D&B Hicks Agri Contracts in Derrylin, Co. Fermanagh made the switchover to John Deere last year and haven’t looked back since.
When father-and-son Barry and David Hicks sought to freshen up their New Holland fleet in the summer of 2024, they couldn’t find the long wheel base models they wanted. Thankfully, they didn’t have to look any further than Lisburn-based John Deere dealer Johnston Gilpin & Co for the tractors that suited their requirements perfectly.
So impressed were they with John Deere and the aftersales service that they invested in six new models, namely two 6R155s, two 6R175s and two 6R250s. They also invested in a brand new John Deere 9700 self-propelled forage harvester, and now swear by the American brand.
“We were looking to change a few of our New Hollands, but none of the dealers we spoke to could come up with the tractors we wanted,” David explains.
“It was then that I met Gethin Evans of Johnston Gilpin & Co at the Spring Farm Machinery Show where one of the tractors he had on display was a John Deere 6R250. He asked if I was in the market for a new tractor and when I told him I knew nothing about John Deere, he said ‘jump up into that’, and I liked it.
“Having heard good reviews about John Deere from other owners, I told Gethin I was interested and he called down to me two days later as promised. We took delivery of all six tractors last August and haven’t found one fault so far with them. The same goes for the forage harvester which we also bought new from Gethin just before the start of the silage season last year. It has an 1,800-litre engine which doesn’t need AdBlue. We traded in a CLAAS 970 harvester for it.
“Switching over to John Deere was a no-brainer for us. They always have stock readily available and have their own finance company with packages to suit everyone, while they also offer three-year warranty and three-year service packages.
“Furthermore, their tractors have brilliant suspension, build, quality and resale value. And what can I say about their back-up service? When you ring Johnston & Gilpin, they are straight down to you. I’ve been very, very impressed by John Deere overall. They really know how to look after their customers.”
D&B Hicks Agri Contracts is a leading agri contracting firm specialising in pit silage, slurry spreading and wood chipping. With customers as far south as Longford, Westmeath and Meath availing of its slurry spreading services, the family-run business is going from strength to strength. It was set up by Barry and David in 1998 and has earned an enviable reputation for quality, reliability and value-for-money.
“We were previously involved in the poultry industry and had 120,000 laying hens. We now rent 500-600 acres of land for pit silage which we sell on to other farmers,” David says.
“We ran the poultry and agri contracting businesses side-by-side for a few years before deciding to concentrate on the latter. We’ve grown steadily and are now cutting 5,000-6,000 acres of pit silage and spreading 20 million gallons of slurry a year in eight different counties. We have some great customers and pride ourselves on our top-class service. We treat every job as if it was for ourselves and know exactly what the requirements of our customers are.”
Offering complete customer satisfaction, D&B Hicks Agri Contracts has a wide range of machinery to carry out your work quickly and efficiently, providing you with an alternative to investing in your own expensive equipment. Its success can be attributed to the knowledge, skill and expertise of its staff as well as the quality of its equipment. The Hicks team delivers the value and quality farmers expect from their agricultural contracting partner.
Employing two full-time employees and another five or six part-time at peak times, David and Barry run an exceptional grass machinery fleet which includes the aforementioned John Deere 9700 forage harvester, two sets of CLAAS butterfly mowers, CLAAS triple mowers, a Case 721 loading shovel with 16ft Redrock buck rake, two Redrock 20ft trailers, a new HighSpec 24ft tri axle trailer, a new Donnelly 20ft trailer, a CLAAS 3600 rake and a CLAAS Volto 800 tedder.
Another new piece of kit is a Schaffer 9640 loading shovel which is used for buck-raking and loading pit silage into trailers.
In terms of slurry equipment, the father-and-son run two Redrock 4,500-gallon twin-axle tankers, a new Redrock tri axle 6,000-gallon tanker, a new Mastek 12-metre dribble bar with Smart Spread flow meter, two new Mastek slurry reelers with 2,000m of slurry hose and a Bauer pump, a Mastek Super PTO compressor and two Redrock mega flow pumps.
“We were one of the first in Northern Ireland to invest in an umbilical system. We were running 1,000m of pipe at that stage, but now we’re running 2,000m. There was no dribble bar then – it was all splash plate,” David continues.
“We have a good relationship with Frank Flynn from Redrock in particular. We do most of the maintenance ourselves. All machines are maintained and repaired regularly to avoid breakdowns and downtime.”
D&B Hicks Agri Contracts’ location on the border, coupled with its impressive slurry fleet, has resulted in a demand for its services down as far as the midlands.
“There doesn’t seem to be as many contractors in Meath, Longford and Westmeath with a 6,000-gallon slurry tanker or umbilical systems. We bought a set of floatation tyres a few years ago and they’re another reason why we’re getting enquiries from down there.
“It suits us to work in the south because those counties I’ve mentioned are all within a 40-mile radius of us and the slurry spreading season starts two weeks earlier on January 15. It gives us a head-start on our competitors in the north.
“The counties we have customers in are Fermanagh, Cavan, Leitrim, Tyrone, Monaghan, Meath, Westmeath and Longford.”
Wood chipping is a growing area which has replaced timber processing as one of the Hicks’ specialist services. It also means that there is no such thing as quiet time of the year for the Erne County contractor.
“We were processing hardwood timber before the law changed about what our customers could and couldn’t use as firewood. That led to us focusing on wood chipping instead. We realised that there was a lot of work out there with ash dieback and so on, so we brought a wood chipper from Fuel Wood which is rigged up to one of the 6R250s. We chip branches, ditches and trees which are stockpiled before being transported to Bord na Mona’s power station outside Edenderry in Co. Offaly.
“We have 14-tonne Case and 13-tonne Volvo diggers with sawheads and grabs for cutting and removing the branches. We’re also running a 2021-registered Volvo FH500 and a walking floor trailer for transporting the wood chip. We bought the lorry from Dennison Commercials and the trailer from BMI in Dungannon.”
David is grateful for the support he receives from his mother Hazel, who looks after the bookkeeping, his wife Joanne, children DJ (13), Chelsea (12) and Stephen (seven), not to mention his father and business partner, Barry. DJ is already a great helping hand.
David and Barry would like to take this opportunity to thank their clients and suppliers for their loyalty and support, as well as their staff for their dedication, hard work and skill.
D&B Hicks Agri Contracts
Garvary,
Derrylin,
Co. Fermanagh,
BT 929QB.
Telephone: 078 18018350
Email: [email protected]
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 13 No 3, Winter 2025
D&B Hicks Agri Contracts, Featured
