Sam Kay ‘Straight Talking’ – RB35 Crop Sprayer testimonial.

Sam Kay is a partner at Wharram & Kay, an arable farm based in Yorkshire. The business has run Bateman Sprayers for over a decade, and Sam talks us through the latest RB35 on the farm…

What is the nature of your business?
We are currently farming over 700 hectares of cereals and oil seeds in the Vale of York.

What Bateman sprayer do you run?
We run an RB35, 36 metre with a 4,000-litre tank with optional larger wheels and Bateman Boom Levelling.

How long have you been running Bateman sprayers?
We’ve been running Bateman’s for over a decade. We’re now on our third RB35 machine and we’re very impressed.

What made you choose Bateman?
We chose Bateman because they’re a family-run business, we are as well and we really like that. They also listen to our needs and requirements to develop a machine that works for both of us.

You worked with Bateman to modify your sprayer to accommodate larger tyres, can you tell us about this?
The main drive for us to change to bigger wheels was the fact that in the Vale of York at certain times of the year the soil can lie quite wet. We wanted to reduce the soil compaction we were making and the depth of wheeling’s we were leaving, therefore, we opted to change to the bigger wheels. We were previously running on a 600 sized tyre with a 30-inch rim, we’ve now opted for 650 tyre on a 38-inch rim.

With us lifting the height of the sprayer, the overall spray height was obviously increased, we found that we needed to lower the boom height to allow us to spray in windier conditions. Bateman were also very helpful with that, Jason took the machine back to the factory and designed a new back frame which was retrofitted to our machine. This now enables us to spray in worse conditions to ensure the crop gets its nutrients in a timely manner.

The overall results are brilliant, the depth of wheeling’s we have now are minimal, compared to what we were experiencing.

Can you describe the terrain you spray across and the benefits that Bateman Boom Levelling provides?
The Bateman Boom Levelling is absolutely fantastic. We don’t need to worry about the booms colliding with the floor, they follow the contours of the ground perfectly and they enable us to maintain the appropriate spray distance between the crop canopy and the tip of the boom.

Spraying at night isn’t an issue, we have no concerns about the boom colliding with the floor, even though you can’t see the boom very clearly in the dark, you know that the technology is there to assist you. We quite frequently spray chemicals on the urban fringe and the Bateman Boom Levelling enables us to keep our drift down.

How would you rate the backup from Bateman?
The backup from Bateman is phenomenal. Any queries or questions that the operator may have, there’s always a handful of guys at the end of the phone in the office back in Devon; they’ll have you back up and running in no time. In the event of a breakdown which can’t be fixed over the phone, I’m astonished at how quickly an engineer is on site making sure that we’re back up and running.

Are you able to sum up what owning a Bateman means to you?
The Bateman Sprayer is the most used machine on the farm, it’s out most days! It’s reliable, efficient, a pleasure to drive and it just gets the job done.