Coggan Farms is a 53,000-acre family-owned mixed farming operation in Queensland’s Western Downs.

Production includes Angus and Speckle Park beef breeders, Dorper/Meatmaster cross sheep, a Meatmaster stud, a feedlot, grazing, and 30,000 acres of irrigated and dryland cropping.

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 100mm – 200mm.

For more than three years the Coggans have been using a Horsch Tiger 8MT. They deep rip grassland and prepare it for crops, deep rip irrigation country and general broadacre paddocks, and also use it to incorporate urea and feedlot fertiliser.

The Tiger, engineered to last, has a heavy 2-row disc system and ripper tines. The Coggan’s 8-metre model has a 4-bar frame with good clearance, TerraGrip shanks with low disturbance points, and single row levelling discs in front of the packer tyres and steel packer rollers.

Philip Coggan is Manager and part owner of Coggan Farms, and a fourth generation farmer. He said he’s never seen a machine do as good a job as the Horsch Tiger.

“We’ve deep ripped close to 35,000 acres with the Tiger and it leaves the hard dry country very soft. It’s the best tillage machine we’ve ever owned.

“After the Tiger’s been through, we can get up to 12-inches of rain before any water runs off the paddock, even in storms,” he said.

“It does 3 operations in one pass, getting the weeds out, deep ripping the land and leaving a seedbed you can sow straight into when the rains come. It adds up to excellent savings on fuel, time and labour.

“It’s easy to maintain the depth we need. And we can have discs in the ground whenever we want to. 90 percent of the time we run it discs down using the tines and the leveller.

“The frame is extremely tough, and it needs to be, to handle rough conditions where we can turn up big sandstone rocks.

“Getting a Horsch Tiger is one of the best things we’ve ever done,” Philip said. “The only way to top it would be to have another one.”

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.