The family has farmed at East Binnington since the mid 1950’s, growing a mix of arable and grass crops on 345 acres – the latter used to fatten 100 cattle each winter for supermarket firm Morrisons. Working in partnership, the brothers also carry out contract baling and loading work for local customers.
They say the use of a larger capacity sprayer has come at a time when the firm is increasing its working widths from 21 to 27m, to speed up spraying efficiency and reduce operating costs.
Up until this season, the farm had been running a 21m Horstine Farmery trailed sprayer and had purchased a secondhand Househam trailed sprayer just two weeks before they were told they had won the competition.
“When you enter any competition, you always think you’ll never win, so to be told we had won was an absolute delight,” explains Adrian Wright.
With field sizes ranging from 12-55 acres, Adrian’s first impressions are that the sprayer might be a bit on the large side. However, the Ikarus’ high standard specification will ensure great manoeuvrability and exceptional boom suspension to give the most accurate and even spraying coverage at East Binnington Farm.
Specification of the high-tech, 3800-litre Ikarus S Pro sprayer includes 27m HSS gullwing boom with slope correction, iXclean comfort, ENFO prime and purge, plus a steering/tracking drawbar.
In addition, the sprayer is equipped with StarGuide III GPS section control, which is linked to an FMC Flowmate controller – a feature that the Wright’s are looking forward to using as part of their drive towards greater spraying efficiency at East Binnington Farm.
“So far, we’ve only done a few acres of stubble at 21m and a couple of fields of oilseed rape at our new 27m tramline width, and doing so has been much easier than I thought,” he says. “I’m looking forward to seeing just how the GPS and auto-section control can bring us more efficiency and cut down on overlaps, particularly in our smaller, irregular shaped fields.”
The farm also operates a Vicon round baler and a 2012 model year RO-XL Rotaflow spreader –the latter has already given the farming brothers a boost to spreading accuracy, particularly on some of the farm’s steeper fields.
“There’s no doubt about it, our Vicon spreader is very accurate and extremely user friendly,” he says. “And early indications are pointing to the Ikarus sprayer being equally as efficient.”