Hi there I am thinking about purchasing a MF 500 4m seed drill with suffolk coulters, end tow and 24m tramlines which i cam across recently at a dealers.

Currently I sow approximately 12 acres of oats each spring and and 8 acres of winter barley in september/October. In addition I sow 6-8 acres of rape as winter fodder for ewes each year. The fields are ploughed and then given a quick rib of the leveller and the larger stones picked and then the field gets a couple of passes alternating between with the leveller, disc and tripple k (spring ) harrows to prep the seed bed. Then the remaining stones picked and the fertiliser and then the seed is then broadacst with a fertiliser sower and theseed is covered with a pass either the disc or the tripple k harrow. I'd be greatfyl if anyone could help me with the following queries:

Just wondering if a drill is easy to set up and use and how many of the passes of the the drill would save. ie haw much time and labour?

How would the suffolk coulters work land that has stones that range in size from tennis balls to the size of a large biscuit tin (we do get most of them that are near the surface but inevitably when the field is returned to pasture there are always 3/4 dtoned the size of large biscuit tin that have been missed)?

How long would coulter tips last and are they expensive to replace?

Will the drill sow rape/grass seed?

Can the tramlines be turned off/overridden?

I'm looking for some thing that is simple and cheap to operate and maintain and will take some of the labour out of the operation. I can buy the drill for around £1000. Is there anything that I should be looking out for with the drill when I inspect it?

Any help and pointers would be greatly appreciated

Regards

John

I had a mf 500 drill the coulters last 300-400 acres and are easy to replace the drill will not sow rape with out a small seed kit  good drill the only trouble i had was with the lift rams   will cope with stones well  The tram lines can be overriden if you want

if you have stones, you need to dump the triple k. a hays leveller is the best for stony land.

how wide are your gates and roads, ? a 4m drill is 17ft wide. you will get fed up transporting it.

i would recomend an accord mounted air drill, it will sow anything. the mf30 needs a small seeds kit for rape which is a pig to fit.

Thanks for the information. Given that the drill is a good few years old, how easy is it to get replacement parts should they break?

I was buying one a few years ago and was told to stay away from them (by my main MF dealer) because spare parts are impossible to get, so I got an MF 30 instead, 3m with everything on. Could overide tramliner. Tramliner kit is foolproof. Really nice machine to operate and put down fert. also but this was a pain to clean out. I'd stay away from 4m machine simply because 3m is big enough and when finishing a field you need a lot more seed to keep the 4m machine going vs. the 3m one.