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Dean Robertson
Retail Sales Representative
Dean has been in Retail Sales since September 1998. Dean covers the Wairarapa/Manawatu area, selling CASE tractors in the Wairarapa, and all of the imported lines in the whole territory. In the Manawatu we have a working arrangement with our dealer Agricultural Traders for the sale of imported lines.Dean is 37 years old, and is married with 3 children under 6 years old, giving him plenty to do in his spare time (not that he has any). Dean enjoys duck shooting, fishing, and drinking the occasional beer. Dean enjoyed introducing the new machines from Krone last year.
Likes the EASYCUT cutterbar
Deans says “Of all the new machines we ran last year, the one that impressed me the most was the mower with the EASYCUT cutterbar. At first glance I didn’t notice a lot of difference, but when we go into the field, it really showed the improvement in cutting ability.
”EASYCUT Cutterbar Under good conditions for maximum of regrowth, 50mm stubble is recommended. However in New Zealand where we have a lot of crops go down flat, the closer cutting ability of the EASYCUT cutterbar is a major advantage. It is also very easy to adjust the cutting height to suit all crop conditions. This cutter bar is now available on all Krone mowers and mower conditioners.
Trevor & Elly Lalich, Waitoa
Waikato Dairy Farmers Trevor & Elly Lalich, milk 170 cows on their property near Waitoa. They are also baling contractors which according to Trevor, “Gets me out of the cowshed”.
Trevor and Elly have been contracting for about ten years and have owned JD round balers in that time. They say that the JD’s were good balers, but everyone kept wanting their silage a little greener. The Lalich’s wanted a round baler that could go out and bale anything. They found such a machine in the KRONE round baler.
Impressed on first encounter Elly says they made up their mind to purchase a KRONE round baler in July 1999, when Trevor was required to bale silage on a block irrigated with dairy company waste. After only eight bales with the JD baler, the belts just stopped going around. That’s when they called in another contractor with his KRONE KR10-16s round baler. He started the next morning, with frost still on the grass.
As Trevor says, “He came in and baled it and that was it. He didn’t stop all day. We looked in that baler at night when he finished and it was as clean inside then as it was in the morning when he started.”
Trevor and Elly took delivery of a KRONE VarioPack 1500MC (Multi-cut cutting mechanism) towards the end of September 1999. Trevor says, “I can’t say we’ve had any downtime as such. We’ve had a couple of little hiccups, but when we had the hiccups it rained and so we were quite lucky. It hasn’t caused us any headaches, let’s put it that way.”
“We’d done about 3,500 to 4,000 bales when we broke some of the rollpins securing the cam followers to the tine shafts in the pickup. But we haven’t had a problem since that was repaired and its done 17,500 bales now for the season”.
Ease of servicing
The features of the KRONE baler which really impressed Trevor were the ease of servicing and operation, and the “brilliant” way the net-wrap worked. As he said, “There was no scraping of rollers or cleaning out the baler in the servicing of it. Just run around with the grease gun for the few grease nipples you have to grease and fill-up the automatic oiler and away you go. You don’t have any problems.”
“And it will bale anything. We had some tine breakages and those other pickup problems early on, but they were easily fixed and I was more than satisfied with the level of service provided by our local dealer Piako Motors in Morrinsville and the importers, Tulloch Farm Machines in Masterton.”
The automatic oiler worked well - especially after we drilled out the small brass fitting which connects the tubing to the brushes (out to 5/64") for oiling the main bale-forming chain. But the other drive chains were more than adequately lubricated.”
“We did some 500 bales one day.” Elly said that with the KRONE VP1500, they doubled the number of bales they were able to make in a day with their previous baler, and without becoming strangers to each other.
Doubled output
Trevor continues, “Yes, on a good day we doubled our output. With that baler you just service it in the morning and go, no hiccups, whereas with the other one, you’d spend over 2 hours every morning cleaning the rollers until the beginning of November when the conditions changed.”
“With this one you just greased it and oiled it and that’s it! Only trouble is the Germans must be stronger than I am because it’s a bit hard to get a roll of net wrap up there at times. But the way the net-wrap is designed on the baler, you can see what’s happening and see where it’s going; it’s absolutely brilliant and it feeds to the outside of the bale perfectly”.
Trevor would like to see some pre-warning device operate prior to the bale-size indicator buzzer sounding, so he would have time to stop feeding the hay into the baler before the net-wrap starts. “Nine times out of ten you’re right, you can stop in time, but with the net and the feed mechanism being at the front of the baler, its gone immediately whereas with the JD the net was mounted at the back and that’s the difference.” Once the net starts on the Krone baler and there’s grass going in, its gotta go. It’s been a little bit of a learning curve because that baler is totally different to anything I’m used to, but it can certainly bale silage. No matter what the silage looks like, it’ll bale it”.
Trevor and Elly have already placed their order with Piako Motors to purchase another KRONE VP1500 for next season. Duo Windrower Added Trevor and Elly also purchased a KRONE KS6.21-6.81/20 Duo Windrower in mid November. They decided to replace their 6 metre, twin-rotor Niemeyer rake with the 6.2-6.8m KRONE Duo.
“Going on the design of the baler and rake, and the way the baler performed, I didn’t think that I could go too far wrong with the rake.” “I was a little sceptical at the time regarding all the bits and pieces (features) the rake had on it which I thought I’d never use, but they’re on there and we use them all the time; that’s the thing I like about it. It’s so simple to use. You don’t have to get out of the cab to do anything. It met all our expectations, plus some”.
Met expectations
When asked if there was anything regarding the performance of the rake he would like to see changed, Trevor replied, “Nothing. Cockies comment on how beautiful a job it makes, how clean the paddocks are and how good and what the windrows look like”.
And driving the baler, following that windrow? “Och, no trouble at all. It makes life easy. It’s both wider and it makes a cleaner job than the previous rake. It builds a far better windrow because of the way the cams are setup and the ability to alter the distance between the rotors. The other one, you had the cams set and that was it, there was no other adjustment on it — it was fixed”.
Trevor’s last word?
“We had a pretty good season. I’m pretty happy with the Krone gear and every body that’s been associated with it. We haven’t had any hiccups or problems”.
Krone Marketing Manager visits NZ
In early April, we were pleased to have Mr Ruhara and Mr Seggering visit us from Krone, Germany. Mr Ruhara is Krone’s Sales Export Manager for machine sales worldwide. Mr Seggering works in Marketing and Sales Promotions. A series of 4 dealer and customer meetings were held in Palmerston North, Ashburton, Mosgiel and Hamilton.
Mr Ruhara told of trends in the European market, and had some interesting statistics to show Krone’s leading position in Europe. Mr Seggering showed a series of slides covering the extensive programme of grass harvesting machines from Krone including disc mowers, mower conditioners, tedders, windrowers, round and square balers, combined baler/wrapper, and loader wagons.