The Farmers Club Newsletter

The “Club Notes” for Tuesday the 16th of January 2024.

By Dwain Duxson

If you can, please get your family, friends and colleagues to sign up. See the website link here.

Way back Dino…..

The Working Dog market has come a long way in recent years. Since the advent of Working Dog Auctions, the profile of the industry has been lifted. Now, it's a fully-fledged industry with a very saleable product. The good, well-trained ones, with maturity and runs on the board, now command a much higher price than they did, say back five years ago when most Working Dogs were sold privately at set prices. The Auction system has been opened up to the best dogs in the Country, so there is now some strong competition out there. It's a serious business in the light of hard-to-get human staff. A good Dog or two can be worth a good person or 2 in many situations. The serious Livestock Farmer wouldn't go without a good team of Dogs; they are so valuable. Have you had a good run with your Working Dogs over the years? See the story below, where a Kelpie sold for $28k and 19 Dogs averaged over $13k. Reply to [email protected]

If the old Windmills could talk

There are two distinct types of Windmills on our horizon these days, and one might be telling us a story about the fate of the other. The old Windmills we see scattered around the place served us well over the years. Many are still standing but not in use. Some would argue that that's the case for the new Windmills as well; they are there but not in use. Obviously, the old windmills served the purpose of getting Water from beneath the ground to the surface. They must have been relatively good at it, but what I want to know is why so many got abandoned. Some were replaced with Solar, and others within the vicinity of a power point were switched to power. But because many of the old Windmills have been left behind as ornaments, is it telling us that wind power isn't the greatest use of Renewable energy dollars? Could the new ones be abandoned in time also? Both are doing different things, but both only work if the wind blows enough. Can you see the correlation, and what is your opinion? Reply to [email protected]

Big Tractors in Tassie

This story stemmed from our Farm Tender Daily story on Green Steigers. This is what a reader sent in: "Your Steiger story had me thinking of another story of our first articulated John Deere. My Dad was an Ag Contractor in Tassie and bought his first John Deere with a sound-guard air conditioned cabin in 1976, a 4230 for his Contracting business. He says that many Farmers were saying he was getting a bit big for his boots and a Tractor of over 100hp was considered a very big machine in Tasmania at this time, let alone the air conditioning! In twelve months, he followed up with the purchase of his first articulated 4WD in 1977, a John Deere 8430. At 215hp, it was colossal, and he really became the talk of the town; he recalls going to the wharf to see it freshly offloaded where it was standing tall on a loading ramp, and it looked so big that he briefly agreed with the rumours, maybe he had lost it! Initially, he couldn't afford a suitably sized implement to hitch on, so he proceeded to build a dolly frame from an old Chev Truck to pull two smaller Discs side by side! Of course, 200hp these days is many people's smallest tractor". See two images at the bottom of the page. Reply to [email protected]

Your replies

Below are snippets from some of the replies you sent in. All quotes will remain nameless. See a few current ones below:

• "Motorbikes and utes will be electric. Tractors and other large diesel machines will be hydrogen. JCB has already converted Diesel Machines to hydrogen with no loss of performance. The only issue to work out is fuel supply logistics”. - A Farmers opinion of the Farm Machinery of the future.

• "Can't see fully electric in big Horse Power any time soon. Love the smell of burning diesel”. - A Farmer who loves burning diesel.

• “Just tried to find the link to a mob in Canada that does a lot of testing for the green mob. They had 2 electric Harvesters arrive to be tested. Now, the story I heard was each Machine had 4 battery packs to run each machine. The grid out where these guys are could not handle the charge on one battery. Apparently, the green army brought in diesel generators to do the job”. - A Farmer who watched a video on the electric Headers.

End of message.

Dwain Duxson
0427 011 900

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