Six years ago Stewart and Irene Walker decided they’d had enough of hay fields and pastures too rough for their equipment.
Pocket gophers were infesting the Kamsack, Sask., couple’s fields, leaving the land so lumpy that they had no choice but to tear it up and replant their forages.
“It can be a serious problem for farmers. It’s the difference between keeping your land in hay for three years or 10 years,” said Stewart Walker.
The Manitoba Forage Council estimates that it costs $210 for every acre that has to be re-established, if severe infestations take place every three years.
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Pocket gophers, known regionally as moles, are the usual cause of hills and trenches found in fields. They build a complex system of burrows that are used to find and access food, provide shelter and meet their social needs.
Some of the damage they do results from eating plant roots, but the greatest problem for many producers is the effect of the resulting dirt on farm equipment and operators.
The Walkers decided they needed a land drag that was big enough to meet commercial farming needs on the Prairies.
“We built our first Mole Hill Destroyer and the neighbours and other farmers in the area saw what it could do and we began building it for them,” he said.
Today the couple travels to farm shows to market the machines. The Stewarts have the units custom made by another Saskatchewan company, Bridgeview Manufacturing, for each producer who orders them.
The 10 foot wide drag sections mount onto harrow packer bars and the machines can be pulled at up to seven km-h.
“We provide mounting kits for harrows built by Morris, Flexi-Coil, Blanchard and Rite Way, as well as Dagelman heavy harrows and some land rollers,” he said.
“We can make them for most any machine.”
The land levelling units use a hardened steel cutting edge, which is adjusted over a set of hardened steel shoes that run along the soil’s surface.
The Walkers produce two models: the lighter duty Series Three Jumbo and heavyweight Series Four Jumbo. The Series Four weighs twice as much.
“We have to price them based on what it costs to build each unit. Steel prices have risen so fast that we have to quote each machine separately,” Walker said.
They have sold machines to individual producers looking to deal with their own land as well as custom operators and machinery rental companies.
“We have one customer that (custom levels) about 6,000 acres surrounding (an alfalfa dehydration) plant every year,” he said.
“Producers use it for more than moles. In the southwestern part of the province, where we got the ideas to build the Series Four, farmers need to level badger and gopher hills for continuous cropping or when they shift from forages to grain production in their rotations,” he said.
“(In forages) you can level in the spring, between the first and second cut and in the fall. In the spring you can level until the new growth is eight to 10 inches tall and you still won’t hurt the (plants).”
Walker said spring levelling will shatter the past season’s alfalfa growth and by haying time the plants will show no sign that the process has taken place.
Walker said some producers add Valmar dry product applicators to their machines for adding grass seed for replanting, while others put liquid fertilizer applicators on the harrow bars to add nutrients to the fields and pastures.
The Walkers’ kits fit machines from 40 to 70 feet wide. Series Three machines require two horsepower per foot to pull them. The heavy duty Series Four needs 2.5 to three h.p. and preferably a four-wheel drive tractor for additional traction.
For more information, call 306-542-4498, e-mail thewalkers@imagewireless or visit www.molehilldestroyer.com.
