BEDNAR importer 4AG in New Zealand gets ready for all conditions: Part 2.

After the successful outdoor show in Gore, 4AG starts its first demonstrations of the new model of ATLAS HO 6000 around the Christchurch area. This area is well known as good farming land with high demand, customers located here have a variety of soil types as the area spans from mountain to ocean level, with various plant and animal production.

The machine itself with a robust body frame is predicted to operate in hard soils with lots of plant residues. This was the case in demonstrating on the Stratford Farm. The farmers are also animal producers as nearly the whole of New Zealand traditionally is. For this reason, it is necessary for high quality milk products to have high quality food for animals. The process of grass land maintenance is the topping, which is provided by mulchers and then a disking process. Which can be a problem in some cases for disc harrows, although it was not for the ATLS HO even though the grass has a strong root connection system and the land is compacted after the cattle’s pasture.

Darren & Hamish Raikes, with Clint Jordan (machinery & cropping operations manager for Canterbury Contracting) inspecting the company’s Swifterdisc XE 10000. Canterbury Contracting is the equipment division of one of New Zealand’s largest corporate dairy farming business, Dairy Holdings Ltd, this business operates 58 seperate dairy farms across 14,000 hectares spread throughout the South Island of New Zealand, milking 46,000 cows! The total business produces 16.2 million kg of milksolids each season! The 10mtr machine has worked 2800ha in 18 months (location, Rakaia, South Island)

Kevin Hermansen (owner) and Paul Glover (operations manager) of Hermansen Contracting Ltd, Norsewood with Hamish Raikes (MD of 4AG Ltd) standing by their Bednar Terraland TN3000D7R chisel plough. Hermansen also operates a Swifterdisc XO5000F short disc harrow (location, Norsewood, New Zealand)

Mark McCully commenting on the first passes with the ATLAS: „Very nice job even after the first pass, we usually make two passes as we really need to decompact the soil and the root systems, sometimes we make a third pass when the grass seeds are re-grown. With the atlas these operations take much less time because and I can easily reach 15 km/h, for the test purposes I went round at 10cm depth with the disc and tried to go faster than that. My tractor reached 19 km/h and the atlas stayed stuck to the ground and the job done was great too, this machine has big potential on the grass land here in New Zealand.“

Graeme Anderson from the contracting company: „Our company owns land with cereals and we are providing lots of contracting jobs, for us the machine has to be somehow universal and most important is the easy set up to change the depth quickly and quickly transport, as our customers are situated in different places.“

Darren Raikes with Simon Broom of S.W Broom Contracting, with his Swifterdisc XE 10000. Based in Culverden, North Canterbury, Brooms‘ business has grown with the massive dairy farming and irrigation growth in this district.

Hamish & Darren Raikes, with Mark McCully of Stratford Farming, Ashburton, demonstration of Atlas HO 6000 into grass seed sward, machine performed well at working speeds of 16-20km/h!! Stratfords is a large farming operation, cropping, livestock, potatoes, dairy. In the back ground is the Southern Alps, the main mountain range of the South Island

Rod Gimblett: “We are already using a Bednar MULCHER MM 7000 for grass-topping and we really would like to see the ATlAS HO working on our lands. This is the machine which we are missing, if the job done is like it is here I will definitely be satisfied”.

GALLERY