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Make sure you have the necessary technical expertise available to maintain machinery systemsMany excellent livestock operators are poor equipment people. Given today's technology, it's vital that they have access to the right expertise - either on their management team or from an outside sourceby RALPH WINFIELDOwners or operators of new high technology equipment need an adequate level of technical expertise if they are going to obtain a comfort level with their equipment. Even I get scared off if the salesperson tries to assure me that I don't have to worry about a technical glitch, offering the standard line: "Don't worry about it, we have technicians who are trained to troubleshoot all the things that can go wrong."We are seeing "computer-operated" diesel injection systems, "hands-free" guidance systems, automated milking and barn ventilation systems, crop-drying controllers, greenhouse environmental control systems, and the list goes on and on. What is scary to me and I'm sure to many others is figuring out what to do if the system malfunctions on some Sunday morning. In many instances, a 24-hour response time is totally unacceptable. Even if the manufacturer or supplier provides 24/7 phone support, someone on site must be capable of following specific technical instructions and know where to locate the module that needs to be tested, bypassed or replaced. When I was a small child, my mother was the primary operator of her Model A Ford car. It never ceases to amaze me how creative Henry Ford and his staff had been. From the driver's seat my mother could advance or retard the ignition timing, adjust the fuel-to-air ratio just by turning the choke rod or shut off the gravity fuel flow to the engine if necessary. I was impressed, but never warm as that Model A Ford was short on creature comforts. It did not have a heater. When I was a little older, I started to help with the milking. We never worried about an equipment breakdown. The important trick was to place your knee so that the cow couldn't put her foot in the milk pail. The coming of electricity and a simple milking machine were both giant technological leaps. Moreover, early tractors and combines did not have cabs, so we certainly did not need to worry about seized compressors or refrigerant leaks. Now, a whole host of new technologies is available on the farmstead. One is the whole idea of controlling the environment in buildings which house livestock. It was absolutely amazing to see the improvement in the environmental conditions and herd health when we started putting exhaust fans in buildings. Then there were thermostats that could control building temperature or at least prevent the temperature from dropping so low that the water pipes froze. Today, we have very sensitive electronic controllers that control the exhaust fans or side curtains. During the 1960s, we mechanized dairy barns and installed pipeline milkers, refrigerated bulk tanks, silo unloaders and manure removal systems. This technology greatly improved milk quality, as well as the productivity of the milking crew. Just recently, I was in a new dairy barn with a double 16 milking parlour -- expandable to 24. The milking equipment monitored and recorded the cow number, milk flow, milk quantity, and removed the milking unit automatically. Technology we didn't consider feasible even 20 years ago! In the field, probably the first noteworthy technology appeared in corn planters. Planter monitors and the first plateless corn planters appeared at the same time. Both of these technological developments had a tremendous impact on our ability to achieve the desired plant population without those very embarrassing skips or blank rows. Planter technology also improved to permit no-till planting with the accuracy we had come to expect in a well-prepared seedbed. I remember very well the crude field sprayer we built to fit on our Ford 8N tractor in the 1950s. We were the envy of the neighbourhood and custom-applied many gallons of 2,4-D (the only herbicide available) on cereal grain and corn fields. Today, we see very sophisticated, high clearance, hydrostatically driven sprayers with booms over 90 feet long. They have rate controllers, GPS systems and now guidance systems that will steer them automatically to eliminate overlaps and skips. Our combines are equipped with loss monitors, yield monitors, GPS systems and, most recently, an override system that can adjust travel speed based on cylinder/cleaning system loading. So, to get back to my opening point, every large farm unit or custom operator/applicator needs to have one person on staff or as part of the management team who has a high level of technical expertise. Based on years of experience, I know that most excellent livestock people are often very poor equipment people. They know everything about the pedigree and the health of their animals, but they often have no idea about or interest in even the routine servicing needs of the tractor they use daily to feed or remove manure. One solution, which works well for many larger livestock operations that do not have technical expertise on the management team, is to have all or most of their machinery-related tasks hired out to one or more custom operators. For example, they might hire a local cash-crop farm operator to do all of the fieldwork from planting to harvesting. This arrangement frees them to concentrate on their livestock. If the livestock operation requires a wider diversity of services, they might hire several custom operators to perform specific functions such as field spraying or manure handling. A second solution that can but doesn't always work is to have management partners (e.g. brothers) each primarily responsible for major operational functions. Some labour can still be shared at busy fieldwork times or to permit time off for the partners. The shared management system can work very effectively if the lines of communication are kept open and clear guidelines are known and followed by all parties. Unfortunately, these shared management systems seldom survive beyond one generation. In effect, what is needed is for one person to have full control of purchasing and servicing high technology equipment, be it in the barn or in the field. That person must have a good working knowledge of all things electrical and electronic, as well as mechanical and hydraulic. He or she must be free to buy service manuals and basic electrical testing equipment, and have or acquire the basic skills to use both. The acquisition of these skills will be as diverse as the total knowledge base. Some people learn by reading, while others must attend structured training sessions from local institutions or training sessions put on by company service trainers. Personally, I believe that many of the companies supplying these more sophisticated types of equipment will recognize the need to train some of the owners and/or their staff in addition to the dealership service technicians. Contrary to some opinions, this co-training will not reduce the need for dealership technicians who have access to very specific, and often expensive, diagnostic equipment. But it will greatly speed up diagnosis of inevitable equipment glitches. Last year, I planted corn for two days with the monitor shut off most of the time. One row sensor failed and neither the manual nor the service manager at the dealership which sold me the monitor could tell me how to stop the buzzer without replacing the sensor. And, yes, I preferred to continue planting rather than stopping to change the faulty sensor on two of the only good corn planting days in May.
Based on many years of reading and a few years of writing both operator and service manuals, trust me when I say that no troubleshooting guide is ever complete. It is and always will be a work in progress! BF Agricultural engineer Ralph Winfield farms at Belmont in Elgin County.
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