Automatic tranmissions on GM trucks prove impressive on tough terrain
Road tests in the Rockies and the Alberta badlands made for effortless trailering on mountain back roadsBy Robert Irwin
General Motors has unveiled a new automatic truck transmission which may tempt even the most faithful manual transmission devotees. As the proud owner of three manual transmission vehicles, I admit I was impressed during a recent two-day test drive of GM's new vehicles last month.GM had invited Better Farming to join leading Canadian automotive writers and editors for an on- and off-road tour of the Rocky Mountains and the Alberta badlands as part of the launch of 31 new Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra three-quarter and one-ton truck models.
A new, more powerful engine lineup made for effortless trailering up steep mountain back roads. But from the moment I first learned I would be driving automatic transmission vehicles with Gross Combined Weights (GCW) reaching 22,000 lbs. among mountain peaks as high as 7,200 ft., I focused on the likelihood of brake fade.
But the four-wheel disc, ABS system made panic stops easy on snow and loose gravel and, after descending my first hill, I discovered that brake fade was a non-issue. In fact, while pulling a skidsteer loader on a tri-axle gooseneck trailer, a load weighing more than 11,000 lbs., I barely touched the brakes during one winding 10-kilometre-long downgrade.
That's because Engine Grade Braking (tm), a new feature of the Allison 1000 series transmission, automatically downshifts on steep grades. Under normal driving conditions, the transmission downshifts from fifth to fourth gear. However, by selecting the tow/haul mode you can take advantage of multiple downshifting from fifth through third.
The transmission has full electronic control of all shift timing points and, when it is operated in tow/haul mode, another new feature called Shift Stabilization reduces what the automaker terms shift "busyness," which normally occurs in hilly terrain.
GM says the new Duramax 6600 diesel with 300 horsepower at 3100 revolutions per minute (rpm) and 520 lb./ft. of torque at 1,800 rpm produces 25-65 more horsepower than any competitor's diesel. It is a 90-degree direct injection, overhead valve, four valve per cylinder, turbo-charged and intercooled V8 developed in a joint venture between GM and Isuzu Motors. It replaces the company's 6.5-litre turbo diesel. The engine started well after spending a night outdoors at -12C. So did the Ford and Dodge diesels parked beside it.
In addition to the Vortec 6600 gas V8 offered as standard equipment, GM has also just unveiled the new optional Vortec 8100 Big Block V8. It puts out 300 horsepower at 4,200 rpm and 455 lb./ft. of torque at 3,200 rpm. This new engine replaces GM's Vortec 7400 and the company claims it produces 40-65 more horsepower and 30-45lb.-ft./lb. more torque than the V10 engines in competitors' trucks.
To back up their claims of more power, GM created up a drag strip half a kilometre long, complete with an ambulance waiting at one end and the local fire department at the other, at an airfield near the small town of Beiseker. Journalists took turns racing GM, Ford and Dodge trucks carrying a 1,000-lb. box load and hitched to identical 2,900-lb. livestock trailers which were also loaded with 1,000 lbs. Regardless of who was driving, GM won every race by at least several truck/trailer lengths. BF
© copyright 2001 AgMedia Co-operative Inc..
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Lely, the world market leader in robot milking machines, celebrated its 1000th sale at this December's EuroTier 2000, the world's largest farm livestock event, in Hanover, Germany. The latest Lely Astronaut robot milker model, which now costs around $230,000 Cdn will take over all milking of a 60-cow herd in the German state of Bavaria.The Dutch manufacturer announced that the Astronaut model now milks more than 50,000 cows in 17 countries worldwide, working in herds of up to 600 cows. The massive expansion has taken place from zero in just eight years. In 1992, Lely launched the world's first commercial robot milker. Now, seven companies are producing their own versions of automatic milking systems and, according to Lely, every major milking machine manufacturer either produces a model or has one in the pipeline.
The company says that research on customer farms in the last eight years has indicated that the robot system of milking heavy producers three to four times daily has meant individual average yields have risen by 10-15 per cent. Cow health control and milk quality has improved universally because of the robot system monitoring of quarter-by-quarter milk quality and temperature, feed intake and animal weight every milking. This standard of day-to-day control, coupled with more frequent milking, is the main reason the productive lifetime of cows using the system has been increased by an average 10 per cent, claims Lely.
Focal points of sales so far are Holland, Germany and Denmark, with the Netherlands alone now using more than 200 Lely robots. The company also says sales are increasing rapidly in Canada and Australia with first commercial robots to be introduced in New Zealand early next year.
Contact: Lely Industrie, Netherlands, Fax: +31 1059 26509 BF
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Automatic fat measurement at each feed
Pioneering hog work runs in the Hesse family, a husband and wife team at Germany's Federal Agricultural Research Centre (FAL) in Brunswick. For while husband Dr. Dirk Hesse is already world-renowned for his development work on sloping-floor self-cleaning pens for feeders and breeders, wife Andrea introduced her own automatic backfat measuring device this winter at EuroTier 2000.The prototype model, part of Andrea's research work for her doctorate, is linked to the wet-mash automatic nipple feeder for loose-housed pregnant sows, one of the more common systems used in German group-housing of hogs, and also mainly a development of her husband's. The transponder-based electronic identification of each sow using the system registers the number of the sow each time she activates the feeder. Pressing the nipple to extract wet mash means the sow is relatively motionless and in the correct position for accurate measurement.
