Tar River SAYA-507 No Till Drill

[breddick]

honestly just ran it out of the "lime blend" and put in the next seed (blend without lime) and it pretty much cleaned itself. No worries.

 

[Bassattackr]

Interestingly, the SAYA-505 (55" drill) is close to a pound heavier per linear inch of drill. More weight = more press into the ground. Smaller drill = Longer plotting time + more tire compaction behind larger tractor however. Difference in the two will be negligible once seed is added however.

SAYA-505: 1036 lbs / 55" = 18.8 lb / linear inch of drill length (226 lb / linear foot). $5k price.
SAYA-507: 1400 lbs / 78" = 17.9 lb / linear inch of drill length (215 lb / linear foot). $6k price.

For reference:

GP 3P606NT: 2280 lbs / 72" = 31.6 lb / linear inch of drill length (380 lb / linear foot).

Posted to save for myself for later

 

[breddick]

Interestingly, the SAYA-505 (55" drill) is close to a pound heavier per linear inch of drill. More weight = more press into the ground. Smaller drill = Longer plotting time + more tire compaction behind larger tractor however. Difference in the two will be negligible once seed is added however.

SAYA-505: 1036 lbs / 55" = 18.8 lb / linear inch of drill length (226 lb / linear foot). $5k price.
SAYA-507: 1400 lbs / 78" = 17.9 lb / linear inch of drill length (215 lb / linear foot). $6k price.

For reference:

GP 3P606NT: 2280 lbs / 72" = 31.6 lb / linear inch of drill length (380 lb / linear foot).

Posted to save for myself for later

The math is correct on the weights. Can’t really rely on added seed to make up the difference... because you’re going to add seed to both planters. The gap will stay.

However. There’s a nice shelf on both sides for weight. I added about 300 lbs total and yes it help. With the 300lbs of shelf weight and a few bags of seed I have had zero issue with slicing into pretty dry / hard clay.

I could easily add more weight but my JD 4300 has strongly objected to that proposal.

 

[Bassattackr]

The math is correct on the weights. Can’t really rely on added seed to make up the difference... because you’re going to add seed to both planters. The gap will stay.

Agreed, I meant the percentage difference drops between the two TR drills when more weight added. Either way worst case you'll still be close to empty at end of the planting run so can't rely on seed.

I bet the shelf weight helps. How did you do that?

 

[breddick]

Agreed, I meant the percentage difference drops between the two TR drills when more weight added. Either way worst case you'll still be close to empty at end of the planting run so can't rely on seed.

I bet the shelf weight helps. How did you do that?

The shelf weights... I had a friend that worked for the railroad and he hooked me up with some big flat counterweights that were removed off of old crossing bars. Roughly 50 lbs each. They almost fit the shelf perfectly. I didn't even have to tie them down. 3 of them on each side gave me about 300 lbs total. I didn't weigh them. I'm just guessing at least 50lbs each. *******Look at post #2 on the first page and you can see the weights.*******

This am I took a shop vac and sucked the residual lime from all the seed cups / gears. That took a whopping 2 minutes. Then I just used a water hose to rinse all the remaining dust / residue. I'm going to let it dry and then hit every moving part with some type of oil. Any advice on that? I could just use Wd40 but didn't know if that was the simplest way to do it. Pump up sprayer with some heavier gear oil?

 

[Southern Hunter]

The shelf weights... I had a friend that worked for the railroad and he hooked me up with some big flat counterweights that were removed off of old crossing bars. Roughly 50 lbs each. They almost fit the shelf perfectly. I didn't even have to tie them down. 3 of them on each side gave me about 300 lbs total. I didn't weigh them. I'm just guessing at least 50lbs each. *******Look at post #2 on the first page and you can see the weights.*******

This am I took a shop vac and sucked the residual lime from all the seed cups / gears. That took a whopping 2 minutes. Then I just used a water hose to rinse all the remaining dust / residue. I'm going to let it dry and then hit every moving part with some type of oil. Any advice on that? I could just use Wd40 but didn't know if that was the simplest way to do it. Pump up sprayer with some heavier gear oil?

