No-Till Opener Designed To Eliminate "Hairpinning"

No-Till Opener Designed To Eliminate "Hairpinning" NO-TILL EQUIPMENT No-Till Equipment 25-2-9 Brothers Alvin and Rubien Herman were convinced no-till seeding of small grains would be more successful for them if the problem of hairpinning could be solved. "The Saskatchewan farmers say it causes uneven seeding and emergence. "We farm a lot of leased ground and often end up in a situation where the straw hasn't been properly chopped and spread," says Alvin. "Without further chopping, the openers on the air seeders we'd been using just pushed straw into the soil instead of cutting through it." The Hermans' opener makes use of wheels on either side of the opener to hold crop residue in place while a single disc slices through it, opening up a clean seed slot. Once they had a design figured out they made six openers and used them to replace the three openers on each end of the John Deere 1850 seeder they were using. "We used it to plant part of our crop, and you could see very plainly where those six openers had been," Alvin says. The Hermans' design was sufficiently different from other openers already on the market that they were able to obtain patents. They have since licensed their patents to Morris Industries, Saskatoon and further development has been a joint effort. Murray Just at Morris Industries says the company has built a new toolbar around the Hermans' opener which mates to the company's 7000 series air cart. After testing the original design on their new toolbar, the company decided to use a parallel linkage, to give it more stability and improve seeding depth. A second independent disk (fertilizer coulter) has been added behind the opener to apply granular fertilizer from a second hopper in the air cart. The fertilizer coulter also provides the choice of applying NH3 or liquid fertilizer. Morris Industries says its new no-till seeder will allow growers to save time in field preparation and at planting. "The Hermans have been able to significantly increase their seeding speed with this opener," he says. Herman says while they no longer need their large horsepower tractors for tillage, they still use them on their air seeders. With the no-pin openers in place, they've been able to plant at speeds of 10 to 12 mph, up from 4 1/2 to 5 mph. "You might think that seeding at that speed would give you a more uneven stand, but we've not seen that," Herman says. Close to 20,000 acres have already been seeded with the Morris prototype unit, primarily by the Hermans. Morris Industries expects to conduct one more season of tests with prototypes of the new opener before making it widely available. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Morris Industries, Ltd., 2131 Airport Drive, Saskatoon, Sask., Canada S7L 7E1 (ph 306 933-8585; E-mail: morris.ind@sk.sympatico.ca)

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