[Dadnatron]

Are they slow simply because of the full ground contact and drive mechanism?

I must be honest, I never thought about them being faster/slower than any other drill. It just never crossed my mind.

 

[Dadnatron]

can you rent one of the Brillions seeders. why buy something you use once every 10 years, lot of money sitting a shed doing nothing

Unfortunately, I have looked everywhere. Brillion/Landoll doesn't even have a dealer in Kentucky. And the closest, Ohio, won't let anything go that far. It really frustrates me. I'd rather rent, that is for sure.

 

[Dadnatron]

What goes 'wrong' with them?

If I buy a used machine, are there things at which I should be specifically looking?

Given the one in the link, does the apparent slight angle in the boxes matter in overall function? My land isn't perfectly flat, and I have a few small 10' hill variance in a few spots.

 

[Dadnatron]

That is definitely a plus for you Beav.

I need access to a seeder and a subsoiler. Can get neither without purchase.

 

[Dadnatron]

We did run ou r billion at a half day and over lap 50% to prevent any chance of skip in the sod

Saint, do you mean you ran your Brillion at half application amount and essentially doubled the passes, overlapping 50% each pass? Were you ever worried about 'overpacking' the surface?

I have disked then cultipacked at 90deg to each other and 45deg to the original drill path. The ground was as expected, but we did have a pretty good rain the day after cultipacking. I haven't had a chance to see how it all turned out after the rain yet, but will take a look this weekend. I don't know whether I will need to go over it in some way before I plant. I suspect yes if I use a Brillion and perhaps not if I go with the Extension's No-till.

My wife said it didn't wash, which was somewhat of a surprise, as prior to disking, the no-till did run a bit in a couple places. Perhaps the disking loosened the top up enough to accept more water quicker.

 

[Dadnatron]

As I was looking through information concerning seeders, I found a Land Pride NTS2511 which is very interesting.

I had looked at smaller versions of this machine with an eye to the future as a 'pasture renovation' tool. But, that was when the largest they had was a 9' model. Now, I see they have an 11' model, which changes things in my eyes relatively significantly.

It has a basic 'Brillion' type design in that it has front and back rollers, dropping the seed between them. There are a few differences, which allow this machine to better renovate pasture however. The front 'roller' is actually 2 slightly overlapping rollers with spikes. These rollers can be angled up to 18deg, thereby causing a more aggressive 'preworking' of the soil prior to seed drop. The following roller is about the same as the following roller on a Brillion.

The only question I have is whether it can do a good job as a primary seeder on worked soil. Brillion is obviously designed specifically for that job, given a larger leading roller. The Land Pride front roller isn't designed to primarily be a 'packing roller' although it looks like it could work well if kept in straight rolling form/direction. The spikes will certainly cause more disturbance than a non-spiked roller, but I am not sure it would be enough to cause a problem. This is the crux.

The Land Pride would be MUCH more useful to me on a year in and out basis given its ability to renovate areas of a pasture which are thin but could use some help. But I don't know whether it can put in a good primary seeding to begin with. I would give up 'some' initial benefit for a more long term useful machine. But I don't want a crap stand because I tried to short cut a problem.

What do you think about the utility of using this seeder as a primary seeder over disked/cultipacked/rained upon ground? The 'breaking up' caused by the roller might be just the thing for a thin crust from the rain. But... I don't want to be talking myself into something just because it 'seems' like it would work well.

Land Pride NTS 2511

 

[Dadnatron]

I have found that I need to apply a heavier amount of seed since some seed gets deposited deeper into the spike holes than desired. So an alfalfa seed for example may fall an inch into the disturbed soil rather than be pressed just a bit into the surface as the Brillion would.

What is your % more estimation that you are adding, when you use/would use the Belco as a primary seeder?

I'm thinking hard about this machine as it would be much more useful on a yearly basis to my farm.

 

[Dadnatron]

I took a leap and went with the Land Pride NTS2511.

I found a 4ac demo unit and towed it home yesterday. It rained, and given Harvey, it is forcast to be raining or rainy for the next 7-10 days. This is going to put my planting at the late stages of acceptable here in KY, according to the 'people in the know'. If I had the seeder over the weekend, the weather was perfect, and it would be able to take advantage of the 2 additional weeks and all the moisture. But... so goes farming.

I went over the seeder for a few hours yesterday afternoon, aligning the seed cups and trying to calibrate the small seed bin. There must be some issues, because I had it set for right around 20lbs/ac for alfalfa small seed bin, and I ended up with 37lbs. I will spend some time determining whether I was just doing something incorrectly this weekend.

