We caught up with Fraser Jones from Welshpool, Powys. The dairy farmer with all systems go! Fraser is a fourth-generation farmer, his great grandfather started up a small farm in the Welsh hills and later moved to Court Calmore; a 300-acre beef and sheep farm.
He is now a dairy farmer with 1,350 currently in milking, across three sites between Montgomery and Welshpool in Mid Wales. With over 3,700 head of cattle and 2,500 acres to farm it’s understandable why there are 35 full time staff! Everything is done in house with no contractors employed, this way when things need to get done, they get done without waiting on a contractor and delays.
The team are currently planting 600 acres of maize a year. When asked what made Fraser buy the Väderstad Tempo drill his reasons were simple; aside from bringing all work in house it was the ability to change from 750mm seed row widths to 500mm. With row widths closer, this year’s seeds per acre went from a usual 42,000 per acre to 48,000 per acre, resulting in an extra 2 tonnes of fresh maize/acre without compromising crop quality.
The equivalent of an extra 66 acres of ground would be needed if the crop were to be planted at the older 750mm row spacing. With a cost around £500 per acre for rented land this equals a saving of around £33,000 less the extra seed cost of around £5000! This staggering amount blew Fraser away and he said he wished all machinery was as efficient.
For the 2021 year’s crop they did not add any extra fertiliser when drilling however, Fraser explained, next year they will try spreading fertiliser to see if it gives even more yield and he will carry out trials increasing the seed rate above 48,000 seeds/acre.
Fraser explained how easy the Tempo drill is to use. “Drilling using GPS makes the job super easy; it shows any blockages or missed seeding on the screen so you don’t lose out. The auto shut off and section control means no undrilled land and no over planting. We had an hours training in the field with the drill and we were away. We’d never used a drill before but it’s very straight forward.”
“This year is our first-year drilling; I wish we would’ve bought the Tempo drill years ago. Neighbours have seen our crop and even asked us to contract out to them but we wouldn’t have the time.”
The Väderstad drill isn’t the only thing Fraser has bought from Pugh’s. He explained how the family have been dealing with us for many years, before the Churchstoke depot was built in the 90s. Robert has not only sold them machinery over the years but also constructed 90% of Fraser’s agricultural buildings too! “We class Robert more as a friend here!”