Heard Farming Ltd

I’m Steve Heard, based in East Leicestershire. Last year we combined 3800 acres of arable crop, spraying 800 to 850 hours per year. This is our second Agrifac sprayer, which was new to us a few weeks ago.

We had our first Agrifac 6 years ago and when it came up for renewal. I fleetingly looked at other machines on the market, but really I had no reason to go elsewhere. We have a lot of new technology on our machine, which was enough of a carrot to lead us to have another Condor.

We are now running the Condor IV with StrictSprayPlus – Agrifac’s pulse width modulation nozzle with turn compensation, which gave us the ability to spray accurately around bends. We farm a lot of small fields and we have a lot of headlands, so ultimately we are spraying around a lot of bends. StrictSprayPlus was a real advantage for us.

Our previous machine was a Condor III with the HighTechAirPlus (HTA) system, which injects air directly into the nozzle to control droplet size. But because of the new StrictSprayPlus, we have moved away from HTA. The way StrictSprayPlus works allows us to set pressure in a similar way we could with the air injection HTA previously

This machine is running Agrifac’s new boom levelling system – StrictHeightPlus. I have been using boom levelling systems for around 12 years and this new system is a real step forward, it is still early days but we are very impressed with the system. For this machine, we have been able to run the John Deere Greenstar GPS, which means we now have standardised systems across the whole farm. Which is a huge advantage, being able to transfer boundaries and fields to get our tramlines on all machines across the farm. So the ability to run the new 4640 screen in the Condor with individual nozzle control was another thing that is unique to the Agrifac Condor.

The sprayer interface is very easy to use and a new operator in a new machine has found it very easy to pick up. The EcoTronicPlus with the StrictSprayPlus has meant we can just set the target rate and the machine takes over and literally works everything else out itself.