Welcome to my blog!!

Firstly I’d like to extend a warm welcome to customers old and new, some of you will know me and others will not (ye !). For those that don’t I have been part of the team at Agricultural Machinery (Nantwich) Ltd for approx 8yrs working as a Service Technician, prior to this I spent 16yrs operating, maintaining and repairing a considerable fleet of machinery on a 1000+ acre dairy/arable farm on the outskirts of Nantwich - I guess this is where my particular interest in foragers was formed.

Soon after the merger of Cornthwaite Agricultural Ltd (Bispham Green) and Agricultural Machinery(Nantwich) Ltd it became apparent that we were able to combine both companies demonstration equipment into one centrally managed fleet and compliment it with additional machines that a single outlet dealer would find hard to justify, and then support it with a dedicated group demonstrator – a role that I was more than pleased to be offered and given the chance to take forward.

The aim of this Blog will be to keep you all up to date with the machines we are running in our demo fleet, the experiences we have in different crops and conditions, and to keep you abreast of current developments in the product ranges of all our suppliers and the benefits they may bring to you and your business.

Anyway enough of the brief intro (!) and a little of what we’ve been up to this season.

We’ve had a great season demonstrating a John Deere 7450 Self Propelled Forage Harvester, a machine we really believe in and pound for pound I would say the best forager currently on the market. Most of you will be aware that we have made Nantwich our green crop harvest centre to support these machines, stocking a HUGE quantity of spares/wearing parts and offering professional round the clock cover – this is a service we are all proud of.

Every time that we have run our 7450 against a Claas Jag 890 this season, and in all conditions, we have seen our machine push forwards with a constant 0.5mph speed advantage, this performance and the comprehensive service package means that we are pleased to have supplied several machines to farmers and contractors in readiness for the 2010 season – thanks to all, you know who you are. We also had the pleasure of demonstrating two of the first John Deere 7950 (812ps) Self Propelled Forage Harvesters in maize, these are for sure mighty machines and once coupled to 10 row Kemper headers would often show outputs in excess of 300tons/hour on the Harvest Lab read out (The record output for the season goes to a rather short chap who farms just outside Nantwich – well done Rob you nailed it!)

Harvest Lab is a unique and beneficial feature of John Deere forage harvesters – more on that next month.

As for the combine demo’s they were sadly blighted by the British summer – Stuart has promised this will not be the case for the 2010 season as his magic weather wand is currently being re-calibrated. Fortunately we were running the right combine for the season, a C670i, a machine with a monstrous appetite and yet easily transportable – the latter proved especially handy when I was lost in Warrington following a horse drawn procession, but that’s another story.

The combine was run with a full i-package including harvest monitoring and auto-trac, when coupled with the combines harvest smart feeding system the increase in output and area worked had to be seen to be believed, not to mention the yield mapping which opened a few eyes (more on the possibilities and benefits of yield mapping and AMS next month).

With the Bispham Green depot supporting Combines and associated products in the same way that Nantwich supports foragers the back up for these machines is again we believe second to none.

It’s time to draw to a close now for this month, next time we’ll take a look at the new 8R series including the tracked model which now has suspended tracks and I was reliably informed on a recent service training school eats challengers for breakfast! We’ll also take a look at AMS and the benefits it can offer to everyone’s business.

 Any questions for now don’t hesitate to contact me on;

07881 461132 mobile

01270 624141 office

chrisj@agri-mach.co.uk