Article from  SUCCESSFUL FARMING February 2009




New tools boost efficiency
Montana grower develops
two divergent ways to
improve seeding efficiency

By John Dietz


Six trips up and down the air cart ladder for every refill may just be the worst part of the no-till, high-tech, precision- guided day on big grain farms. But there is a remedy at hand.

“It’s a 15-minute job to fill the cart with the Goose Tender, and it’s easy,” says Charles Stewart, Oak River, Manitoba. “Instead of screwing around with a truck, a semi, and a transfer auger, you back up with this thing once and unload. ” You can fill all three compartments (urea, seed, and starter) without getting off the air cart, because you can open and close the gates with the remote control. You only make one trip up the ladder to refill.

The Stewart family – brothers Charles and Doug, and father Gary – is among the first Canadians to use the Goose Tender.

An invention by Chester, Montana, agronomist/wheat grower Kurt Kammerzell, it was renamed the Seed Express 600RT bulk seed tender and began rolling out of the Meridian Marketing Group assembly plant in Storm Lake, Iowa, in late 2007.

Goose Shooter

Kammerzell’s earlier invention, the Goose Shooter, was designed for planting performance rather than planting efficiency.


Charles Stewart holds the remote control that allows him to
manage the flow of urea, seed, and starter fertilizer from the
truck-mounted seed tender in the background.
“The Goose Shooter double-shoot system was designed to band urea fertilizer above the seed and just below the soil surface,” Kammerzell says. “The Goose Shooter does not fracture the seedbed, and wheat stands are greatly improved over many seeding conditions.

“Eliminating deep banding significantly reduces power requirements, he adds. “Eight years of product testing has proven that this double- shoot system will work under many conditions. I use it; it works great.”

Both inventions are products of a Montana heritage – of a farmer wanting a better way to do a farm job.

Kammerzell’s grandfather homesteaded the farm. “On our farm today, there are probably 60 farmsteads that went broke,” Kammerzell says.        

While earning a master’s degree in entomology, the inventor noted a research drill that was able to double- shoot. It put down all the seed and fertilizer in one pass, through the regular seed boot and through a goosenecked add-on.

When Kammerzell returned to farm with his father, Gordon, in 1995, the two purchased their first air drill. Kurt Kammerzell had issues with it and remembered the research unit.

“The drill was going slow,” he says. “We weren’t getting a very good stand with the deep-banding, double-shoot system we were using.   


SUCCESSFULL FARMING February 2009


New tools boost efficiency
continued
Deep-banding fractured the soil, drying it out and pulling very hard.

“Most farmers solved the problem with a separate application of urea on top of the soil,” Kammerzell continues. “That wasn’t an option on our farm. Montana State Experiment Station researcher Greg Carlson has proven over and over again the volatilization factor of surface-applied urea is a 20% to 60% loss. That’s a lot of money, a lot of yield, a lot of protein going up in smoke.”

Looking for a better way

After hours at the drawing board and in the farm shop, Kammerzell mounted his own version on the shanks of the air drill. It dribbled urea into the furrow behind the opener and above the seed. An instant later, the furrow was covered.

“It worked great,” says Kammerzell. “The shooter tube dramatically reduced horsepower requirements. We weren’t hurting germination. Our stand actually improved significantly. I probably used it two or three years, then neighbors started taking a look at it.”

A local shop, Toner’s Tire-Rama in Rudyard, Montana, began building the Goose Shooter for Kammerzell in 2004. It’s available online at www.goosetender.net.

The Goose Shooter continues gaining popularity in Montana, Kammerzell says.

Farm operators install the shooter tube on each shank and redirect the cart’s double-shoot hose into the shooter. It releases the flow of product above the furrow and a few inches behind the seed. Some soil already covers the seed when the urea hits the furrow.

The shooter can take up to 60 units of nitrogen. It isn’t exposed to the ground and can last as long as the drill, he says.


Kurt Kammerzell displays his Goose Shooter fertilizer attachment on
a double-shoot seed boot with a 1-inch carbide point. Urea fertilizer
is applied above the seed and just below the surface.
If dinged by a stone, it can be fixed.

“It could cause a problem if guys are seeding really shallow,” says Kammerzell. “It’s meant for seeding at an inch or more deep, and you want a ¼- to a ½-inch separation so the urea fertilizer isn’t touching the seed.”

Design speed is to seed 5 to 7 mph, depending on row spacing. There is a design modification for different row spacing. The speed of the drill is key to the effectiveness and a benefit.

“We get an excellent stand because we’re not fracturing the seedbed anymore,” he says.

Tender reaches the market

Meanwhile, at age 60-something, Kammerzell’s father, Gordon, was getting worn out climbing the air cart ladder as the father-son team struggled to seed about 5,000 acres.

“We were working our tails off to keep the drill going. We were backing up multiple trucks every time we stopped. I thought, there’s got to be a better way to fill these drills,” Kammerzell recalls. In 2004, Kammerzell hired Gerber Manufacturing in Great Falls,

Montana, to build a prototype tender to match the 500-bushel capacity of his air drill.

It emerged in 2005 with three compartments to dump product onto a single conveyor belt, which emptied into the auger hopper. Mounted on a flatbed truck, it carried all three products – seed, urea and starter fertilizer. It was faster and more efficient, but they still had to climb the ladder each time they switched product.

In the next few months, Kammerzell developed a handheld remote control to hydraulically operate the tender’s gate and conveyor.

“With a remote control, I could climb the ladder one time and then open and close the gates from the top of the air cart,” he says.

In January 2007, he started working with Meridian Mfg. (www. meridianmfg.com) to bring the tender to market. Meridian fine-tuned the design and had 10 units ready for delivery in the fall of 2007. The Stewarts have one of those units.





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