A plough with 11 furrows

Press, 15 June 1979, Page 8

A plough with 11 furrows

What he believes to be the largest plough in New Zealand—in a single unit—has been built up by a Sheffield machinery sales representative and former agricultural contractor, Mr N. R. (Neal) Dunnill.

It has 11 (35cm or Min) furrows and will cover almost 4m or 12ft lOin in one sweep. Mr Dunnill, who was an agricultural contractor for 16 years until four years ago and is now a "sales representative for Dalhoff and King, Ltd, says that his specialty is tailor-mak-ing implements to suit farmers’ requirements. So in the last two years he has modified about 15 ploughs and also built cultivators as well.

With ploughs he starts off with existing implements — in the case of ploughs he works with Clough beams — and extends them.

He has built up four nine-furrow ploughs and one 10-furrow. The plough that he has now enlarged for Messrs G. G. and D. G. McLean, who farm in the Killinchy district between Dunsandel and

Leeston, is his largest so far — it was originally eight furrows. Although there is increasing talk these days with rising fuel costs and decreasing availability of the precious liquid of minimum cultivation and direct drilling, Mr Dunnill says that most arable farmers are still using conventional equipment and are looking for machinery that will cover more acres or hectares in the minimum amount of time. Hence the interest in bigger implements and machines.

Mr D. G. (Donald) McLean said that such equipment meant that they could get over more ground and catch up more quickly with their work after being delayed by a wet spell. They grow about 200 ha or 500 acres of crop. It was also fuel saving

In that pulling the big plough behind their 196 horsepower Case tractor meant that they would be using less fuel than if they were using two smaller tractors, and it was also labour saving as they would do all of the

heavy work with the big plough. They also have a 10.1 m (33ft) wide cultivator and a set of 5.5 m (18ft) discs and have had to extend some of their gateways to take the big equipment. Their enlarged plough

weighs about four tonnes and is almost 10m (32ft) long from tip to tail.

Asked about the special features that it included, Mr Dunnill said that he had a special design for the headstock where a plough was pulled by a tractor with dual back wheels. This enabled the tractor to be turned without any restriction — that is without the wheels coming in contact with the plough at turning. He also uses high floatation tyres which come from Sweden. Their particular advantage is that they tend to keep on the top of the ground so that wheel marks are not left on the surface of the paddock and a better finish is given to the work. It is expected that in farm use the big tractor and plough will cover almost 3 ha or seven acres of ground an hour. Last week the enlarged plough came through its paces well on the property of Wright Brothers, at Annat, where it was being pulled by a 160 horsepower tractor. It was its first time out.

Mr Dunnill has also extended a five-furrow plough into a seven-fur-row for the Wrights, and also working on the brothers’ property last week was an 8 m (26ft) wide cultivator that Mr Dunnill built up from scratch. It folds up into just over half of its width — about 4 m or 13ft 6in to pass through a gateway of just over 4m or 14ft. One of the features of its design is that the main lifting wheels are within the main frame, which adds to the stability of the implement.