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2017 SIAFD Agri-Innovation winners

Mystery Creek will be an opportunity to meet the Leonardo da Vincis of New Zealand agriculture.

Taege Engineering began as a blacksmith’s shop and chaff-cutting business in Sheffield, Canterbury in 1923. Herbert Taege’s grandsons, Keith and Brian Taege are continuing the tradition of creating six new ideas before breakfast.

Two of those new ideas have recently made it through prototypes, trials, refinement and into fruition and will be on display at National Fieldays: powered disk openers and a new fertiliser spreader.

The power disks have already won the Agri-Innovation award at the South Island Agricultural Field Days this year. A key difference is the disks are on arms attached to the drawbar. The arms pivot up and down to give depth control. The arms contain no more than six disks per shaft, to ensure the disks always follow the contours, which disks on a solid beam cannot do.

Hydraulics lift the disks out of the way when they are not needed or when you shift to transport mode.

The disks are the bees’ knees for precision drills. They can be custom-made to fit any drill up to 6.0m (and it’s likely in the future that they will go bigger).

With the power discs on the front of a precision drill, they will eat up any trash and create a fine tilth for the placement of the seed. They cuts down the amount of cultivation required and farmers can leave more trash and add more carbon into the soil.

Keith says tilth creates the best start for seedlings.

“The disks create perfect conditions for establishing fodder beet because they creating tilth where the seeds go but do not disturb the sprayed-out grass around them, which stabilises the soil against erosion and provides a windbreak for the emerging seedling.

“The power disks are also great at de-thatching. They cuts into the ground naturally and loosen it up. Dealing with permanent pasture is easy for these disks. The serrated teeth cut the ground like a skill saw blade.”

They can also be used for under-sowing. They create tilth in the rows where the new species are to go without disturbing the established pasture.

Depth is adjustable down to 80mm, and Taege Engineering is working on bigger disks to go deeper.

The power disks are easy to change if damaged or when worn, and they do not require lots of power because the turning disks naturally push the tractor along.

Also at Mystery Creek will be the Taege precision fertiliser spreader. It accurately dispenses fertiliser over a set area with even spread.

This is vital when farmers need to know exactly what chemicals or fertiliser are going where, and to ensure waterways are kept clean. The booms are divided into four sections, which can be individually turned on or off.

Boom sizes are 12m or 15m with controlled discharge every 750mm so within a 750mm length there will be exactly the same amount of fertiliser or trace elements as the next.

Taege Engineering will be at Site C84-90 with air seeders, power disks and fert spreaders.

Country Calendar

Taege Engineering was fortunate to appear in Episode 4 of Country Calendar on the 5th of March 2017.
Click here to see the full episode.

Country Calendar – Episode 4 – 2017

Jaiden Drough tests the new Taege 3m Air seeder at Ross Collier’s property in Waiouru.

Farm Trader checks out the newly released three-metre air seeder from Taege works well in hard, rough terrain

There’s always an element of adventure when it comes to testing a Taege machine, as you never quite know where in the country you are going to end up.

The team at Taege like to test their prototypes thoroughly. This means any new release hasn’t just had a gentle run on the Canterbury plains or volcanic flats but has been put through its paces on the steepest, roughest conditions the Taege team could find. And it has been accompanied by instructions to ‘go hard’ just to see where any potential weak points are.

The first time I tested a Taege machine (many years ago), the first thing I was asked was whether the machine needed a ‘This Way Up’ sticker. I don’t think I have tested a Taege drill since in a tractor without duals, which is a great indicator of the terrain these things are being used in.

Jaiden Drought checks out a Taege 8m cultivator at Beaumont Station in Central Otago.

Recently I got to visit one of the largest privately owned stations in New Zealand: Beaumont Station, owned by the Hore family. At 28,000ha, it’s a big slice of dirt. So what brought me to this wonderful part of Central Otago? The Taege eight-metre cultivator with seed hopper – part prototype, part hillside climbing cultivator.

Now I say prototype quite loosely, really, as it is not a new machine; it’s a slightly heavier version of the six-metre cultivator with an extra metre added to each wing to become the eight-metre cultivator. Everything else is the same.

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West Coast farmland tamed by Taege Machines…

Brent Lilley heads to the West Coast to meet a couple who have transformed some wild land into lush pastures with the help of a team of Taege machines.

Travelling far and wide across the country for Farm Trader not only takes me to some stunning locations, but also gives me the opportunity to meet some great farming families.

On a recent trip, I headed to the wild West Coast of the South Island and into Haupiri, a stunning valley at the foot hills of the Southern Alps. There I caught up with Murray and Gaye Coates who have developed an impressive property in a somewhat challenging environment.

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Taege post drivers

Most people assume all post drivers are the same. They push the pointy thing into the hard thing, making fencing faster and less arduous – I guess to the untrained eye this is correct. But, if you’re a Taege customer, the switch to a Taege post driver has shown there is a point of difference.

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