With silage acreage on the up and the move to umbilical slurry proving to be a resounding success, these are busy and successful times for long-standing, Armoy, County Antrim based contractor J Wilson Agri Contracts. As the slurry season closed, we headed towards the north east coast and touched base with Ryan Boyle to get an update on this class act, which has recently added to its magnificent fleet of machinery.
For coming up on six decades, J Wilson Agri Contracts has been delivering unrivalled agricultural contracting services in and around the Glens of Antrim, one of the island’s most historic and scenic farming hinterlands. While founder John Wilson remains very much involved in day-to-day activities, his nephew Ryan Boyle runs the show these days.
Between them, the pair operate a fresh and immaculately-maintained fleet of Claas tractors and machinery, constantly replenishing and upgrading to minimise downtime and ensure that farmers continue to avail of the high standard of service they have become accustomed to. This year’s additions to the fleet included a brand-new Claas Arion 650 tractor in October and a new high-powered, self-propelled Claas Jaguar 880 forage harvester ahead of the start of the silage season in April, both purchased from Erwin Agricare’s Limavady depot.
“Investing in the fleet is an ongoing process for any contractor,” Ryan muses. “You have to keep up or you’ll be left behind – it’s as simple as that. Tractor-wise, everything we have is Claas. We changed two in the past twelve months, one in December of last year and the second one there at the start of October. We also changed the forage harvester and got a new Pöttinger power harrow, so it’s been another busy year with upgrades to the fleet. We’re also looking at upgrading our trailers at the minute, so it never stops.”
Ultimately, the money is being spent so as to ensure that J Wilson Agri Contracts own and operate the best equipment in order to keep consistently offering customers a service that cannot be beaten. “The silage window in particular is so short now with unpredictable weather that you have to make hay while the sun shines and minimise breakdowns as much as possible,” Ryan confirms. “Time is of the essence and you have to make the most of it.”
To Ryan’s credit, the fleet always looks fantastic, although the Antrim contractor stresses that performance rather than aesthetics is his priority: “The image does count but I don’t get too carried away with that,” he comments. “For me, the main thing is that the machinery has to perform and do the job it is intended to do. At the same time, it’s obviously nice to have a fleet that looks the part, too…”
Indeed, the best of both worlds. Which is pretty much what J Wilson Agri Contracts are all about as they specialise in providing professional services with a friendly, personal touch. “Our focus has always been very much on doing every job as efficiently as we possibly can – and always doing our best,” says Ryan, who has worked in contracting and farming all his adult life – longer, even!
“Customers know we will always do our best for them. Of course, there’s only so much anyone can do, but once we give every job our best shot then I’m more than happy with that. We have a lot of very good customers and do our best to look after them. We also have excellent staff and really appreciate all their hard work throughout the year – we couldn’t do this without them.”
The majority of the customer base has been with J Wilson Agri Contracts for years, nay decades, and this includes many local farming families who have been on board since the business started. “Over the last five or six years we have taken on some new customers, and I was glad to get that new business. We also have a lot of longstanding customers and I’m very grateful of their ongoing loyalty and support.”
J Wilson Agri Contracts offers a full pit silage service, slurry (with an umbilical system and tankers), whole crop harvesting, dung spreading, ploughing, reseeding, sowing and also a plant hire service. The aforementioned Claas Arion tractors are joined in the fleet by an array of slurry, grass, tillage and plant equipment.
The slurry equipment includes an Agquip umbilical slurry system with 1,200 metres of piping and a dribble bar alongside a pair of 3,500-gallon Redrock ferry tankers (with a third one hired in), a 2,500-gallon Redrock field tanker and an NC slurry pump, while, for grass, the Class Jaguar 880 harvester is currently complemented by a set of Claas Disco 8500 butterfly mowers, a set of Claas Disco 9200 mowers, a Krone rake, three 18ft Redrock grain and silage trailers, an 18ft Herron silage and grain trailer and a JCB 418s loading shovel.
Tillage equipment includes the Pöttinger power harrow, a Pöttinger one-pass seed drill and two four-furrow Kverneland 150B ploughs, while in plant Ryan also operates a Hitachi FH130 excavator, a Kane WBDT 15t half pipe dump trailer and a Herron industrial low loader tri-axle trailer.
“John is still here in the background doing his fair share of work and I’d do most of the day-to-day running. During busy times, there’d be nine or ten of us on the go,” the dedicated Antrim contractor continues. “Twenty-twenty-three was a good year. The new harvester is going well and silage acreage is going up every year, while the umbilical slurry has gone down very, very well, as we expected it might. Ploughing is busy, too, so it’s all go, thankfully.”
With deeply-embedded roots and an unblemished track record for invariably delivering industry-leading agricultural contracting excellence, J Wilson Agri Contracts is firmly established as a dependable business providing farmers with professional, value-added services. As for the future of this model family business, Ryan concludes:
“We’re growing steadily and I’m happy with that. We will try our best to hold on to what we have by continuing to invest in the business and working hard to make sure we always provide the best service to all of our customers.”
J Wilson Agri Contracts,
52 Carrowreagh Road,
Armoy,
County Antrim.
Tel: +44 7763 959451
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: www.facebook.com/J.wilsonagricontracts
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 11 No 6, December 2023/January 2024
