Agricultural Contractors like Henry Righton, offer the full range of arable services from tillage and drilling to spraying and combining. “The growth in our business has come from being flexible,” explains Mr Righton. “We have a wide variety of crops, soil types and customer requirements to consider, so high performance and flexibility in the machinery we use is essential.”
Operating in a 30 mile radius from its base in Moreton In Marsh, Gloucestershire, the business now services more than 8,500 acres, including 2000 acres of land farmed under contract. Mr Righton’s team of 10 full-time and 10 seasonal operators ensures 3500 acres are harvested and 7000 acres are drilled each year. “Drilling is clearly the major part of our contracting services and we’ve have a long history of using Horsch kit, starting with a CO4 drill back in 1992. We replaced that with another CO4 before moving to a 4m Sprinter and then a 6m model. We’ve always got on very well them as a good all-round tine drill that is simple and easy to use. The reliability is great and it performs very well straight after cultivation.”
In addition to two Sprinter drills, the business now operates an 8-row Maestro maize drill, 4m Terrano MT and 8m Joker RT cultivators. So when Horsch launched its new Focus TD drill, which offers the benefits of a strip-tillage drill and a conventional drill in one machine, Mr Righton was keen to see if it matched the performance and reliability of his other Horsch equipment. Horsch has developed the Focus TD with the TerraGrip 3 tine system with release forces up to 800kg and a 30cm spacing so the tines move smoothly in the ground even when loosening very deeply.
For rape, sowing on the deep loosened area is very successful and fertiliser can be placed shallow, deep or 50/50. The Focus TD features a 5000 litre grain and fertiliser hopper with a 60:40 split.“The Focus was brought in to give us an extra dimension. It allows us to directly drill into stubble and to put some fertiliser down as we drill,” explains Mr Righton. “We started a pre-production model and got very well with it. In 2013, we took on 4000 acres and that drove our decision to purchase a new Focus.”
Last year Mr Righton’s team drilled around 1500 acres of winter cereals with the previous version of the Focus TD and 1600 acres of oilseed rape. “The Focus has proved to be a big success for us and has opened up new business by solving some issues we were having with drilling OSR in a single pass. “We had tried different routes including using a sub-soiler with a seeder or using discs with a seeder and placing the seed before or after the packer, but this was not giving us the results we were looking for. With the Focus we can drill rape in a single pass using the strip-tillage configuration and place a bit of fertiliser as we do it. This has worked very well and enabled us to drill up to 200 acres per day. Once, done, we can then change it to the disc coulters to convert it to a conventional drill.”
The Focus TD’s tine cultivation frame can be quickly and simply released from the chassis at four mounting points. Once taken from under the machine, it can easily be replaced with the DiscSystem with 52cm discs to create a compact rotary disc harrow, increasing the flexibility of the machine enormously.
“The Focus is a good complement to the Sprinters and given us more options. On some lighter ground we might run with the Joker to get the chitting then go straight in with the Focus with some fertiliser, and then roll. On heavier ground we break up the clods with the Terrano, run the culti-press and then go with the Sprinter. Our business relies on flexibility to meet the different requirements of our customers.”
With the addition of the new Focus TD, Henry Righton’s customer list now includes drilling rape on Chris Tallis’s farm, one of the founders of the Tallis Amos Group dealership where Mr Righton purchases his Horsch and and John Deere machinery. “We’ve worked with Tallis Amos for many years now and they’ve provided the good service and support we need to run a busy contracting business. I’m delighted to be able to working on Chris’s farm with machines they’ve supplied.”
Looking to the future, can Mr Righton see a second Focus TD joining the fleet? “I’d say it’s quite likely once one of the Sprinters is due for a change. We’re seeing more and more spring cropping so less reliance on using a Sprinter in the autumn. If the Focus has the build quality and reliability of the Sprinter, then the additional flexibility and performance it gives us makes a lot of sense.”
