March 28, 2024

Great Plains Manufacturing introduces new box drills

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Farmers asked. Great Plains Manufacturing listened.

The company presented its new box drills, the BD7600 Series, at the National Farm Machinery Show.

Many features are based on customer and dealer feedback, said Dan Bratt, Great Plains Ag Division vice president of sales.

“This is a huge thing for the company. We control the market share of the box drill. A lot of the competition has sort of chased us for years. This sort of leapfrogs us forward again,” he said.

“This is the biggest product that we’ve introduced in the last 10 years.”

Initial orders were placed in January, and the first production runs have already sold out. Look for the drills on dealership lots in March.

Bratt detailed the revolutionary design, which also includes a work light in the boxes, a hydraulic drive option and an optional camera that can be attached with a magnet anywhere and feeds through any ISO monitor.

On The Feeder Cup

“That feeder cup itself is just completely new, top to bottom. It used to be that there were handles for each individual row unit. Now, you can make adjustments for the entire box with a simple turn.

“You have the ability to do large seed or fertilizer and small seeds using the same feeder cup. Historically, you had to have a second seed box mounted on the back to do small seeds.

“The majority of the patents for the new drill are based around the new feeder cup.”

On The Split-Box Design

“Essentially, all you’re doing is if you’ve got large seeds in it, you’re opening the large seed gate. If you’ve got small seeds in it, you would open the small seeds gate.

“But that same meter is universal. With the older drill, what happened was they would be completely separate meters and you couldn’t do the same type of seed through it, so it created a situation where there weren’t common components, you would have to stock of different components for the meter.

“In different applications, if you want to be able to leave, like, two rows shut off where your sprayer would go back through the field, with this new design, you can just close the gate and you’ll shut off that row unit, so once you shut off the seed, it’s off. The old one, you had to go and put a plug in the tube.

“Again, all the stuff that we’re adding is really trying to get it from having to adjust, depending on the row, like, 70 rows down to three places.”

On The Blockage Monitor

“Obviously, from the cab of the tractor, you can’t see what’s going on in the back. So, older technology drills, you could just drive through half the field and never know about it. So, now it feeds back into the monitor in the cab and allows you to know if there’s an issue feeding seed. It’ll show you if you’re running out of seed, too.

“You can fill it and transport it. Older box drills, you couldn’t do that.”

On Cover Crops

“In Illinois and Iowa and other places in the Corn Belt, one of the main things this does in those areas, even though they might be a corn grower, the cover crop people are still going to a box drill to plant cover crops. You can’t blow the seed through an air drill.

“You’re seeing a lot of large-acreage farmers doing cover crops, and then that new meter design allows you to meter that, because even cover crop is getting more expensive.

“It used to be you sort of just dumped it or threw it in a spreader and put it out. Now, as pretty much every crop seed has gotten more expensive, that’s the importance of trying to be able to meter that.”

On Its Weight And Size

“Widths are 26, 30 and 40 feet. When you have a box drill versus an air drill, your weight of the crop is spread across the whole thing. On an air drill, it’s all sitting right on the center two wheels. So, your ability to get in the field when it’s wetter is better with a box drill than an air drill.”

On The Walk Board

“Even though that seems simple, from the voice of the customer, that was one of their biggest things — they wanted a much wider walk board. The old one was essentially half the width and it was an a lot less aggressive pattern and there was no grab handle.”