For agricultural contractor, Henry Righton, the silage harvest has been pretty much a doddle this year, not necessarily due to the effects of the very dry summer, but more down to the equipment he is using and the support he gets from his local dealer.
Henry Righton Agricultural Contracting, based in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire started business back in 1991 and today offers a wide range of contracting services including all arable work, muck spreading, umbilical slurry applications, big square baling, chemical, seed and fertiliser applications, combine harvesting and everything to do with forage harvesting - including grass, maize and whole-crop. He also runs around 2000 acres of his own farming enterprise and therefore he is testing his machinery to the maximum - year round.
“Maize silage work this year,” commented Henry Righton “has totalled about fifteen hundred acres (1500) and throughout the business, I have a team of ten full-time staff with six part-timers, depending on the workload. We operate in a twenty mile radius of home and most of our customers are dairy based farming businesses. Two years ago we invested in the very latest self-propelled forage harvester a John Deere 8600 and its performance has been nothing short of impressive. In the maize crop we use a ten-row Kemper header and the workflow has been so smooth, with excellent performance. It’s so good that I have capacity to take on much more contracting acreage in the future as we are not working at full-capacity.”
Since starting his business almost 28 years ago, Henry has used the services of the Tallis Amos Group from their local Evesham branch. Henry currently runs seven John Deere tractors, two John Deere S685 combine harvesters plus the recent addition of the 8600 self-propelled forage harvester. “We always want to provide a first class service with reliable, first-class equipment.” said Henry, “I’ve found over the years that John Deere equipment has always provided great performance and excellent reliability, plus, the cost of ownership and residual value of the equipment makes it a very viable proposition.”
As with many professional contractors, Henry Righton uses the John Deere PowerGard extended warranty programme on all his John Deere equipment as part of a business decision to protect assets.
“No matter what brand of machinery you choose,” added Henry “there is always the possibility of a component failure or malfunction, especially when equipment is being used in high output functions like agricultural contracting. I choose to include PowerGard on all my John Deere products because it makes absolute business sense when you can calculate the exact cost of the machine ownership to the penny and, avoid any nasty surprises or costs in the cashflow. That gives me total peace of mind - especially during the busy season. I do have some products other than John Deere and where I can, I also include extended warranty on these because it always makes commercial sense.”
On all his prime-movers, Henry uses the latest John Deere StarFire SF6000 receivers, coupled to his GreenStar AMS software providing valuable data, yield and accuracy recording for his customers. “When you have such high capacity machinery as we do in our fleet,” enthused Henry, “it’s important to be able to utilise agricultural management software to aid customers to get the best performance from their crops. I get great support all-round from TAG and their AMS team and that gets me through any issues that can appear in technology from time to time.”
