A 53,000-acre Queensland farm has again chosen Horsch Sprinter seeders over all competition.

Coggan Farms is a family-owned fifth generation farming operation at Meandarra on Queensland’s Western Downs.

The farm’s undulating terrain has mostly brigalow belah soils, firm to hard-setting with a clay loam surface and medium to heavy clay subsoils. Plant available water capacity ranges from 100-200mm.

Production includes Angus and Speckle Park beef breeders, Dorper-Meatmaster cross sheep, a Meatmaster stud, a feedlot, grazing, and irrigated and dryland cropping.

30,000 acres are given over to forage sorghum, lablab, grain sorghum and irrigated corn in the summer, with barley, wheat, chickpeas, triticale and vetch in winter. Approximately 50 percent of crop produced is used as fodder on-farm.

Philip Coggan, Manager and part-owner, said he traded up on a 12-metre Horsch Sprinter and took delivery of two new Horsch Sprinter 18NT seeders in March 2021.

“The 12-metre Sprinter had done 18,000 acres for us. It was the simplest seeder we’ve ever used and worked very well, but we didn’t go into our next buying decision with eyes closed.

“My son Tom and I researched the latest seeding technologies from various brands. We knew what was available and Sprinters were the best choice,” he said.

The Horsch Sprinter NT has narrow fold design, rotational folding seed towers, a floating drawbar hitch, excellent ground following ability with instant terrain response, simplified integrated hydraulics and one-metre underframe vertical clearance.

Precision alignment of the packing system to the openers provides optimal seed to soil contact. Individual depth control on each tine guarantees accuracy.

For Philip Coggan, the quality of the engineering and the thought behind the deceptively simple, very strong design have produced standout advantages.

“Sprinters are mounted with rubber torsion. With no pins and bushings on the tines, you’ve got no wear. Basically, you can run these machines for years without having to spend any money on them,” he said.

“The Sprinter follows the ground very well and with the narrow point and leading coulter, we get minimal soil disturbance for a tine planter.

“It’s very manoeuvrable in the paddocks and folds up well for road transport and shed storage.

“It’s simple to calibrate and setting the coulter depth is very quick.

“It’s great to be able to set tine down pressure from the cab with the touch of a button.  We can have five different soil types across one paddock and we can easily increase pressure on the run.

“We sowed into 6-tonne per hectare barley stubble travelling at about 8.5kmph and got uniform, quick emergence. The Sprinter does a great job even in soft ground, which is another reason I love them,” he said.

The Coggans chose 17,000-litre aircarts and set them up with single shoot 10,000-litre liquid fertiliser systems, which means the whole 17,000-litre cart is full of seed.

“It takes us less than 10 minutes to fill the seed cart,” Philip said, “and we can go for more than 15 hours before we need to refill. It’s unbelievable efficiency.”

“The Sprinter’s so easy, safe and efficient to use. You just turn the monitor on and away it goes, doing everything you want it to do,” Philip said.

Horsch Machinery is distributed throughout Australia by Muddy River Agricultural. For more information, visit www.muddyriver.com.au, check out the experience @muddyriverag, and call your local Horsch dealer