For agricultural contractors this is a quiet time of the year ahead of the madness that the summer usually brings.
The winter months bring about the opportunity for contractors to carry out any maintenance work necessary as they get set for the busy period ahead.
However, there are some contractors who are kept busy all year round, given the wide range of services that they provide to their customers.
For this month’s edition of Irish Tractor, we profile one such family run business as Ronnie Killen & Sons Agricultural Contractors is in the spotlight.
Based in Newbuildings, Co Derry, this family run business offers a wide range of services to an ever-increasing customer base.
Ronnie established the business over 30 years ago and over the years, he has been joined by his sons Richard, Geoffrey, Graham and Stuart.
The latter spoke to us about what it takes to run such a successful business and the workload entailed to keep everyone happy.
“We are dairy, sheep and pig farmers and we milk in the region of 430 cows, so we are kept busy all year round,” said Stuart. “We farm in the region of 900 acres and we have recently purchased a farm of land consisting of about 120 acres.”
Hailing from a dairy background, Stuart feels that they know better than anyone what they’re customers want.
“We provide a wide range of services including slurry, both tanker and umbilical, maize, barley, reseeding, baling and wrapping as well as silage.
“Our customer base would be in the region of about 1800, many of who have been with us since my father first set up the business all those years ago. We would get through around 6,000 acres of silage during the summer months between the first and second cuts. Sometimes, we would have two crews going depending on how busy we are, but generally it is just the one. Another good thing about the customer base is that it would be within a 15 mile radius of our home place here. We are in a good location and take in a couple of other counties apart from Derry.”
Of the tractors used by the family, Case and New Holland are the preferred choice and they are upgraded on a regular basis.
“The tractors are bought from Cowan Brothers in Derry city. We would be dealing with them for many years now and find them very helpful. The tractors are generally upgraded every few years, while we would also have a wide range of machinery for all the different work we do.”
With such an extensive range of machinery at their disposal, Stuart admits that maintenance is a big part of their workload.
“A lot of the maintenance would be carried out during the winter months. The fleet has to be in pristine condition during the summer Spring and Summer as these are our busy periods and the last thing you want is for breakdowns to be occurring.”
Despite the contracting work taking over during the summer, milking still has to be done twice daily, a job that can take up to three hours at peak times.
“We use a Pearson milking machine which we find very useful, and generally one of us would be at home working the farm, while the rest go contracting.”
For combining, Ronnie and his sons use two Claas harvesters, an 870 and 890, while of the tractors, New Holland 6070s and 6030s are the preferred choice.
A Vicon 235 baler gets through a mammoth amount of work during the summer period. “The Vicon is a very good baler we find, we do a lot of baling and wrapping and this has proven to be very beneficial to us.”
Stuart admits that they are happy with the workload that they have on at the moment and there are no real plans to expand the contracting.
“We will probably expand the dairy end of the farming. We’re happy with the workload in the contracting. The majority of our customers are there years and we will continue to look after them. During the busy period, we would take on about five lads on a part time basis to give us a hand get through the workload.
“You are basically going 24/7 during the summer. With the weather in this country, you have to try and get as much done as possible during any dry spells that we have, which at times are scarce.
“We were fortunate enough last year as it was a dry enough summer and hopefully we can have more of the same this year. The last month or so has been really wet and a lot of land is still under water, but hopefully we will get out to do some slurry work in the coming weeks.”
Ronnie Killen & Sons
Newbuildings,
Co Derry.
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 4 No 2, February 2016
