Big machines such as tractors and combines may grab the limelight, but a lot of the work on farms is done by smaller equipment or attachments fitted to handlers and tractors.

As part of our coverage of this year’s Lamma show, we decided to look at a range of attachments that might be of interest to farmers and contractors. These include post drivers, bale squeezers, feeder buckets, buzzsaws, log splitters, digger arms, mixer buckets, road brushes, bale handlers and root washers.

The other great thing is that these attachments are not too expensive – ideal in a year when there isn’t a lot of spare money around.

Cardley Bingham post driver

Pontefract-based Cardley Bingham made its name building bits of kit for the mining industry, but when that work pretty much dried up, the firm turned its attention to farming.

This one-man vibrating post driver can be fitted to any loader or excavator with simple flow and return oil lines.

The chevron post-clamp is used to pick up stakes and hold them in place. Once it pressurises, a priority diverter valve directs oil to the unit’s motor drive, which spins a pair of off-set bob-weights at 2,250rpm to produce 3.5t of downforce to drive the post into the ground.

The key advantage of this set-up is that it avoids the need for an extra man on the ground to hold stakes in place, making for a safer, cheaper job. The unit costs £7,250 and the hydraulic clamp adds a further £3,000. The company also builds hydraulic stump grinders and road/concrete planers for fitting to diggers and loaders, all coming in at between £4,000 and £5,000.

Zocon bale squeezer

New to the UK, Dutch-built Zocon kit is being brought in by north Devon-based Estrada. This chunky-looking bale squeezer will extend to 2.45m, enabling it to handle square six-stringers and the biggest round bales.

Like a telehandler boom, the sliding sections use maintenance-free, nylon wear pads, making the grab much more robust than a standard unit, according to the firm.

Supplied with bolt-on Euro 8 brackets, it costs £2,000. All galvanised, Zocon’s full range extends to sweeper buckets, grass-harrows and three-way tipping trailers up to 9t.

Emily feed bucket

French firm Emily has redesigned its feeder buckets to better handle long-chop grass silage. The conventional discharge auger has been swapped for a chain-and-slat system, which, with the help of an agitator rotor over the outlet door, is said to double the feed-out speed and avoid bridging.

In addition, it now has a flip-down door that acts as a chute to direct material more precisely.

The swing-up cutter rotor is an option but cleverly, even with this fitted, the bucket requires only one double-acting service. To achieve this the chain drive and door open/shut circuits are synchronised as are the rotor drive and raise/lower functions – a simple electronic diverter valve switches between the two.

A range of different sizes are available from 1.5-3.7cu m and 2-2.7m wide. The 2.6cu m on display at Lamma costs about £11,500 with the optional cutter rotor.

Coup’eco buzzsaw

Risborough Ag Services was displaying its handler-mounted buzzsaw at the show.

Available as a three- or four-blade unit, the Coup’eco saw is primarily designed to take off over-hanging tree limbs, although the standard discs can be swapped for free-swinging blades to side up hedges.

Suitable for fitting to any loader, the unit is said to be ideal for telescopic machines, especially those with a hydrostatic transmission where engine revs can be set at a constant level, irrespective of forward speed.

Hydraulic head tilt and drive for the saw are controlled electronically from a joystick in the cab which comes as part of the fitting kit alongside a separate free-flow return line that has to run directly back to the host machine’s tank.

The standard three-blade Coup’eco retails for just shy of £12,000.

Quickfencer splitter

Best known for its clever stock-net unroller, Quickfencer had a self-feeding log chopper/splitter on its stand.

Put simply, lengths of timber are dropped in through a chute at the top. A V-shaped blade powered by a hydraulic ram with 45t of pressure behind it then crops it to length and simultaneously forces it through a vertical splitter blade.

The addition of a loading grab has significantly upped outputs according to the firm. Telescopically, it is used to grasp individual lengths of cordwood when the unit is crowded fully forward. Then, with it rotated back to an upright position, gravity is left to do the rest. Capable of dealing with timber up to 35cm (14in) in diameter, the Quickfencer splitter can be fitted to either loaders or excavators and costs £7,500 with the grab attachment.

Cochet digger arm

French firm Cochet spends most of its time building combine header trailers (now sold through Quivogne UK) but it also has another interesting sideline in the shape of excavator attachments for loaders.

Two models are available – one with a 1.8m-deep reach and 1.8t tear-out force for fore-end loaders and another for handlers capable of stretching down to 2.4m and generating 2.8t of lift. Up in the cab an additional left-hand joystick is fitted to activate the slew and crowd services through a solenoid diverter valve. Supplied with a 40cm-wide digging bucket, the unit costs about £4,000.

