can i drill with accord air drill/combination,thinking of spreading m.a.p in front of drill.Will kemper header handle it.(Contractor wants to drill) .I think that the same amount of seeds per acre makes no difference if in rows close spaced or out of maize drill. Your help much appreciated

Rob We did this at college.However we did not sow the crop using the normal spacings. We simply used a different part in the distribution head which in turn blocked off every other coulter. Did a beautiful job, you would only know it was not drilled with a precision drill because the spacings between plants was not the same. I am fairly sure the drill was an accord with the normal coulters, but not a combi. The contractor involved was happy with the arrangement once he had bought a kemper. However, if you sow the crop at normal row spacings you might get problems at harvest time, since we have found with our jaguar and kemper you sometimes have to slow up a bit when going across the rows otherwise you either get bung ups or you push/cut plants over before they get a chance to feed into the auger. It does depend on how mature the crop is, its yield and if it has got laid or not though. I was sat in the passenger seat once as our head driver went across the rows diagonally at heck of a speed and the crop fed fine. I'd imagine that so long as the seed rate is the same you should be okay since the volume of crop on the header at any one time is similar. If in doubt why not just fit the different part like i said? Im not sure if it was home made or a specially produced part from accord. Perhaps your contractor is keen to get the drilling work? Mayo

We used to drill green feed maize with a cross-slot years ago in NZ. We only used every 4th opener at the time to match the forager head. Worked a treat. It was a gravity system, not air like it is today.

To save buying a differnent distribution head we just block the outlets at the head end with scrunched up newspaper or paper towel. Drill loads of game cover maize this way and it works a treat, if a bit of a bodge................................

We have quite a few customers doing what you are saying both over here and over in Ireland where some are using Grain and fert drills so are putting the maize and fert intogether where as most are purely sowing the maize only. The only thing they all have done is shut off enough rows to be at 15" rows (2 Shut off) or 20" Rows (3 Shut Off), this is purely personel preference but definitely at std 5" rows and 10' rows they all said there wasn't enough air and light getting arround the plants for them to develop well enough put simply. In all the cases the customers set off a little bit as a trial for one reason or another and were amazed by the results and not one has gone back to true precision maize drills. But in all cases they had rotary headers on the choppers. The one area of discussion is coulter design. some customers felt a suffolk coulter wasn't really ideal and prefered discs or our boot coulter others said it didn't matter and suffolks were OK Ithink alot really depends on soil type and conditions. Hope this helps Cheers Alistair

We drilled our GM feed maize with an Accord drill purely by blocking off coulters. First year used a contractor at helluva price. No difference in results, only on the bank balance. In any case you need a fairly warm seedbed by which time the Accord coulters worked OK. Jack Caley

Bought a 4 row maize drill 3 years ago to drill our own 120 acres maize - paid for itself over 2 years. We are just adding an extra seed box to allow us to drill at 24" rows so our neighbour / contractor can spray and apply liquid fert with his sprayer set up for 72" tramlines. Forage harvester has a Kemper header and will manage to pick the rows up ok. He does another farm with 7 seed boxes on their drill at uneven spacings! The most important thing is to plant the seed the right way up, anything else is a bonus! Neil

I have a 8 row maize drill for sale .50 acres a day ! Its a but old but it does a real good job.It gets the seed right into the moisture. Plenty of spares for it .Just need checking over before using.

thanks for all your help,will be drilling some in a few weeks time,Rob

While you can do this no problem and the crop will grow you will notice that the crop will fail to mature properley or together. The seeds per hectare is worked on allowing each plant x amount of space, allowing x amount of light. Sun light for maize is as important as water and soil. If a plant is shadowing another as it grows it will hinder its growth and resultingly will equal uneven maturity at harvest. Plus as someone else mentioned while across your row spacing is fine, the spaces between the plants are to pot, so when harvesting the 500hp of forger is one split second under peak load and the next nothing that why contractors want to drill with a precision drill, plus of course it will result in a even maturing maximum yield crop for you.

do none of you guys plant under plastic? nearly everyone in N.I does with the samco x-tend system http://www.samco.ie/index.asp?page=profile

Alistair Do you still have the Maize drill for sale?? derekjohnston@precise-solutions.co.uk