Antrim farmer with a love for trailed foragers

Based between Ballymena and Larne in Co Antrim, Neil Hoey milks 140 British Friesian cows alongside his son Sam.

Running a multi-cut system, Neil cuts in the region of 100 acres three times – the majority of which goes into a silage clamp, with any additional grass being baled.

The Hoeys have been cutting their own silage on the farm for generations, dating as long back as Neil can remember.

“I was born in 1978, and that year, my father and a neighbour bought a new Kidd double chop trailed harvester,” Neil says.

“Before that, they were cutting it with a single chop.

“We ran that machine up until 2000, until she was practically worn out to be honest,” he adds.

“We bought a new JF 900 that year. It was a great harvester, and it served us well.

“Once we kept cam bearings and the main bearings in the pickup changed, she never gave us any big trouble. We kept that machine right up until 2021, when we decided to upgrade it.”

Wagon v trailed harvester

“When we decided to change the harvester in 2021, we looked at all our options. If we were going to stay with a trailed harvester, then it was going to be another JF/Kongskilde machine,” Neil explains to the Irish Farmers Journal.

“We spoke with our local machinery dealer R Kennedy who sell both Kongskilde and New Holland, and debated about buying an older New Holland FX self-propelled harvester, or buying a new Kongskilde 1060 trailed forager, at similar money.

“While thinking this through, we also looked at the wagon concept, particularly from a labour point of view. As all farmers and contractors know, it’s getting harder to get help.

“In addition, some of our silage ground is as far as six miles each way, so one wagon would be far too slow,” says Neil.

“In the end, we decided to stick with what we know, and we bought a new Kongskilde 1060 trailed harvester. Yes, a self-propelled would have been a great machine for output, but buying an older harvester could potentially mean buying someone else’s trouble.

“I spoke to a mechanic and we both agreed that self-propelled harvesters can be a money pit if they go wrong.

“We advertised the JF 900 we had at the time. We paid £9,800 for it back in 2000, and we sold it for £5,000 in 2021 – as machinery goes, it was a good investment,” Neil outlines.

Does it pay to cut your own silage?

When changing harvesters, Neil also contemplated getting a contractor in to do the work for him.

“We have always cut our own silage on the farm, and we are used to being able to cut it when we want to. There are loads of contractors around here, and on a normal year, there would be no problem getting one of them to lift the silage when I want to, but I’m just afraid of the weather on a bad year, that we might get caught out,” says Neil.

“Last year, there was a short weather window, and I didn’t have enough help to get 50 acres in before the rain, so a local contractor lifted it for me. I’m not a man for analysing the figures too much, but it’s definitely no cheaper to cut my own silage versus getting a contractor in, and maybe it evens works out more expensive to cut my own.”

Kongskilde FCT 1060

The FCT 1060 can be equipped with a 1.8m or 2.1m pickup, with Neil’s fitted with the latter. He notes this is a big improvement in comparison to the previous JF 900, which had the smaller pickup meaning the raking man had to be very exact with the rows, or they would be too wide for the header.

Once the grass passes up and over the pickup, the auger feeds it through to four feed rollers, which work in a pair to smooth out the flow of forage into the chopping drum. The drum is kitted out with a multi-knife system, with the idea here to help keep costs down, with the operator only having to change a knife that covers a quarter of the rotor width, if a knife is damaged. The 1060 can either be fitted with 24 or 32 knives.

Kongskilde says that its unique upper cut system cuts the crop at the shear bar and throws it directly into the chute. It says that by doing this, friction between the knives and rotor housing is avoided which, it claims, provides more than a 25% increase in capacity compared to similar precision harvesters with the same tractor.

The 1060 features ProTec – which is essentially a friction clutch – which releases in the case of high or sudden overload, for instance if a large object or too much grass gets into the machine. In this event, the reverse system is kicked into motion, and the machine will try and spit out the lump/object etc.

The machines come with the option of a metal detector. This system sees one set of feed rollers made of demagnetised material. In front of the rollers there is a magnetic field that will be actuated if a metal object gets near, which will release the stop pawl. The stop pawl will stop the feeding immediately, so that the metal object will not reach the chopping rotor.

As Neil is only cutting his own silage, he didn’t opt for the metal detector.

An electronic control box in the cab looks after all of the machines operations, such as engaging the pickup, raising and lowering the pickup, hydraulic control of the drawbar to offset the machine, adjusting the chute and reversing the feed rollers.

Fond of machinery

Although a dairy farmer through and through, Neil clearly has a bug for machinery. Mowing with front- and rear-mounted Claas mowers, Neil shakes out the grass with a Claas Volto 800 tedder and rakes it into 20ft swathes with a new Kuhn twin rotor rake.

Alongside the Kongskilde FCT 1060, he runs several Johnson 16ft trailers, and pushes up the silage up with a JCB 532-60, kitted out with an 8ft Johnson buck rake.

Previously, Neil got a contractor in to pipe slurry around the farm with an umbilical system, and typically done the tanker work himself. However, last year, he purchased an AgQuip umbilical system, consisting of a 9m dribble bar and 1,000m of four-inch piping.

Neil also has his own McHale 5600 round baler and a McHale wrapper. The only task he currently uses a contractor for is reseeding.

“We are very happy with the Kongskilde FCT 1060 trailed harvester,” says Neil.

“Just like the JF 900 before it, the machines are simple and they get the job done. We only cut 300 acres maximum each year, and the harvester is cleaned down, washed and tucked away in the shed. When cutting our own multi-cut silage, we aim to pick around 50 acres each day, through 20ft swaths. We run the harvester on a New Holland T7.210, which is well able for it. We pick heavier swaths at around 4mph, while in lighter grass we push it on to around 6mph. With the T7.210, you’ll sicken the harvester, before the tractor starts to give,” noted Neil.

“We typically do any maintenance ourselves. The main thing we watch out for is the cam bearings and the main idler bearings in the pick-up reel.

“Once you keep the knives sharp, and the pick up right, the machine requires very little other general maintenance. I’d say if we’ve spent £100/year on it since it came new in 2021, its about it,” he concludes.