Richard Reads owns and runs a family dairy farm based in Devon, with over 260 Holstein Friesian cows and over 400 acres of land for grazing and forage. They rear all their own replacements with around 200 youngstock at one time and sell their milk to Arla.
Three years ago Richard purchased an ISEKI TG6495 IQ compact tractor, explaining more about his unexpected purchase he commented; “having always used the larger agricultural tractors, as everyone else does, we wasn’t looking for this type of machine when visiting the local dealer MST’s Open day a few years ago but when we saw it we thought we would try something different and so booked a demonstration. We were blown away by its ability, it is smaller than our other tractors on the yard, making it ideal for negotiating around the barns and the IQ transmission offers clutchless gear changes for effortless manoeuvrability whilst muck scraping all the cow sheds; so, we purchased straight away.
Richard explains further; “The TG6507 IQ is used purely as a muck scraper tractor, the yard constantly needs scraping and youngstock housing needs cleaning to ensure the cows are kept in the best condition. The implement is mounted on an a-frame so, if needed we can drop the scraper to use the tractor for other things.
“Best feature of the tractor is the IQ gear box, we tried an HST tractor from another manufacturer but we found it was constantly revving up and down the gears, causing unnecessary wear and tear. The IQ transmission gives clutchless gear changes with a forward and reverse shuttle lever, so simple to drive, quick and manoeuverable around the cow sheds. Everyone on the farm, from my wife to my son and the lady who milks the cows all use it. We have it road registered so we can pop up the road to the other farm on it too, it has good road speed.
“Both myself and my son are very tall but having the moveable steering wheel allowing us to get in and out of the tractor easily with one simple touch of a foot pedal, no dirty hands. I find it easy to drive with the steering wheel forward and then the lady who milks our cows jumps in, a lot shorter than us, she can move the steering wheel back towards her so its comfortable for her too.
“We have had this tractor for three years, we have had nothing mechanically go wrong with it, it has been regularly serviced and it has been faultless, it is an incredibly reliable tractor. I would definitely recommend this ISEKI TG6507 IQ tractor to any dairy farmer, it is compact, highly manoeuvrable, easy to drive, incredibly well built and considering the particularly mucky job it has, the tractor has been faultless.
“I cannot find another tractor that can do a better job.”