Richard Murray’s Lowlander 120 HBD and Farmstar 80 HBD

Continually evolving his manure delivery and spreading service has led one Scottish contractor to run three highly accurate Bunning spreaders applying a vast range of products for his growing customer base.

Richard Murray has been on a mission to improve soil through targeted manure applications since 2008, and the recent addition of a smaller Bunning Lowlander 80 HBD (Horizontal Beater and Spinning Discs) has allowed easier access to some smaller fields and a dedicated machine for heavier products such as lime.

In partnership with his brother, Mr Murray runs a farming, contracting and haulage business at Redden Farm near Kelso in the Scottish Borders. The farm is tenanted from the Roxburghe Estates and is predominantly arable with some permanent pasture. Alongside this is a small haulage business and agricultural contracting operation, which supplies and spreads up to 60,000t of manure a year.

The company began offering manure spreading in 2008, which began with moving poultry litter on to farms and spreading after harvest. This has grown substantially over the years and the business now has three Bunning spreaders in its fleet supplied by local dealer Rickerby – a 2015 Lowlander 120 HBD, a 2017 Lowlander 120 HBD, and a smaller Farmstar 80 HBD that arrived in 2020.

Richard Murray explains the benefits of running different sized machines. “The Lowlander 120 HBDs carry out the bulk of the farmyard manure, poultry and digestate works. However, to increase efficiency with heavier products such as lime and gypsum, we bought a third smaller, lighter spreader, to allow us to start spreading earlier in the year and make it easier to access smaller farms and fields.”

Smaller spreader

As the spreaders are turning a wheel every month of the year, and with the wide variety of products now being spread, a Bunning Farmstar 80 HBD was added in 2020. The spreader was bought to primarily spread lime as the heavier products in the bigger machines represented a lot of weight tracking across the field, as Mr Murray explains.

“We could only put 8-9t of wet lime in the larger spreaders. They had no problem with spreading it whatever the condition, but we thought owning a spreader better suited to this type of product, and one that would allow us to feel more stable on hills, would be a worthwhile investment.”

Some of Mr Murray’s contracting work involves steep grassland fields and tight gateways so the shorter wheelbase and lower design of the 80 HBD means safer operation in these areas. The spec of the smaller machine was slightly different to help product flow more evenly. Additional slats were added in-between the standard ones on the moving floor to avoid dead space, helping product move down the spreader with greater ease. As its primary job is spreading lime, variable rate application, weigh cells and Isobus were added, which means the spreader settings now run through the John Deere screens, rather than requiring a separate control box.

“Isobus has allowed greater compatibility between the tractors and spreader and is so easy to set up. Through the My John Deere operating centre I can send prescription maps to the tractor and the operator accepts it to begin, and this can be variable rate maps for any product based on soil requirements.”

Mixing manure

The manure process is controlled from start to finish, from haulage and positioning of manure heaps on farm, to loading and spreading accurately to suit the fields. One area that Mr Murray says has improved the nutrient value of manure is the pre-mixing back at his home farm before delivery to customers.

All material arrives at the farm via lorries and is tipped on to a dedicated mixing bay. He adds gypsum to poultry manure to increase the calcium and sulphur levels, and it also adds a bit of dry matter, which helps when storing and applying.

For FYM, a turner is used on some farms to compost the FYM bulk during the year, before application in the spring. “This has been a bonus for us as a 1,200t heap of FYM can be reduced to 600t through composting. It has the same P/K nutrients, which is what most growers will be looking for from FYM applications. It is more efficient to apply and the nutrients are available to plant quicker.”

Some of his long-term customers are seeing reductions in bought-in fertiliser applications, with Mr Murray also only applying top-ups of P/K every five years.

The back-up from Bunning has been second to none and Mr Murray says being able to pick up the phone and speak directly to the manufacturer has huge benefits when issues arise. He is currently pricing up for a Lowlander 120 HBD to replace the 2015 model through local Bunning dealer, Rickerby, and he says moving another spreader onto Isobus will help increase efficiencies across the business and allow him to accurately apply and record every load.