CARMANGAY, Alta. – At first glance, Dennis Benci’s John Deere 1860 looks like a standard three-row disc drill.
Except John Deere didn’t make a three-row 1860 drill.
In the late 1990s, Benci, a seed grower near Carmangay, Alta., was seeding with a New Noble Seedovator.
“I would classify that as minimum till – it’s a one-pass operation but it does use cultivator sweeps, so it tills the soil,” said Benci.
He wanted to reduce tillage and leave more stubble standing after seeding, to limit the risk of wind erosion. A neighbour was using a John Deere disc drill, but with seed boxes instead of an air drill.
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“I had seen his crops he’d seeded with that drill and was satisfied with the job he was doing. We got together and said if we could get an air drill in this type, and double shoot, it would be ideal,” said Benci.
“We had heard about a guy that had (added a row to) an 1850 drill and together we thought we could do the same thing with an 1860 drill, and use anhydrous for N with mid-row banding.”
Benci felt seed placement was especially accurate with this opener.
“There are some other hoe-type drills with each individual shank independent, and they’re quite good too, but we wanted to go to the disc, with minimum till.”
When Benci and his neighbour added the third row to John Deere’s two-row 1860 drill, John Deere didn’t make a three-row seeder.
Deere has since put out a 1895 three-row machine, but the 1890 is still two row.
In the fall of 1999, Benci and his neighbour each bought a 42 foot 1860 air drill and converted both to three-row units through the winter.
“We ordered them not set up. That knocked about $5,000 off the cost. We needed to take them apart anyways, so there was no need to have them set up,” Benci said.
“They had the frames set up with the openers on them, but they were in three sections.”
Another neighbour had a John Deere 1850 drill so the two borrowed it and kept it near the shop through the winter to use for reference and take measurements on the main beams and other areas, like the bracing.
“When we ordered the drills, we ordered them at 7.5-inch spacing. Then we set up the drill at 10-inch spacing, so we could use the extra openers on the anhydrous rows. We were still short seven openers each, but we found a dealer in Saskatchewan with some used 750 drill openers and we bought 15 from him,” Benci said.
The steel for the frames was bought new. That included six by six tubing and 10 by 10 tubing for the main frame. In the main tube frame that runs from front to back on the middle section, Benci bought extra tube steel one size smaller and slid it inside the original. That doubled the strength of the main tube to carry the extra weight from the added openers.
Openers were aligned in a configuration that allows mid-row banding of ammonia.
“Right now we have seed row, ammonia, seed row; seed row, ammonia, seed row; and so on. Our anhydrous is every 20 inches, with 10-inch seed row spacing. Nitrogen is mid-row banded, while all the other nutrients go down with the seed.”
Benci and his neighbour drew on the experience of another farmer who had made similar modifications to his drill.
“He cut the front of the drill and extended it to the front. That meant you had to lengthen all your hydraulic hoses and wiring. We added to the back of the drill, about 47 inches.”
When Benci was changing the opener spacing, the original hydraulics that lifted the front rows had to be moved because the new spacing had an opener where the hydraulic connections were.
“We left as much of the bracket on as we could, then welded a new one on and that worked fine. We bought as much stuff from John Deere as we could, hydraulic lifts and so forth, so it looks identical to the front of the drill.”
Where they added the third row, they bought original hinge brackets from John Deere. They had to move the hydraulic lift that folds the drill wings from the original back row to the new back row.
“When we winged our drill up for the first time, being that we lengthened the frame, we were hoping our hinge point was going to stay constant. And it did. We put a smaller pin in the hinge point to see if there was any play there, but we were happy about the way it folded up,” he said.
“There was an option to get dual wheels on the frame wings. The main frames always have dual wheels, but the wings had the option of getting a single wheel. We went with the dual wheels for more support.”
For the first year in the field, Benci ran his ammonia openers along the back row of the drill.
“We set it up that way, but when seeding our small oilseeds, we noticed with the back anhydrous rows, there was some soil movement. You want to place your anhydrous a little deeper, two to three inches, and we were covering up some of the seed rows. Even though it’s a disc opener, it still moved the soil a bit,” he said.
“We seeded that year and our canola came up OK, but we thought we could do better. After seeding, we took the time to change the anhydrous from the back row to the front row. So our two back rows now are our seed rows.”
The original drill used a four-inch wide depth gauge wheel on each opener that runs along the side of the seed disc. Putting on a third row of openers meant nearly every inch of ground covered would be run over by a wheel and disturbed.
“On a dry year, it can pulverize the soil and there is a chance for wind erosion. At that time, we still had a little bit of summerfallow and it was more of a concern on summerfallow.”
While John Deere now has an option where you can order a 2.5-inch wheel, at that time, Benci said they only had the four-inch wheel.
“We found out that Flexi-Coil made a two-inch wheel the exact same diameter and hole size that would fit ours. We had to take a few spacers out, but it fit right on. We went from a four-inch wheel to a two-inch wheel. We put them on and it made a world of difference.”
With this setup, Benci said he doesn’t have a lot of packing on the land, especially in the area without an anhydrous opener.
He said now when he goes over the stubble, he can hardly tell where he’s been. But the switch to the narrow Flexi-Coil wheels did come with a problem.
“On the Flexi-Coil drill, those wheels don’t support the weight of the opener. They’re more of a cleaning wheel, to keep the disc clean. We’re using them now as a support wheel, to hold the whole opener out of the ground,” he said.
“After the first year, we noticed some cracks starting to form in the rim of those wheels. We had some one-eighth by one-inch flat metal bent, to fit right in there. We welded that in and that stopped that problem.”
Benci went with a tow-between cart, because he also pulls an anhydrous tank behind the drill.
“We used to pull a 1,700-gallon anhydrous tank and we’ve switched to 2,000-gallon. I might even go to a 3,000-gallon twin tank, to get more capacity out of the anhydrous.”
To keep track of the anhydrous, along with the hydraulic down pressure on the openers, Benci set up gauges on the front of his tow-between cart, visible from the tractor cab.
“We ran a hydraulic hose and anhydrous hose, with a pressure gauge on the ends, to the front of the tank. You can watch them from the tractor. That way, you always know if you’ve got enough down pressure on the drill, and if your anhydrous is getting empty,” he said.
When setting up the anhydrous system, Benci added an automatic on-off system.
“It’s a Dickey John monitor that’s worked really well. We put a little ram in our hydraulics, so when you lift your hydraulics up at the end of the field, it shuts your anhydrous off as you lift up the drill. When you go back down, it turns the anhydrous on when you create pressure to push down on your drill.”
The Benci farm produces cereals, oilseeds and pulses. Benci said when seeding pulses, he doesn’t apply ammonia, so he can lock up the front row of discs and just use the back part of the drill.
He also switched tractors, to a more powerful 450-hp model on tracks so they can pull the drill between 7.5 and 8.5 mph.
“… it seems like eight mph works good. It’s a nice, comfortable speed. You can do a lot of acres with 42 feet at eight mph.”
Benci said each drill had about $13,000 of cash costs, not counting labour, to complete the modification.
“We bought the drills before Christmas and did a little work in December and January. But it was February and March the majority of the work was done on both drills, with three people working on them,” said Benci.
“I like using anhydrous because of the efficiency and you still can’t buy a John Deere drill with anhydrous. You have to set it up yourself. I really like the drill, I don’t see making any changes. Usually we don’t keep our machinery for a long time, but the way this drill is set up, I don’t want to trade it off.”
