by Josh Zuck

The weather is still not our friend and there is still a lot of frost in the ground. A few guys have applied some fertilizer, but can only run a few hours in the morning before the ground thaws out.

Teke Heinschel, Sales Represantive at Lanark, has been keeping busy mapping field boundaries for RTK customers. He has around 2500 acres done with another 11,000 to go. Customers up this way don’t have any square fields and a lot of waterways. In fields like this, RTK can pay for its self in 1 year and customers can really see the seed savings when it comes to RTK.

We held a customer silage clinic in Verona, WI and had a very good turnout. The discussions centered around the Kernel Processor and Deere’s Kernel Star vs. Shredlage.

We also held a sprayer clinic in Monroe and had another great customer turn out. Hy-pro had a rep from their company that attended along with a rep from Firestone tire. The Firestone rep did a tire pressure discussion along with a tire contact board that showed footprint differences under different tire pressure settings. The Hy-pro rep brought up a sprayer boom simulator that represented a sprayer boom with clear plastic pipe to show how little water the boom had in it during operation (half air and half water). He also had a version that had the new end cap aspirators on it to show how they operate. The air in the boom is what causes the nozzles to slowly build a pattern and also has a weak turn on and off time. Customers were very impressed when they saw the difference in the tip flow and how that would apply the correct amount of product where they wanted. It and also greatly improved on and off times. Cuba City had three customers agree to put them on their sprayers. We have done one install already and we have the special tools to do both high flow and standard flow if anyone also needs to do them in the shop.

Joe Brunker, Product Support Specialist at Monroe, WI, ran into an issue with Apex where the RX acres were not correct. Some were ½ off and some were 1/3 off. Deere is aware of the issue but no fix at this time. They said it should not affect planting.

Installs are underway and we have been doing a lot of rate controllers on NH3 bars along with all different kinds of liquid fertilizer systems on planters. Customers are still pricing new and used AMS equipment.

The northern stores will be getting the RTK towers finished up next week with the help of a few guys down south coming up to assist with the install.

I installed an Auto Trac controller in a T9.390 NH 4wd yesterday. It went very quick and was easy to install. These Auto Trac controllers have really sparked some interest this year. You can utilize the other brands ISO connector and harness for the most part and it is a very clean set up, especially for customer that have a red tractor and a John Deere Planter.

Row units are still coming in to get ran on the test stand. Make sure that all the brand new planters that we sell to send to the stores that have the test stands. Every new meter has needed adjustments to achieve the best spacing. Just remember that the row units don’t come ready to plant from the factory.