Shayne Ints is the Manager, Irrigated Farming, for Reardon Farms on their ‘Worrall Creek’property, near Talwood, Queensland. The farm has 5000 acres of wheat crop on red clay, chocolate and grey soils, “It is basically, all types of soil,” explained Shayne. In Winter, they planted 2500 acres using RYAN NT packer wheels on a Morris Contourdrill with 60 rows on 12” spacings. The planting included including 1200 acres under lateral irrigation. “We don’t have to pull up – and there is less maintenance,” said Shayne. “They are self-cleaning and increasing speed cleans them up.” “In drizzly rain you could see the mud flick off at 7 mph,” commented John Cassidy, who operated the machine. They cut through when the rubber wheels would build up and lift up off the ground. “We had five different machines in a 700 acre field and this was the only one with coil wheels. The coils are much better.”

Jeff Jones has 35 years crop farming experience at ‘Micron Downs’ near Goondiwindi and uses RYAN NT double disks and coil packer wheels fitted to his 2006 model Janke parallelogram Hoe Drill. The packer wheels are self-cleaning and give great seed to soil contact”, said Jeff. “They really stood out on the last seeding; the coils don’t pluck the seed out of the ground when it’s wet, compared with rubber-tired packer wheels.” Jeff used 15” plain double disks disc after trial work to get a smaller incision to avoid smearing and moisture loss. As he said: “There was less fracturing and drying out of the soil. It gives even soil contact, with no air pockets. And we have no maintenance issues.” They plant wheat in late Fall and he plans to rotate with chick peas. “This is a simple concept, which allows us to get going a bit earlier and we can plant in wetter conditions.”