Back Issue - Practical Farm Ideas - 102# Augu

23 brand new workshop projects.

Including:

• A post driver that uses a hydraulic vibrator is fast and of course far safer than traditional pile drivers. Handles big posts too.
  Read how to make it, loads of good pics details of hydraulic parts.
  
  
• Gizmo that lifts the final furrow on your plough with no alteration of settings. Read how it's made and how to fit it.
  
  
• Milk a 3 quartered cow as easily as one firing on four.

Management ideas unique to Practical Farm Ideas.

This well stocked dairy farm doesn’t buy fertiliser No N through the season.
Is it really sensible to say “I don’t want to know.”?

Arable farming is getting bigger, slicker. In this issue we visit a three farm estate with over 3,000 acres.
They build and adapt machinery over the winter months. Because it pays them.

Practical Farm Ideas does not accept advertising and focusses exclusively on new ideas developed in workshops. Anyone with a new product or service of interest to farmers - whether inventor, manufacturer, marketer, distributor or whatever - is invited to contact Farm Ideas regarding possible publication.

If you are serious about farming, are prepared to learn about the less conventional, are interested in small scale ‘Brailsford’ ideas that improve performance by just a percentage point but add up to creating winners, Practical Farm Ideas is definitely for you. And if you buy it and it’s not, we are happy to refund your subscription.

Make this issue the first of your subscription (click).

They made their own grassland seeder.

Aaron (21) and Dan (29) do farm contract work. Customers are farmers and also horse owners, and many want grassland renovated. They needed a direct drill but the cost was prohibitive, so they made their own.

Simple home made grain cleaner adds £10/tonne.

Fed up with £9-10/tonne stoppages for low bushel weights this farming family came up with the idea of a cleaner built in a drill hopper. It cost them £1,500 to build, and reckon it saves £3,000 a year in stoppages. Plus it cleans their corn for seed.

Free Astro turf for cow tracks.

Playing surfaces are wearing out, and cow tracks are a good second use for scrap. We give details.

All spare parts direct drill

With soil varying from sand to clay on their 500 acres, cultivation machinery was never right. So six years ago they moved to no-till using a drill made in the workshop from a collection of spare parts. It adds liquid starter fertiliser and has rape seed pipes

Sucker herds share secrets

This is has a real seminar in sucker cow management. Sucklers are the enterprise for dairy farmers who quit the milk race and they’re the chosen route to greater soil fertility for many cereal farmers.

Scots farmer designed and made cubicles for 240

Cow size is getting smaller as they breeding away from pure Holstein, and these cows can get trapped by the conventional cubicle. They tried this home made idea and liked it so much made 240 cubicles for their new shed. Generously shared with Practical Farm Ideas.