Scrub Crushing Equipment

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30901, 6 November 1965, Page 10

Scrub Crushing Equipment

'A RANGE of implements "* *■ known as “bush breakers” which are being extensively and very successfully tested in various regions of Australia, were the invention of Lieutenant-Colonel V. H. Holt, of Kirbymoorside, Yorkshire. Colonel Holt has estates in Yorkshire, Scotland, and Africa, and it was his personal experience with intractable weed and scrub growths that led him to develop a range of implements for their control. The implements are of simple, robust construction and, being trailed, no reciprocating parts are involved; in fact, not even oiling is required, so that maintenance is reduced to an absolute minimum.

The largest of the series of implements, the Mark XA bush breaker which is being tested in Australia, consists of three sections ganged together to give a crushing width of 11 feet, each section weighing practically a ton. This model is being widely used in tropical Africa, particularly for the conversion of scrub-infested areas to pasture. The Department of Agriculture, Kenya, has stated that: “Many experiments have been carried out with heavy and light machines in an endeavour to control the various species of bush. Up to date the only reasonably economic and practicable method is with this implement.” In Tanganyika, on the Kongwa ranch of the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation, some 30,000 acres of thorn

and sodom apple infested land have been dealt with by the "Breaker” with a consequent increase in stocking rate from one beast to 20 acres to one beast to six acres over a period of six years.

These implements have a basin listing action which is proving of extreme value in areas liable to soil erosion. The blades, striking the ground at a low angle of incidence, break through any surface pan without causing compaction and leave a discontinuous series of cups which prevent soil wash, retain the water and offer suitable conditions for grassland re-estab-lishment. In tests carried out by the East African Agriculture and Forestry Research Organisation on an area subject to both sheet and gully erosion it was found that after a series of heavy rainstorms of high intensity no erosion occurred on the “Holted” areas whereas sheet erosion could be observed on the untreated land and new gullies had been cut.

In temperate climates the Bush Breaker has a direct application to forestry. Secondary scrub growth on the sites of old fellings are crushed and re-planting takes place directly into the trash thus left In England birch scrub up to 30ft high has thus been treated and replanted with appropriate conifers at a cost of something like a quarter of that which would have been incurred by hand felling.

There is a wide range of bush breakers with varying crushing powers, the lighter models being suitable for the control of herbaceous weed growths while the heavier for work in heavy scrub. The models are available either in single sections or ganged together to give greater crushing widths; the single section models are eminently suitable for inter-row weed control in various plantation crops. The lighter models are available with patent hydraulic mounting suitable for the standard 3-point linkage of wheeled tractors; the largest of the Bush Breakers require crawler tractors.