Contractor profile: southern England contractor staying focused on silage

The wet start to 2024 has been as challenging in Britain as it has in Ireland, adding to the pressures for farmers and contractors across England, Wales and Scotland of higher machinery costs and a fallback in commodity prices. Even in the usually drier south, there has been little let-up in the rain.

Having been cutting silage for over 25 years, though – and contracting for much longer – such challenges are nothing new for the Osborne family, based at Ashington, West Sussex, just 10 miles from England’s south coast and 25 miles south of Gatwick airport.

John Osborne began contracting in 1967, when the contractor he had been working for since leaving school was killed in an accident. His employer’s father invited John to take over the machinery and the customer workload, which was mainly muck spreading.

“When I joined the business at 25 years old, I wanted to look for ways we could diversify,” explains his son Steve, who is still helped out by 87-year-old John, but whose own sons, Sam and Daryl, now take on much of the workload, which includes a broad range of farm services but focuses on silage.

“I decided to offer more services to the cattle farms we were already working with, reckoning there was a gap to get into silage, so that farmers weren’t waiting too long for a contractor.

“With a self-propelled forager being a big investment, we split the cost with another contractor in a different area whose workload would fit with ours.

“That worked OK at first, but as we both took on more work, things got stretched and in 1998 we decided to buy our own machine, purchasing a secondhand Claas Jaguar 840. At that point, we had 700 acres of grass and 400 acres of maize committed, aiming for a customer base of 1,000 acres of each crop to ensure the machine paid its way. But as we won more work, after a couple of seasons we needed to upgrade both in age and performance, so in 2003 we bought a Jaguar 850, our first new machine.

“While the number of nearby herds and cows has fallen in recent years, there’s still a good workload locally, and we’ve built things to the point where last year we chopped 5,500 acres of grass and 1,500 acres of maize, plus some wholecrop, all through one machine.

“We tend to renew the forager every four years, but with machinery getting more expensive, our last one did an extra year. We’ve stayed with Claas, though, and last year bought a new 585hp Jaguar 950.

“We have a couple of nice large organic farm jobs of around 1,000 acres each, and we’re probably the second largest forage contractor in our area.”

While dealers of other makes occasionally try to persuade the Osbornes to try something different, they have been happy to stick with Claas for forage equipment.

“Other dealers do come knocking, but don’t always listen to what we want, simply pushing models with more output.

“We have a good Claas dealership nearby, formerly Claas-owned but now part of the independent Oliver Agriculture business. Their home area isn’t big forager country, but they have retained good staff who know the machines, and while they have had to expand like most dealers today, they also seem to understand how family businesses work, which isn’t true of every dealer.

“The service engineers know these machines well, and the foragers are the obvious choice for us given their popularity on the market,” says Daryl.

“A forager dealer tends to recognise that a silage contractor is busy with harvest not just from July to September like a combinable crop contractor, but from April on early grass to November on late maize. Back in 2005, our forager caught fire one morning late on during first cut, but by 4pm we were working again with a backup machine for the rest of the season and were found a new machine for the autumn. That’s the sort of support we value.

“The size and specification of the 950 suits us well, and the 900 series spec gives us additional features over the 800 models, such as automatic variable chop length according to crop dry matter. We’ve had a couple of small issues with the metal detector on our current machine, but they were sorted quickly. All machines have problems – it’s the way they’re dealt with that’s important.”

With a workload including grass, wholecrop and maize, the Osbornes have made a significant investment in heads to match their foragers over the years.

“Our current Orbis 750 maize head was carried over from our previous forager, and is now four years old. We’ve decided to upgrade for this autumn to a wider 12-row head, which will make it easier to open up fields with the tractor and trailer alongside without making a mess,” explains Daryl.

“We also have a Claas Direct Disc wholecrop header, which is probably the least profitable attachment.

“The problem is that the acreage booked can vary so much. In a dry year when grass growth has been poor, especially post first-cut, some farmers decide to commit a lot of cereal acreage, but while we might do 500 acres one year, the next it might be 50. But it works well enough, and was bought as part of the forager package. Having our own saves us running around for one.”

For a while, the business was also responsible for a big area of combining, running as many as five combines.

“But that was a bit of an ego trip which turned into a nightmare,” admits Steve.

“To get the staff meant we were using lads who were put on combines without enough experience, and someone else was needed full-time running around with diesel, while combines were still often waiting for fuel when they should have been cutting.

“We’ve cut back to one Claas Lexion 570 for a handful of nice jobs where we can stay for a few days and get the job done.”

Other key silage implements are also from Claas, including a Liner four-rotor rake, while the business is now on its fourth set of Claas Disco triple mowers.

“We started with a trailed Taarup mower, before moving to a front-/single-rear combination, and then a front unit plus rear butterfly mowers. We still have a Kuhn front/rear set, but have settled on Claas for our main butterfly mowers, and are now on our fourth set.

“The current Disco 9200C has a grouper, which has proved useful in lighter crops, where we’ve sometimes grouped the three mower swaths and then put two rows together with our Liner four-rotor rake. The Disco does a good job even on flat grass, and leaves a decent finish and good swath.”

While they have committed to Claas in terms of crop equipment, the Osbornes have spread their net wider for balers and tractors.

“We do a lot of square bale silage, and until last year all three of our balers were Claas Quadrants – a 2100, 3300 and 3200. Claas have since stopped offering an 80 x 90cm model, and when renewing that machine last year we purchased a lightly-used Fendt 990 on which I got a good deal,” says Steve.

“In terms of tractors, at one point we were all Case IH, then moved to McCormick before trying the early Claas tractors, including Ares 600 and 800 series models and Axion 800 series. We liked them for their comfort, but at 3,000 hours after a couple of years we had some reliability issues, mainly electrical,” Daryl says.

“We then went to John Deere for while, before the then fairly new AGCO dealer nearby convinced to try Fendts, which we got on well with, particularly the 724, which was well-matched to our previous 8.5m butterfly mowers.

“But the Valtra product from the same dealer also caught our eye. They seemed to have a lot of the same technology and standard of quality at a good price and with a distinctive look. In 2015, we bought our first T series, and all our main tractors are now Valtras.

“They’ve proved comfortable and reliable, and the availability of different colours helps us stand out. With one T255 on our fleet as well as a T235, we’ve reached the limit of what the T series models can offer us at the top of their range, and our latest investment is one of the new Q series, a 305hp Q305. Its jobs include clamping silage with a front-mounted buckrake.”

Despite the need to keep customers happy and make all this equipment pay its way, one benefit of such high-capacity kit is its efficiency and how it helps to ease the workload, reckons Steve.

“For instance, in good fields with the triple mowers we can cut 120 acres before needing diesel. And we don’t do stupid hours – usually, we stop by 9pm unless bad weather is forecast.

“Family is important, and my dad is still working with us at 87 – until a couple of years ago he did all the mowing. To keep our workload manageable, we need good kit with good backup that means we can get the job done when the weather comes right.”