This was an article written for the "Liberty County Times" but it is a great explanation how the Goose Tender got its start.
Goose Tender a perfect fit with Goose Shooter
By PAUL OVERLIE
It all began about 14-years ago, when Kurt Kammerzell saw a double shoot system on a seeder at an experimental station he was working at. Kurt and his father Gordon worked up the design for a better system and started using it. This led to the need for a better system of loading the hoppers in his air-seeder and now both items are available on the market. Dubbed the “Goose-Shooter” and the “Goose Tender,” both are a perfect mesh of need and utility in an ever-changing agricultural environment.
But the big deal right now is the Goose Tender!
“I came up with the idea about five years ago,” Kurt Kammerzell said. “I put a rough sketch on paper and went to Gerber Manufacturing in Great Falls; they built the first prototype.”
That first unit proved to be a big improvement over the way Kammerzell had done things in the past, but there were still some drawbacks. Chief among them was needing to climb the ladder to the air drill hopper several times. “It worked real well with all three products (starter fertilizer, seed and fertilizer) on a single truck, which decreased the time it took to fill the air drill by a bunch,” Kammerzell said. “After a year of using the manual version, we developed a remote control unit so you could climb the ladder just once and handle all your filling from there.”
Kurt patented the idea and then went to work finding someone capable of manufacturing it. He finally contacted Meridian Manufacturing and the concept is now in production and available to the public.
“I shot a video and I knew that, to make this work, I needed to find a manufacturer that made tenders,” Kammerzell said. “I contacted Meridian Manufacturing in Lethbridge, Alberta and I talked to a sales manager. When I went up to meet with him he wasn't available, so we got to see the president of the company and he loved it!”
Meridian is now making the “Goose Tender” under their product name “Seed Express 600RT.
So how good is this idea? Well, if time matters, this unit can fill a 450-bushel air cart in 8-12 minute; that is all three hoppers on the unit with all three products. It also takes fewer people and fewer trips to get the job done.
“One person can handle the filling out of a single truck,” Kammerzell said. “No longer does it take several people with three trucks 45 minutes or more to fill a big drill, which dramatically reduces the work load.”
But, for Kurt Kammerzell, this type of tender came out of the older idea, a second shooter attachment connected to a standard air drill drop tube. The idea was to put nitrogen fertilizer in the ground but not right on the seed.
“At the research station we notices there was too much variability in fertilizer utilization (with top dressing) so we wanted to put the fertilizer down in a way that would reduce volatility loss and variability,” Kammerzell said. “This double system was the answer. Dad and I went to work on this and it took about two days to get the spacing and angle right.”
The process is called a modified in-furrow band.
“Because the second unit doesn't touch the soil, this doesn't pull hard and that means you can increase your speed in the field,” Kammerzell said. “This reduced our time in the field but we were filling our drills all the time and we were spending too much time filling the drills. This is what led to the goose tender idea.”
Top dressing with dry nitrogen fertilizer has always had its problems. These were made even worse by no-till farming methods, according to Kammerzell.
“Top dressing really has too much loss, but there are problems with putting the fertilizer in the ground as well,” Kammerzell said. “This system puts the seed in and it gets covered by soil before the nitrogen goes in on top of it, then the furrow closes over it all. Instead of deep banding the fertilizer we are putting it on top so you don't fracture the seed-bed.”
The “Goose-Shooter”, as this unit is called, is manufactured locally by Toner's TireRama in Rudyard. Both the tender and the double chute system can be ordered by contacting Kurt Kammerzell.
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