Jordan Cosh, who runs a farm contracting business based at Pallamallawa east of Moree in north west NSW, is pleased with the performance of his new 18-metre Morris Quantum air drill.
His contracting business, JC Farming, provides his grower clients from southern Queensland to central NSW with seeding, spreading, spraying and harvesting services.
Despite the drought in recent years, the seeding contract program averages about 15,000 hectares a year.
Mr Cosh has been a long-time fan of the Morris brand of tillage and seeding equipment, helped by a strong relationship with Moree dealer, WJ Matthews.
His seeding fleet includes two Morris 9450 air carts, an older 7240 air cart, two C2 Contour drills and the latest addition, an 18-metre Quantum air drill.
He said the new Quantum drill ticked a lot of boxes for minimum till seeding with narrow shanks throughout the region.
"We plant at about 10 kilometres per hour and there's minimal soil throw," he said.
"With the narrow shanks we recently went into a six-tonne (per hectare) wheat stubble coming out of pivot production and we inter-row sowed mung beans straight into it."
The contracting program traverses various soil types including clays, sands, red and dark chocolate soils.
"We use the same tine, boot, ram and press wheel as well as a Dutch Industries single shoot point for everything,'' Mr Cosh said.
Tine spacings are set at 37.5-centimetre (15-inch) while 150cm (60in) is used for summer plantings, sowing in between the 37.5cm rows. Up to 75cm (30in) is also adopted for chickpeas or applying fertiliser.
"We just run one in, one out, lifting up tines and turning the taps off,'' Mr Cosh said.
Like most of the contracting equipment, including spray rigs and spreaders, the seeding bars are set up to suit controlled traffic farming for the region.
They dig to depths of up to 15cm (6in), generally into moisture.
Mr Cosh said the Morris Quantum air drill was easy to pull and its parallelogram design better suited the contracting work and undulating country.
"Since the C1 drills, the Morris bars have got better and better with seeding precision and good seed-to-soil contact. As a result, germinations have also got better and better.''
He said the Quantum was a more solid bar than the C2 Contour drills, where, in tough soils, wheels could lift off the ground a little - "not that we have ever put a welder on them''.
"The Quantum has a strong frame which is a good indication that Morris is listening to what customers are saying. We had no dramas at all,'' he said.
"There's no walking beam, just a single tine and bush and the bushing system is good. Day-to-day maintenance is minimal.
"It also folds up nice and narrow, and, with the large flotation tyres, it is nice and smooth down the road, which is great for contracting.''
Mainly operating in large paddocks that can be up to 1500ha with 4-5km runs, Mr Cosh said section control technology with the air carts was not a strong requirement, however he had started to use the variable rate application control system.
"We have started varying the rate of fertiliser and it's all worked perfectly.''