Willie Smith
Greentowers, Cartland, Lanark

Willie Smith, his two sons and other family members, with an additional 10 employees, farm Greentowers, a large dairy and beef producer on what was originally six farms at altitudes varying from 650 to 1000 ft above sea level, north of the town of Lanark with its bustling new cattle market. The farms have been reorganised into 4 units, more or less adjacent, to provide a highly efficient enterprise. The majority of the land is in grass for silage production and grazing, with the arable fields producing barley and wheat, to a total of more than 400 hectare.

Two of the farm steadings allow feeding in modern ‘drive-through’ passageways in excellent modern buildings allowing ample space for Diet Feeders to discharge the rations up against feed barriers; the third unit requires a very different type of system with a feed trough of about 48” width up the centre of the buildings, providing access to feeding from both sides through feed barriers which are 48” high. These bunker troughs can only be filled from the ‘cattle side’ by a feeding machine with a very high discharge height, so it has not proved practical to use a diet feeder for this application.

Over the past 30 years, Kidd forage boxes were used for this purpose, but in 2009, Willie chose a Foster D750, supplied by Ross of Lanark to take over the work. As with the Kidd boxes, extra discharge height was required, and Fosters’ Mike Drewery agreed to provide a special build D750 with 12” of extra height built into the chassis to ensure that the machine feeds over these high barriers satisfactorily. This brought the discharge height up to 49” and has been proven to work well, so that the bunker troughs can be filled easily from one side whilst the stock are held in the cubicle area of the building. The variable speed cross conveyor on the D750 can be easily adjusted from the tractor seat to ensure that there is enough silage available for stock feeding from either side. These large troughs have ample capacity but there is very little waste, even when seasonal requirements mean that only one sided feeding is required. In other buildings at the farm, the D750 feeds easily into conventional troughs.

The moral of the story must be that no one machine will ever suit every set of conditions, but with careful planning by the user and flexibility on the part of the manufacturer, many more variable applications can be successfully tackled by the same piece of original equipment!

For further details of products and dealers contact Foster Sales Company by email: sales@fostersalescompany.co.uk