Neville Rickey runs a sizeable contracting business in Newtown Butler, Co Fermanagh, after many years of running a separate bale and wrapper combination as a side business to his pit silage operation.

On the pit front, Neville gets through around 5000 acres per year but not all of his customers want their silage put in the pit. Some want it baled.

Neville found that when the silage season got busy, he was struggling to get the manpower and tractors to run the separate baler and wrapper systems. He looked at the market and decided that the Krone Comprima CF155XC X-treme was the machine for him. It looked to have the output he required and he was also familiar with the brand as he runs all Krone in his pit silage operation.

Neville Rickey with his Krone combi baler.

Tyres

The combi has completed one full season and he has found very little wrong with it. The baler came on 620mm tyres as standard and Neville believes that they are just big enough to keep the big combi afloat in his part of the country.

The baler got through about 8,000 bales last season which Neville said was a greatly reduced figure due to the weather.

When out working, Neville says that the baler is capable of taking up to 50ft of grass from his impressive four-rotor Krone 1400 plus rake.

This rake is usually used to line up the grass for Neville’s Big X harvester. Usually, he saves the big rows for the harvester and uses a smaller 30ft rake for the baler.

The baler is paired for the season with a Fendt 824, which has plenty of power and has the bulk to handle the weight of the combi on the undulating ground of Co Fermanagh.

Neville’s fleet of tractors make for impressive reading with two Fendt 824s, a Fendt 720, two John Deere 6175Rs, two John Deere 6930s and a John Deere 6430 on flotation tyres to run the business’s umbilical system.

Neville says that each of his main tractor clocks in or around 2,000 hours each year. For the season ahead, Neville has a new Krone big M and a Big X 770 ready to go. With this size of machinery, you can see how the tractors are clocking such big hours keeping grass away from them.

He says that the combi baler allows him to free up staff and machines to keep the harvester rolling to get through the acres. After doing one full year with the baler, Neville says that it has done everything it has been asked to do. He finds the ability to vary the size and density of the bale a great advantage as customers need different types of bales.

The only issue he has come up with was that he thought a steering-rear axle would help his operator to get around some of the smaller jobs and entrances that he inevitably runs into when at the baling game. Neville hopes that the weather will play ball this season and he will get to put more than 12,000 bales through the machine and give it a proper test.