Gormley Contracts in Co Fermanagh undertakes all types of grass-based agricultural contracting and building contracts. On the grass front it runs a set of Krone front and rear mowers, a pair of McHale F5600 balers and a McHale orbital wrapper, but the main agricultural part of the business is slurry spreading.

Based in Belleek, the company is owned and managed by Jamie Gormley. It started in the slurry game in 2002 with a pair of tankers, staying at this for two years before moving to a ground drive tanker. Jamie carried on with this system until 2009.

It was around this time that umbilical systems came on the scene. Jamie decided that for his part of the country, this was the way to go, having found the tankers and ground-driven system caused difficulty with the local ground conditions.

Having looked at what was on the market, Jamie decided that self-build was the way forward. He owns and runs a construction company which does a large amount of steel erection and concrete shuttering. The fact that Jamie had the steel working skills from his other business meant that he was able to take on these projects.

Transport

A key factor for Jamie was the ability to transport up to 1,200 metres of hose. He could only source systems at the time which had 400 metres on the front reeler and 400 metres on the rear. He thought that if he could get 400 on the front and 800 on the rear, this would allow him to work in most of his jobs with no need for an extra roll of hose to be brought in with an extra tractor.

Jamie built everything from scratch, with the exception of the hydraulic motors for rotating the reelers and a Bauer spread plate. Most of his work takes place within a 40km radius of his base, including parts of Sligo and Donegal as well as Fermanagh. This allows Jamie to work for an extra month in the southern counties as the closed period opens in Sligo and Donegal before his home county. This means that he can work constantly from January till the end of March.

The day-to-day workings of the system involves four to five people – one mixing/agitating, two or three drawing with tankers and one man driving the venerable New Holland TS115 that the outfit is attached to. This tractor has clocked 14,000 hours, nearly all of them while on the umbilical system.

The tractor is on very impressive Terra tyres, the dimensions of which are 66-44x25. This means there are 66in of rubber on the ground on each side at the back.

When the outfit is working at maximum capacity, Jamie believes that output upwards of 70,000 to 80,000 gallons per day is possible.

Sturdy

The self-built reelers appear to be a lot sturdier than any of the commercially available machines. One issue Jamie solved with his front reeler design was in relation to the A-frame used to mount it on the front link arms. He engineered a bracket to attach the A-frame directly to the weight holder on the TS. This modification made a huge difference in the manoeuvrability and also balances the tractor better on steep inclines.

Jamie said many of the entrances to his clients’ farms are quite tight so the extra tidiness of the front reeler is a major advantage.

He said the shorter nose on the outfit makes it easier and safer to come out on to a public road.

The main weight of the front reeler is about 2ft closer to the front of the tractor.

The only disadvantage of this is the reeler has to be lifted on with a forklift when required; not a big issue in this case as the yard has a fulltime forklift and it is rarely taken off the old New Holland.

This is the third version of the YELMORG engineering umbilical system and the other two systems have been sold on to other contractors and are still getting through work.

The main tankers used by Jamie are two 2,250 gallon Abbey machines. These are drawn by a couple of newer blue ladies, A T6080 and a couple of T7-200s.

Gormley Contracts uses a Doda HD 35 pump for this umbilical system. This was chosen for its high pressure and ability to move slurry at a high enough rate to hit the work rate required. While in the yard, the Irish Farmers Journal noticed the balers had extra-wide wheels on them.

Jamie has modified the balers to fit a set of 800s on each of them. This shows that he has the skills to modify and change equipment so that it suits the area that he is working in.

During the damp end of the silage season this year, he found he could bale silage in borderline ground conditions with the big wheels.

Jamie is proof that not only is there great ingenuity among farmers and contractors, but also the ability to adapt to local conditions, whether it be with building your own custom umbilical system or fitting monster tyres to get the job done.