and they've only made incremental improvements on it," Mr McLintock said.
Mr Crookes said the cab was an ultimate cab, meaning all leather in the seats and steering wheel, and it has a 360 full LED lighting package.
"These machines also have a tier 2 engine, which is quite a big deal for a lot of Aussie farmers, because a lot of the emissions systems cause issues and it just makes it much more reliable," Mr McLintock said.
"With their 1700 litre capacity, they're designed to give a full 12 hour shift at 100 per cent engine load."
Attached to the Quadtrac was the 60 Series Flexi-Coil air cart with dual-wheel tyres.
"The metering system is really quite good and modular, so to replace the metering rollers, it's actually very simple: two taps and you pull it out," he said.
"You can change your tank configuration, so if you have a higher rate of fertiliser, you can put that in the back tank and if you have a low rate of seeds, you can put that in the front tank and vice versa.
"It's a 10 minute job to swap it all around."
The Flexi-Coil also has turn compensation, as well as full 8 run section control dual shoot.
The turn compensation increases or decreases rate during turns, controlling the amount of seed and fertiliser put on one side and decreases it on the other side.
"You get a far more even flow of product through the paddock," Mr McLintock said.
In the past five to six years, he said Flexi-Coil had upped its game with new technology and the addition of liquid tanks to its range, he added.
"Farmers need more technology to farm more efficiently and we believe this machine can certainly do that, it's providing that extra technology to compete with other products on the market," Mr McLintock said.
The Ausplow DBS D300-61 had a lot of options regarding tyne configuration, said Mr Crookes.
"You've got different sizes of press wheels, closing tools, different types of seeding boots - it's all down to the grower's choice," he said.
Ausplow is a Perth-based company, with Mr McLintock saying its seeders were designed for Western Australian conditions.
"Obviously Western Australian conditions vary - you go down south and you've got very sandy soil, you go out east and you've got hard clay.
"So they've made it so the machine can be completely configured to how the customer needs in terms of agronomic needs."
Mr McLintock said the major benefit with DBS (deep blade system) is that it's a precision seeding system, so there's precision seed placement.
"The digging blade is independent of the seed placement, being that it is a separate mechanism," he said.
He added it was especially important with something like canola, where a couple of millimetres out, can be either too deep or too shallow.
"The Ausplow DBS D series frames are built stronger than any other similar product on the market, and have significantly improved in strength since their previous E and D series models", Mr McLintock said.
"The big thing with the Ausplow is that it's completely upgradeable to the latest tyne assembly: so you can buy Ausplow DBS Serial Number 1 (which is still working today in 2024) and you can upgrade that tyne configuration to the latest ProD system on it; the DBS frame is built to last."
