With cows indoors, now is the perfect opportunity to carry out repair work on farm roadways.

Over the course of a year, roads can become loose and potholes may develop. Ignoring issues is not a good idea because a poor, uneven road surface can result in cows becoming lame. Lame cows will not perform to their potential and yields will be affected.

To renovate a road most farmers will be forced to buy in stone. Sometimes, however, there may be no need to buy in more stone, especially if the road is higher than the land and can be drained easily.

It may be just a case of getting the right machinery to resurface what is already there.

John Hanrahan from Hanrahan Plant Hire Ltd in Ballyporeen, Co Tipperary, is well known in farming circles for the water system installation service his company provides on livestock farms.

His company also provides other agri plant services such as land drainage, roadway construction, stone crushing, ploughing and reseeding.

In recent years, the company has been perfecting the roadway re-grading service it provides for livestock roads. It has invested considerable funds in machinery to carry out this work.

The Irish Farmers Journal recently visited a roadway John was renovating on Chilly Noonan’s dairy farm in Shrove, Kilbehenny, Co Limerick.

Picture one and two

The sandstone road on Chilly’s farm was damaged after heavy rainfall in the spring (picture one).

Picture one.

The road is on the side of a steep hill and when it rains, a large volume of water makes its way down the hill and damages the road. Chilly was not sure what the best course of action was but after getting in touch with John he decided a regrading job was the way to go. To carry out this regrading work, an excavator is used to ruffle up the existing road (picture two).

Picture two.

“The digger loosens up the stone in the road and pulls a lot of the stone to the centre, all the while taking away the grass verge,” John says. By loosening and centring the stone, the machines that come next are in a better position to carry out their role.

Pictures three and four

The next machine on the job is the FAE stone crusher. This machine is usually used in stony fields during reseeding.

However, John has found that it is an ideal addition to the road regrading fleet.

The stone crusher passes through the loosened road and breaks down any decent-sized stones in the mix, pretty much turning them to dust.

Picture three.

This crusher generally works at a speed of 400m to 500m per hour depending on the size of the stones passing through it. John says it can crush stones up to 12in in diameter but the larger the stones the more time it takes.

The crusher’s teeth have special hard-wearing carbide (carbon and metal compound) tips that normally last for 80 to 90 hours before requiring replacement .

Picture four.

A hydraulic hood at the back of the crusher allows access to these teeth (picture four). According to John, crushing this stone helps to make best use of the materials already on site and leaves behind perfectly sized stone to make the ideal cow road.

Picture five

After the preliminary stone crushing takes place, John likes to give the road a quick run of the grader. To grade the road he uses a Fransgard GT-250PH grading machine.

Picture five.

This machine levels out the freshly crushed stone. John says he has great control placing and shaping the road with this machine because it has hydraulic side adjustments that can move in and out or up and down.

He usually gives a road another quick pass with the stone crusher to pick up any stones that might have escaped the first time around.

Pictures six and seven

When he is happy that the stones are all crushed, John gives the road a final pass of the grader. The grader allows him to leave different types of finishes depending on customer preferences.

On this road he is installing a cross-fall, which means one side of the road is higher than the other (picture six).

Picture six.

He can also create a camber on a road, which means the centre of the road is the highest point sloping away at either side, allowing rainwater to drain away.

“It really depends on the site. If your road is on a hill, I would recommend a cross-fall but if the field is flat a cambered road would be the most economical,” says John.

Picture seven.

The final task in the process is compacting the road. John recently purchased a special Stehr plate compactor machine to do this. He is delighted with this machine as it works really well on a cambered finished road compared to a roller. “Using the roller on a narrow road you could end up flattening the camber after all the work you put in trying to put it in place,” John explains.

Cost

The end product is impressive given the condition of the road before work started. No stone was bought in to carry out the repairs.

John says every job is costed depending on the site, the type and quantity of stone already in the road and the length of road to be renovated.

As a guide John says it costs about €4/m to carry out the type of work described above on a 4m wide road excluding VAT.

A 5m wide road costs approximately €5/m excluding VAT. John says this option is perfect for farmers with a stone source on their farm that just requires minor crushing to create a good road for cows.

He said where stone crushing is not required they can re-grade roads for farmers using bought-in capping material.