Planters have grown in popularity in the United States, but you don’t see as many in Alberta. However, that didn’t stop our curiosity at Rousseau Creek Farms in Deadwood, Alta. We had heard we would be able to cut seeding rates by using a planter and get better crop emergence.
Last spring our local dealership brought a planter out to our farm for a demo. The first day didn’t go as planned, it was spent trying to get the settings on it right. There were missing parts and parts that weren’t right for it. The planter didn’t even make it into the field that day.
The next day we were ready to get rolling with it. We weren’t however able to distribute fertilizer with the seed. We also discovered the canola seeds were cracking as they were getting stuck on the plates used to meter out the seed.
It took three days to get 100 acres of canola seeded, with our SeedMaster seeders we usually plant around 400 acres per day, making the planter not financially feasible for us. About 10 acres into the demo both sales guys said to us that a planter wasn’t the right fit for our farm.
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