One thing about this seeder which is odd is that it has 3 adjustable 'gearing modes' which essentially cause the seed box gear/drop mechanism to turn faster or slower. This could be the issue, although, when I look at the gearing, it appears to be set at the correct rotation. I'm going to have to check with the Rep to insure it, because their 'suggestion and my actual' are significantly different.

I also noticed, that one of the 3 seed cups was dropping only about 75% of the others. I cleaned it out and checked everything I could find, and there is nothing clogging either the tube or the cup that I can see. This makes me wonder whether other cups could also be significantly variant.

 

[Dadnatron]

Thus far, I've been very disappointed in the functionality of the Land Pride NTS seeder.

On the surface, it is 'similar' in function to the Brillion seeders. I haven't found that the front rollers with the spikes, tear up the ground too much.

My biggest complaint, thus far, is the horrible engineering in their seeding chart. I calibrated the legume box with coated alfalfa 6422Q, all regular size. Using the seeding chart for 20lbs/ac I dropped 37.5lbs/ac. In order to get it correct, I had to change the seeding setting to less than half of the Official Chart Indication. While I don't expect it to be perfect, I'd expect it to be within around 10% with a little fine tuning by me.

I then did the large box with Harvestar Orchard grass and using their chart, I was looking for 10lb/ac and achieved 32lb/ac.

When I contact Land Pride/Great Plains and spoke with their Engineers, they were perplexed. They said initially, when the seeders came onto the GP side (after purchase of the company) they had some issues dumping up to 100lbs/ac. But they did some calculations, changed some gearing, and according to calculations, 'fixed the problem'. I spoke directly with the engineer who 'ran the new spreadsheet' and he was very proud and was going to send it to me directly. I asked him whether he had gone out to a machine and tested his calculations? And his reply was "Its all just math, gearing etc. It should work just fine."

After explaining to him that his system did NOT work just fine, he was dismissive. I told him I'll make a YouTube video showing things... which I have been recording since then, but have not edited and put out. He said, 'Ok, I'll take a look when you've done it.' and that was that.

I think the machine will work, but the company has been worthless to me thus far. I know Kubota purchased them both, and perhaps things will change. But as it sets, I think I would have rather gone with the Brillion and skipped the 'potential added utility' of this machine. Given its primary workings require me to calculate each new seed rate from scratch. Not impossible, but it is a major pain, and requires much more work, than ANY brand new machine should require, just to get it up and running.

I'd hate to have 'taken their word for it' and began seeding RR alfalfa at $11.50/lb.

 

[Dadnatron]

85% and 300% off isn't of any use.

It would be better for them to just say, 'You're on your own', then I wouldn't have had any expectations of being in the ballpark. And while I understand seed size variability, I don't think there is any way that a 'checked' seeding rate chart could be this far off.

I've used seed charts on several different seeder/drills and never have I seen one which was further off on 2 different seeds, than this one.

 

[Dadnatron]

Orchard grass is uncoated and yet it dropped over 3x stated expectations.

 

[Dadnatron]

With hulls or without? Does that seeder have cups with seed gates like a drill? There are so many settings and variables that it's always hard to say.

The orchard grass had no hulls. But that was in the seeding chart. I don't think I've ever actually seen hulled seed for planting, but that is likely just my limited experience. The seeder has seed gates and cups. There are 2 ways to control seed drop on the 'large box' gate and % cog teeth showing and 1 way (cog teeth) on the legume box.

I don't know how Brillion meters seed so can't compare. I really don't see why this one should perform so poorly. The theory seems sound, but the outcome is anything but.

I saw a NT drill which had a tray which could be inserted into a slot to catch seed. I think this is brilliant and should be standard on all drills/seeders. What I did worked, (separate tupperware containers for each seed tube/gate/cup) but it was not convenient. And given the discrepancy in the chart vs reality, EVERY seed which is put through this machine require calibration if you want to make it to the end of your field.

Next, I have Timothy, which will be a real test. I haven't decided how I will go about calibration. I might put in 100lbs (which is what I plan on planting) and test the output of every cup. Just get a bunch of those throw away tupperware containers and catch every cup separately.

I might end up designing a tray to catch seed, like you say you built. Do you have any recommendations? I was thinking about just cutting a 4-6" PVC pipe in half and figuring out a way to cover the seed drop.