Mechanical Progress With Overdrilling

Press, Volume C, Issue 29459, 10 March 1961, Page 24

Mechanical Progress With Overdrilling

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D. J. G. DAVIES]

With the prospects of a wet, cold winter ahead, many dairy and some sheep farmers will have already taken advantage of the favourable soil moisture conditions for providing winter greenfeed and fresh spring pastures by overdrilling. Greenfeed grown under consolidated conditions is more easily and efficiently utilised than if grown under cultivation, and this is probably of greater importance when soil is sodden with rain. Pastures either clover dominant or run out to flatweeds may be successfully renovated by sowing a mixture of cereal and grass together with adequate fertilising with nitrogenous and phosphatic manures, details of which have already been widely published. As the thought of pasture renovation is uppermost in farmers’ minds at present, the following notes reviewing trial work carried out last season are appropriate at this time. Two Attachments Perhaps the greatest progress during the year has been made in the machinery field and two attachments, one for a disc drill and one for a hoe coulter drill, have been developed to facilitate overdrilling work with conventional machines. For the disc drill Mr R. P. McCarthy and his son, Brian, of Tai Tapu, have designed and produced a groover attachment similar to, but more rugged in construction than the prototype hook point first developed last autumn. The overdrilling unit is completely independent of the disc drill and is attached forward of the discs on a specially constructed frame so that each. groover point and disc track is in line. By simply lifting (with a specially provided handle) the groover points can be easily moved to a carrying position leaving the drill free for ordinary work. The McCarthy family were rewarded for their efforts with a certificate of merit when they entered the drill in the farmers’ machinery section at last year’s Royal Show. Several acres of cereal grass fertiliser mixtures have already been suc-

cessfully established with this machine since January. A well known farm machinery firm has designed and marketed a rolling disc attachment for the hoe coulter drill. Each disc is fitted in front of the sharply pointed coulters in a manner similar to a skeeth attachment on a plough. The miniature flat sided discs cut the turf to a depth of approximately one inch, sufficient for the following pointed coulter to deposit seed and fertiliser uniformly along the loosely cultivated grooves. It is anticipated that both of these attachments will be on display at the Young Farmers’ Clubs’ farm machinery field day which will be held on the property of Mr G. Van Asch, Hoon Hay Valley, next Friday and Saturday. (To. be continued.)