United Kingdom, Neil Buckton

Neil Buckton, Wansford, Driffield, East Yorkshire

Since buying it in February, Neil Buckton’s XERION 3300 and 24m dribble bar umbilical spreading combination has spread a massive 250,000m3 of pig and cow slurry, and worked over 2,500 hours.

Based near Beverley in the pig farming and breeding heartland of east Yorkshire, Neil invested in the XERION based dribble bar system last spring to replace a home built, tractor mounted splash plate unit.

“The splash plate bar system was fine, but with tightening regulations it made sense to change to a dribble bar system,” says Neil. “As we are mainly spreading into growing cereal crops, firstly a dribble bar means that we can more accurately place the slurry at the base of the plant, and also avoid slurry being washed down tramlines, but also as most of the farms are using 24m tramlines, obviously they wanted us to follow those.”

Having bought the 24m Vogelsang dribble bar unit, after looking at various tractors and power units to mount it on, Neil thought that the XERION offered him the most flexibility, as during quiet periods it could be used for other agricultural work. In addition, by using the front linkage the XERION, which has a front positioned cab, could also carry a 1200m pipe reel between sites.

Supporting the XERION 3300 is a second tractor, which carries and tows a further three reels of pipe totalling 2000m, which works ahead of the XERION to set up supply pipes from the 150hp slurry pump, so as to keep field turnaround time to a minimum.

“Our season starts in February when we are spreading on to oilseed rape, after which we then spread into cereals through to late May, often running 20 hours a day,” explains Neil. “During the summer we then change to a 6m injector unit for stubbles and grasses before finishing in late September.”

“Typically we work at 0.5kph covering 2ha/hour at a rate of 50m3/ha and during the spring when in standing crops, those who used to use two splits of fertiliser will now often use us for at least one of those splits. I have at least ten 3,000 pig units which we will visit twice a year, taking three days to pump over 5,000m3 and we have the capacity to pump up to three kilometers because these often don’t have much land, so neighbouring farmers are buying the slurry in place of fertiliser.”

“The XERION 3300 is fantastic and even when pulling 300m of 10cm diameter pipe, because it is so well balanced it makes far less than a normal tractor would. CEBIS makes it very easy to operate and change the macerators hydraulic flow speed depending on whether we are applying watery pig slurry or thicker cow slurry.”

“The drivers love the XERION, the cab is very comfortable and we have even fitted it with a small TV and a 12 volt Freeview box as when working at night at such a slow speed, a good three hour film soon helps the time go by!”

So pleased has Neil been with the XERION 3300, that he has just invested in a second spreading system, based around a XERION 3800 and a 24,000 litre Agrimac tanker with a 24m dribble bar boom.