Where tight buildings and yards are concerned, pivot steers may seem the obvious choice, with Weidemann a familiar name for those users. However, Alex Heath visits a farmer who has taken on one of the manufacturer's compact rigid telehandlers instead.
Set high up in the picturesque hills around Windermere, Cumbria, Simon Wood farms 121 hectares (300acres), stocking the land with suckler cows and ewes. His herd is made up of 40 cross bred cows, with Blues, Blondes, Limousins and Herefords all featuring in the breed composition.
Calves are predominantly sired by a Blonde d'Aquitaine with some Limousin influence also seen. They are sold as 11-month old stores through North West Auction's Lancaster and J36 markets.
Mr Wood's landlord's cattle are also housed and looked after by him, taking the bovine head count to 120. Ewes are made up of 300 mules, set to lamb in April, with a small pedigree Texel flock now housed and ready to lamb.
While the area is famed for its vast hillsides, Mr Wood's buildings are anything but vast, with narrow and tight accesses, requiring a telehandler that packs a punch in performance, but is also nimble enough to scoot in and out.
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Arriving on-farm in August last year, the Weidemann 4512 has been kept busy over winter feeding the housed stock on-farm and supplementing the out wintered sheep in their stone walled paddocks.
After looking around various brands to replace his aging JCB 515-40, the Weidemann was settled on with the build quality and compactness strong points in Mr Wood's eyes. The deal was sealed with Cornthwaite Farm Machinery.
Mr Wood explains the workload of the telehandler, he says: "During winter, it spends most of its days loading silage from the pit into his Keenan mixer wagon, coupled to a 1.32-metre wide shear grab."
The 4.5m lift height enables the loader to clear the mixer wagon, but also when unloading straw lorries, the top two bales can be safely removed. Straw comes tightly packed in Quadrant bales, says Mr Wood, but the 1,250kg lift capacity is plenty to keep on top of the job.
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The cab is a crush - inevitably, perhaps - but rear three-quarters and all-round visibility is just fine.