Sieplo feeder/mixer bucket

Given that vertical tub-type mixer wagons are all the rage in the dairy game, Dutch firm Sieplo has come up with a range of miniaturised single- and twin-auger mixers for handlers and loader tractors.

Stretching from 675-4,075 litres, they are made entirely from stainless steel, and have weigh-cells and feed-out doors to both left and right hand sides.

The company says the attachment is popular with different groups of customers – small-scale dairy and beef farmers who aren’t happy just dumping a bale in front of their cattle and want to produce a very precise TMR. The others are big dairy units who want to produce a very controlled diet for groups of dry cows and youngstock, separate from the main herd’s ration.

In addition to the main line of loader-mounted mixers, there is also a walk-behind, battery-powered version. But for now the most popular is the 1,500-litre model, which starts at about £7,500 and climbs to well over £11,500 when fitted with the optional clamp face rotor.

Adler road brush

This arrow-headed attachment is specifically designed to deal with stubborn deposits of run-in mud and muck on the black-top after there has been field traffic coming out on to the road.

Built in Germany, the Adler road brush has a bank of sprung scraper blades out front to prise awkward dirt from the highway surface. Following that is a conventional 750mm-diameter rotating nylon brush and collector hopper. Although there are plenty of hydraulic functions on the machine, the plumbing is actually relatively straightforward. A single auxiliary service on the host machine supplies all the oil and this is then sent in two different directions by a single electronic diverter valve.

One circuit supplies the motor that runs the brush while the other deals with the scraper and dirt box. So as the paddle-frame is lifted and pressurises the brush it then lifts clear to allow the hopper contents to be discharged.

Suitable for fitting to a loader or the front-linkage of a tractor, the Adler brush is being sold by Ireland’s Farm Machinery for £10,500.

Grass Tech root washer/chopper bucket

We have heard plenty of late from Irish firm Grass Tech about the benefits of zero grazing and its range of cut-and-run wagons built for the purpose, but now the company has an additional weapon in its armoury.

Called the Beetmaster, it is a feeder/chopper bucket with the facility to wash roots before they are distributed to the herd. At the business end it’s all pretty standard stuff – an auger in the base of the bucket propels roots to the left-hand side where they’re forced through a turbine-like chopper unit.

But it is what’s up top that makes this different – a cage frame incorporating a tumbler rotor clamps shut once the bucket is full allowing the attachment to be lowered upside down into a water tank.

Then, with the agitator running on the same circuit as the auger, roots are mixed and tumbled in the water to wash off any soil. With that done, the bucket returns to its usual position and gets on with the job of spewing out chopped beet or potatoes. Two models are available – a 750kg version for £5,500 and a 1,000kg one for £6,500. It’s well worth taking a look at the company’s YouTube video of it in action.

Kuhns MFG small bale handling kit

Ohio-based Kuhns MFG was displaying its clever small-bale handling system at Lamma. Based around two crucial pieces of kit – an accumulator sledge and a grab – the concept sees flat-eights, flat-10s, flat-12s and even packs of 18 grouped and bound together to make handling a much simpler task.

It all starts with the accumulator sledge towed behind the baler. A three-wheeled unit, bales leave the chamber and excess inertia from the plunger propels them up a chute to the top of the accumulator bed.

A series of mechanically triggered gates then send the bales into their correct position within the pack, irrespective of forward speed and all without electrics or hydraulics. As with a conventional sledge, the final bale trips the back gate and
the pack drops onto the ground.

But it is the hook-grab that’s the really clever bit. Depending on whether you have chosen to go for a flat-eight, flat-18 or anything in between (there are versions to stack them on their sides, too), you will need an appropriately sized Tie-Grabber to go with it.

Looking much like grandad’s good old flat-eight, hooks grasp the bales but with the Kuhn’s version, one side rail acts as a hydraulic squeezer to firm the pack up.

With that done, a twine arm is triggered and wraps the bales with a single strand of string, tied together by a conventional Rasspe knotter of the sort you will find on most balers.

It is all hydraulically powered and sequenced so it can be done as the pack is being moved to the trailer. Because the bales are all securely bound, there is no need for restacking and no one gets any blisters.

But of course there is a cost. Imported by Surrey-based Small Bale Company, prices for the Tie-Grab start from £8,100 and from £10,500 for the accumulator.