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Thursday 28 July 2011
Jake Bryson and his new FR9060
Jake Bryson is a director at a busy New Holland tractor dealership in Lanark – Bryson Tractors, but he also has his own contracting firm in the area. He says that one of the most important jobs of the year is the silage making.
Last year, to ensure that everything would run as smoothly as possible, Jake bought a brand new New Holland FR9060 for the job.
“The foragers have a very important role because the grass harvest provides vital winter feed for the cows. But it’s a very short season and there’s a very brief window of grass cutting opportunity – especially here, where we get so much rain. The machine we use has to be ultimately reliable because if we miss that window because of a breakdown, then it’s a disaster.”
Because Bryson Tractors deal in New Holland tractors, and not foragers, he went to Agricar in Dundonald, the specialist New Holland Forager Xpress dealers, for his new FR9060.
Agricar Dundonald provides Foragers, Forager services and Forager parts to, not only their own customers, but other New Holland dealerships and their customers in Scotland.
Jake Bryson’s new FR9060 harvested around 4000 acres of grass and some grain over 600 hours in its first season. Jake says his driver was impressed with the machine: “Our driver spent about up to18 hours a day on the forager and he really liked it. From an operator’s point of view it’s very good, with a nice, comfortable cab. But also, from a technical point of view, New Holland has changed the drive system layout on the FR9060 and it’s much easier to access and far simpler to maintain.”
Jake, who has had three New Holland Foragers before, was also impressed with some other new modifications on the FR9060: “New Holland has changed the design of the pickup on this machine: Instead of the retractable fingers on the older machines, this one has paddles: They’re a huge improvement.”
Although the harvest was a success and the FR9060 performed well, Jake is cautious about tempting fate: “I’m not one to praise a machine on its first season – you really have to give it four or five seasons to see how it does, but I can see that in the long term, this machine is going to do well – it’s certainly a case of so far so good.”
