Our
loader tractor is quite old but it still works well. It is capable of
lifting about 600 kg and it is used every day during the winter months
and most days in the summer. By today's standards it is not very big
but the attachments we use are just smaller versions. Some farmers use
industrial type machines, which can lift over 2 tonnes.
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The Shear Grab.
This is used for feeding the silage to the cattle
during the winter months.
Powered by hydraulics it cuts the silage from the clamp.
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The Grab.
Before we bought the Shear Grab we used this for
silage feeding but it also has other uses. We can use it for cleaning
out cattle sheds and moving things such as tree branches or sleepers.
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The Bucket.
This is mainly used when we are empting the slurry
store and loading the muck spreader, but it is also used if we need
to move things such as soil or stone when building.
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The Bale Spike.
This is used when handling big bales and it can
either be fitted to the loader or the rear of the tractor.
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The Pallet forks.
These are most commonly used during the summer months
for handling things such as fertiliser in 500kg bags. Some cattle
feed is sometimes delivered this way. Clearing rubbish or removing
the lawn clippings from our 0.10ha of lawn using the Tip Skip are
other uses.
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The Tip Skip.
This was made from a scrap 1 / ½ tonne dumper
and for moving bulky rubbish or logs it is very useful. Unlike the
Bucket it can be left by a job to be filled over several days without
tying the tractor down. It can also be fitted to the rear of the
tractor.
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The Bale Slave.
This is quite an old machine now and mechanical
handling of bales is really more advanced but due to the fact that
we only need to move 3000 bales per year this still suffices. The
bales are manually stacked in blocks of 6 or 8 ready for lifting
onto the trailer.
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The Concrete Mixer.
We bought the mixer in 1989 when
we took over the farm because we knew that we would be doing a lot
of our own building work. It is tractor powered and is mounted on
the lift arms. It is tipped using the tractor's hydraulics.
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| The Fertilizer Sower.
Our fertilizer sower has a capacity of 600kgs when
full. However, it generally has one x 500kg bag at a time.
It spreads the fertilizer by means of the oscillating spout at the
rear and the rate of application is often about 250 kgs/ha on the
grassland.
Grassland fertilizer is generally applied about every 6 weeks during
the growing season. Often the type used is 34.5% nitrogen. If you
compare this to a lawn fertilizer, it is approximately twice the
nitrogen content.
A company called Vicon makes our machine and they are often referred
to in a similar way to people calling a vacuum cleaner a Hoover.
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