MOOSE JAW – One high clearance sprayer can use a lot of water in a day. Add a second sprayer and it can be a challenge to get enough water to the field to keep them going.
When the Babich family expanded their acreage a few years ago, they bought two 1,200-gallon high clearance sprayers to keep up with their plant protection applications. That also required changes to their water delivery system.
“We used to use a flat deck with a couple of 1,250-gallon tanks on it,” said Byron Babich, who farms near Moose Jaw with his brother, Brandon, and father, Grant.
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“We used to only have one sprayer so that would keep up.”
Babich said one of his neighbours had been using a retired highway tanker, so in 2001 they bought their first unit from an oil hauling company.
“They steamed it before we bought it. It was the front end of a super B, so we took the fifth wheel off, built a deck on the back, put a mixer on and a pump,” said Babich.
“We used some two-by-two square tubing and channel iron to make the platform, then put wire mesh over top. Then we built some railings for the side. That big trailer holds six fills, so we put enough chemical on the deck for six fills.”
Babich uses three-inch hoses throughout the tanker, with a 5.5 hp Honda pump to speed up fills.
“It had the valve coming off the back, so it was pretty easy. We just had to put a three-inch coupler on it and hook a hose up.”
The second tanker was bought from Golden West Trailer. With only two axles on the back instead of three, its capacity is a little smaller than the first one. Babich said it holds slightly more than five fills Ð around 6,000 gallons.
The rear deck was built the same as the first tanker, except that the main tank hose draws from the bottom of this tank instead of the rear.
“The first trailer that we got had stairs from before,” he said.
“The second one, we built it the same as the other one. We cut the fender out and then built the stairs in there. So far we’ve had no problems with mud or anything else.”
The Babich family has three home yards and each one has a 3,000-bushel hopper bin – about 25,000 gallons – that is used for water in the summer.
The farms have access to city water so they don’t have problems with sediment, algae or anything else that could plug the sprayer nozzles. They don’t worry about filtering the water before it reaches the truck.
“There’s a filter that comes off the pump, but we’ve never had any troubles and we don’t even really look at that filter.”
The Babiches store granular fertilizer in the bins during the winter. In the spring they empty and rinse them out, remove the chute off the bottom and put on a liquid kit.
After spraying is complete, the bins are allowed to dry out and then go back to being storage for lentils, wheat or granular fertilizer.
“We use the pump on the back of the truck to fill from the hopper tanks,” Babich said.
“It’s got a three-inch outlet that comes out of the bin. You disconnect the pump from the mixer, hook the bin up to the pump, then use the hose that you use to pump into the sprayer and put it into the top of the water trailer and pump it straight in.”
While two tankers hauling more than 13,000 gallons of water may seem like a lot of capacity, Babich said it depends on what they’re spraying and the gallons per acre they’re using.
“The other day we sprayed 4,300 acres at five gallons per acre – I think we went through three trailers altogether. When you get to 15 gallons spraying Bravo or other fungicides, you’re lucky if you can do 3,000 acres a day, so you need 45,000 gallons,” he said.
“That’s why we’ve got the second one now. When you’re spraying Bravo and you’re putting on those big gallons, six fills goes by pretty fast. You just have the trucks revolving.”
Babich said the sprayers can operate in separate fields or work together, depending on the situation.
“When we’re on five gallons, we’re usually in separate fields. If we’re in a small field, we’ll split them up, but if we’re in a big field Ð like 1,200 acres Ð one guy starts on one side and the other on the other and we’ll work together,” he said.
“Usually we’ll start off with the one truck and empty that one out, then make sure the second truck is coming right behind. Then they keep on revolving all day. When you’re on low gallon stuff, you can go just about the whole day on one trailer with one sprayer, so we can split them up.”
Babich said fill time is about six or seven minutes when applying a basic product. If they have to do a lot of mixing, it can take up to 15 minutes to fill the tank.
“When you’re spraying Harmony, the first thing you dump in is Refine for broadleaf control, then add some Banvel to heat it up for the broadleafs, then you put your Horizon in for the grassy weeds, then add Score, which is a surfactant,” he said.
“That’s why it’s good to have a guy on the trailer, to have that stuff all ready to go.”
Babich said highway tankers are expensive new and it’s hard to find a good used one.
“The only advice I can say is if you do stumble upon one, I’d pick it up. If you can find one for between eight and $10,000, that’s a decent price.”
