One of the highlights of this weekend’s Melleray Vintage Club silage event at the Lismore Castle Estate in west Waterford will be seeing Kieran O’Donaghue’s restored Tullow double chop silage harvester in action. Since we referred to the now extinct Tullow machine last year, Kieran, a well-known vintage enthusiast, has searched one out and now restored it to its full glory.

There is an interesting history behind Kieran’s Tullow double chop, which he bought about six months ago from a farmer in Newry, Co Down. The harvester had done many years of work and was painted in John Deere’s green colours as the farmer had wanted it to match his tractor.

Kieran took the machine back to Cork and set about disassembling it, checking the condition of the component parts and then putting it all back together in a working condition. There was a lot of work to be done on the machine, including some fabrication and repair of panels before sand blasting and getting ready for painting.

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“I don’t normally paint machines that I restore, I like them to be in their original working condition, but somehow I felt that the Tullow double chop deserved a full restoration,” said Kieran. This meant searching out the proper colours for the machine, which had four colours in its final condition.

The main body is in the original Tullow red, while the chute is yellow, the hydraulic rams in black and the wheel rims in silver. Kieran had the help of silage machine restoration expert Jimmy Cotter, wh0 carried out the sand blasting of the machine and the priming.

During the disassembly it became obvious to Kieran that some parts such as shields and guards would need to be fabricated. Luckily, fellow vintage silage enthusiast Declan Carey from west Clare told him he had a neighbouring contractor who was still using a Tullow double chop and could have a good supply of parts.

Kieran then travelled to Senan Corry’s farm between Labasheeda and Kildysart on the north Shannon estuary where he found a treasure trove of Tullow double chop parts. Senan has been a dedicated Tullow double chop fan since the machines were introduced and has cut silage up until 2015 with two machines. What Kieran found on Senan’s farm was everything he could want in a Tullow double chop part, along with some interesting history of the machine. Senan bought his first Tullow double chop silage harvester in 1987, when double chops were the dominant silage machine in the country. He bought a second one in 1989 and since then has accumulated parts for up to six machines.

“The Tullow answered all of the questions for contractors working in heavy grass and tough conditions in west Clare,” said Senan. “It has big wheels, a solid frame and a heavy-duty chopper that was able for the tough grass in the area. Each year for more than 30 years we cut upwards of 400 acres of silage with the Tullow double chop and it was durable and strong.

“We had Taarup double chops before the arrival of the Tullow; they were very well balanced machines, lovely to drive but not as durable as the Tullow in the field,” said Senan. “The Tullow suffered from being a little less balanced than the Taarup and that was noticeable when idle, waiting for a fresh trailer to arrive, but once into the grass and loaded, the machine was at its best,” he added.

“The Tullow was also a little narrower than the Taarup due to the location of the wheels, even though there were two equal-size wheels. This was a big help to us operating in the narrow roads of west Clare,” said Senan.

When Tullow Engineering closed in 1987, McHale Engineering, then based in Kilmaine, Co Mayo, bought a lot of the unfinished machines, parts and tooling for the double chops. They assembled a small number of machines for sale, including one that Senan Corry bought in 1989. Some of these machines were fitted with the McHale Silomac logo. McHale made some small changes to the harvester at the time by galvanising the chute and the flap at the rear of the auger, to give better wearing qualities.

Round bale silage started to make inroads on farms for their convenience and ease of use. There were also issues beginning to appear in relation to silage pit run-off and these combined to see the large-scale demise of the double chops, of which the Tullow was just one emerging on the market.

Kieran’s restored Tullow double chop in original colours with perfectly replicated badges and colours will be one of the highlights of the Melleray Vintage Club silage event. He responded to Senan’s generosity in providing him with so many free parts for the restoration job by inviting him to drive the machine powered by his restored Ford 7610 tractor in front at this weekend’s event. This is the very silage harvesting combination that Senan Corry operated the year he bought his first Tullow double chop, back in 1987.