When feeding starts, sensors mounted on a steel brace descend onto the sow's back just behind the shoulders and backfat is measured at this point within a few seconds. The system then sends fat measurements -- along with details of mash consumed -- back to the farm computer. Where pregnant sows are run in groups, it is very important for each animal's body condition to be carefully watched, explained Andrea Hesse. Sows can eat too much and become too fat, giving farrowing problems as well as wasting feed. Too thin sows -- and especially gilts -- can mean small litters and not enough milk for the piglets. There is also evidence that, where the gilt's backfat is under four mm during first pregnancy, her productive lifetime can be substantially shortened.
One reason why the automatic backfat measurer, which has a potential for being applied to other self-feeding systems, was pioneered at FAL was because a recent survey indicated that the so-called stockman's eye cannot be relied upon as much as believed for judging sow condition. It has been found that 25 per cent of visual body condition assessments by experienced pig producers are in fact wrong, with far too many sows therefore coming up to farrowing too fat or in poor condition, explains Mrs. Hesse.
The measuring device is a new and inexpensive system which should give farmers everywhere much more control over this important aspect of pig breeding.
Contact: Andrea Hesse, FAL, Fax: +49 531 596 364, website: www.bb.fal.de BF
© copyright 2001AgMedia Co-operative Inc..
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Gel bed cuts piglet creep heat
A one-step $8 addition to the already simple solar waterbed for piglets from German innovator MIK offers 40 per cent energy savings in creep heating.The original waterbed idea has already proved to increase piglet survival through attracting piglets away from the sow during non-nursing periods with an ultra-comfortable lying/sleeping area in the creep. The solar version of this comprises a double bottom which insulates the water from the pen floor and a black upper surface to attract more radiation heat from the creep lamp. This winter the MIK developers, with input from University of GieAYen Animal Production Department in Germany, changed the waterbed to a gel bed by simply adding 80g of gelling agent to the eight litres of water in the standard 0.55 m2 model.
Careful kneading turns the liquid filling quickly to gel, which can retain heat for much longer than water. The result: all that's needed to maintain a gel bed surface temperature of 30C is a 140-to-150 watt radiation lamp instead of a 250-watt lamp which had to be used with water.
Contact: MIK, Fax: +49 2689 9436 40, website: www.mik-online.de BF
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There's hope after "Life Without Promise"
By Don Stoneman
John Donkers, the singing farmer from Monkton, who made a mark protesting low pork prices last year, didn't give up his day job. Donkers, 35, helped make the rest of Ontario aware of the pork crisis two years ago by writing a song and producing a musical CD called "Life Without Promise," written in December 1998, when pork prices were at their lowest level and producers were in their deepest despair.While protesting loud and long in the media about market conditions and the increasing corporate direction that the industry was taking, Donkers was making changes at home to put himself into a better position when markets made their expected turnaround. He cleared out his barns and repopulated them with new sows in the summer of 1999, timing the cleanout to miss selling to what was expected to be a very low Christmas market. The first crop of market pigs from the new sows were marketed almost a year ago.
"Everything is clicking the way it should," he says.
When he and his wife Linda bought the farm in Perth County's Logan Township 10 years ago, they took over an existing herd of 80 sows. "We had some herd challenges," Donkers says. "Eventually that catches up to you." Despite heavily medicated feed, Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) pushed finishing barn mortality to 10 per cent at one point. "Drug bills were higher than we wanted to see."
Breeding stock came from several sources as they built the herd to the current 210 sows over the decade, and each group of sows had different sensitivities to diseases. By merely adding new stock to an existing herd, he says, "you are taking a risk with herd health problems."
The gilts in Donker's repopulated barn came from Great Lakes Hybrids, run by Rein Minnema of Appin. Donkers got what he was looking for -- FI gilts with a good health record, and selling at a reasonable $30 each over the hog market. During the price turn, that even dropped to just $10 over. "The only reason I could afford to repopulate was because of his prices," Donkers explains.
Great Lakes is now his sole breeding stock supplier. Medication costs have plummeted because finishing pigs no longer required treatment. "We just have a little LS 20 in our starter now," he notes.
Donkers went into what he called "survival mode," where cost cutting was paramount. He collects his own semen from boars and breeds fresh AI, figuring this saves him $8 a service. He's trimming expenses in other ways, keeping vaccination costs to a minimum. The level of security on his barns is high to avoid a battle with disease that involves costly medications. "You live. You don't spend anything extra. You see what you can get away with," in reducing health treatment costs in the barns, he says.
Sows are kept on the 80-acre home farm. A new, automated dry sow barn was built there in 1998. About the same time, a new finishing barn with capacity for 1,100 was built on the second farm about a mile away,. That barn runs on liquid feed, keeping labour costs to a minimum. The debt load is high, Donkers admits, but it is manageable. In the current economic climate, he says, "I'm happy I don't have to build anything. At least, I haven't had to write any songs lately. The music industry is even worse than pig farming," he adds. "Want a CD? I can't give them away."
Still, he says community support in his part of rural Ontario was strong. Donkers is a member of the Ontario Independent Hog Producers Association. He's also the local director of the Progressive Pork Producers co-op (PPP).
"I'd like to see them both succeed," he says. There have to be market outlets other than Maple Leaf and Quality Packers, he asserts. A PPP plant in southeastern London would take 20,000 pigs a week from Ontario farms. And the independent pork producers are encouraging smaller abattoirs to expand their capacity as well, offering another alternative to the big mainstream packers.
Pork production appears to keep on going up. Donkers still thinks that independent farrow-to-finish operators like him can take on the loops and compete successfully. There's a cost in terms of death and disease when pigs are moved from one barn to another in three site production systems, he says.BF
You can listen to Donker's CD, "Life Without Promise," on Real Audio at Better Farming's website www.betterfarming.com/sound/promise.html
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