Impressions of JD’s 5430i self-propelled sprayer

With a mere 150 hours on the clock, you could be forgiven for thinking that a machine is still in the ‘honeymoon’ period, but Alan Cook is a firm believer in his latest purchase – John Deere’s 5430i self-propelled sprayer.

Trading as Windwhistle Farms, Alan and three full-time staff, including his son David, cover 1,000ha (2,500 acres) of sand, clay over chalk and chalk soil at Sherfield English, Hampshire.

Of this area, 600ha (1,500 acres) is shared, rented or owned, while the remainder is on stubble-to-stubble contracts, within 25 miles of their base.

Cropping consists of wheat, spring barley and oilseed rape, but also in the farm’s growing equation is grain maize. Alan is a leading grower on the UK grain maize scene and, since 2001, has been increasing his involvement with the crop for crimping and other markets such as bird feed.

The John Deere sprayer is the latest to join the all green and yellow line-up at Windwhistle Farms, replacing a trailed Deere 840i machine in the fleet.

“We had some staff changes last year,” Alan says, “and this led me to consider how best we could optimise our pre- and post-emergence regimes.

“At this point, a John Deere 7530 was hauling the trailed sprayer, but this left me with a tractor down when it was needed for other important duties.”

A decision was made that changing from spraying to other duties for the tractor, which

includes maize drilling in the spring, was too time consuming and a self-propelled machine was considered for the first time.

Other makes

“We did look at other makes, having run a Knight sprayer before the Deere trailed, but my confidence in the back-up from R. Hunt, our local dealer, gave me confidence that the 5430i was the machine for us,” Alan says.

The sprayer arrived on-farm in late September 2009, just in time for wheat pre-emergence duties. Since then, it has been driven mainly by David Cook who has a fully specified spraying package to make use of, run through Deere’s 2600 touch-screen system. As well as SF2 guidance which gives around a 20mm accuracy, options such as boom track and swath control aid in operator efficiency at higher spraying speeds. The boom travel and suspension are also praised as both being ‘excellent’.

“Most nozzles are designed to work most efficiently at half-a- metre above the crop, and we can get down that low on early applications,” Alan indicates.

“This means we can cover a full spectrum of spraying, and more importantly on pre-emergence this gives a bigger window of opportunity to apply, and gets the product down to the leaves, where it is effective without drift being such an issue.”

An added bonus of the sprayer, as with most self-propelled machines, is the superior clearance which they can offer for crops such as oilseed rape and maize. “We tried everything with the trailed machine to reduce damage when desiccating, but still made a mess. I am hoping we will be well clear with this machine,” says Alan.

“This clearance should also benefit us in maize, as applying the last dose of fungicide to the crop will now be possible much later. Maize just snaps if you touch it, so our window of time-crucial spraying is now extended.”

An area of the machine which does not get a massive thumbs up is the operator station and access to it.

“When you pay over £100,000 for a machine, you would expect a little better access and cab for your money,” says Alan.

The cab, derived from a 5000 (now 5R) series tractor, is said to be a tad noisy both from the engine and hydrostatic transmission, and does not provide the operator comfort which the Cooks had expected: “We would have liked to see a 6000-series cab fitted on the sprayer, and higher specification air-conditioning,” David adds.

Despite the cab issues, Alan believes he will be in a better position to win more contracting business with the 5430i than he was with a trailed unit.

In doing so, he will apply less spray volume more accurately with fewer passes, but the Deere will certainly clocking up the hours.

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