WD-40 is oil based and will collect dust and gum things up. The manufacturers ive seen say to use powdered graphite. Dry lubricant
Thanks for all the info you've given. Ready to get to work with mine when it arrives. Good luck this season.

 

[buckdeer1]

Usually door lock lube won't attract dust and you can buy in spray can

 

[tnpredator]

Talked to my local dealer and his rep said mid December if I ordered one they were selling so good. Found a place that had a couple at a good price and picked mine up today. Thanks for the info.

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[Turkish]

Talked to my local dealer and his rep said mid December if I ordered one they were selling so good. Found a place that had a couple at a good price and picked mine up today. Thanks for the info.

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Is that an MX5100? And 507 drill?

 

[tnpredator]

Talked to my local dealer and his rep said mid December if I ordered one they were selling so good. Found a place that had a couple at a good price and picked mine up today. Thanks for the info.

Sent from my LM-G710VM using Tapatalk

Is that an MX5100? And 507 drill?

Pretty much. MX5200 and the 507

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[Brinktown]

Update on fall plot plantings:

In preparation for planting in the next couple weeks I played around on the drill today. Lots of experience planting the soybeans in the spring and it did wonderful. Smaller seeds and “blends” were the next item on the menu.

I’m a big fan of whitetail institute turnips / greens. I’ve done some traditional tillage plots of “Tall Tine Tubers” in the past and they did very well. Till ground. Cuktipack. Broadcast tunips. Cultipack. The problems with this method are pretty obvious. Soil erosion. Poor moisture preservation. Need for more fertilizer. More labor intensive. Etc.

This year I want to no-till the turnips. The Saya drill has two seed boxes. Smaller box has a very small gear box and can meter seed as slow as possible. However, I realized that metering a homogenous population of turnip seed is simply a pipe dream. Lol. I should have known better but I’m not a farmer. Some lessons are learned the hard way. Metered down as low as it could possibly go (to still actually put our seed) was going to drop 15-18lbs or turnips / acre. Ouch.

So now I realize why turnips are significantly “diluted” into a mix to no-till.
The drill did it’s job and did drop these seeds very evenly. (I put plastic bags over seed tubes to measure / compare / calibrate). I was simply asking it to do something impossible.

I need to find the right seed / substrate to mix with my turnips to allow accurate seed / acre without planting something that will compete heavily with the turnips. The turnips are what I want to be the main focus of the plots. I’ve got extra soybeans but the seed is so much larger than the turnip seed I know the bulk of the turnips would fall to the bottom of the bin within a short period of time.
I’m confident the Tar River drill will do the job. I just have to come up with the right blend.

If I were you, I would take a look at replacing a sprocket in the chain drive for the small seed box to slow down the seed shaft so you could accomplish your brassica mix with no filler. Our 1006NT handles brassicas fine. It’s not impossible. You just need to slow down your seed shaft. If you can access a sprocket and get it removed/replaced, that could be your best option.


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[breddick]

If I were you, I would take a look at replacing a sprocket in the chain drive for the small seed box to slow down the seed shaft so you could accomplish your brassica mix with no filler. Our 1006NT handles brassicas fine. It’s not impossible. You just need to slow down your seed shaft. If you can access a sprocket and get it removed/replaced, that could be your best option.


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I’ll definitely look into that possibility. I’ve been planting a lot of PTT lately and I’ve simply mixed it with cereal rye to get it like I want. I did plant some using the lime but am not sure the hassle was worth it. I was kind of paranoid about washing it out very thoroughly afterwards. With seed or something else that’s a non issue.

 

[Southern Hunter]

As the title implies this is a thread aimed at providing an ongoing review of the No Till drill manufactured by Tar River. I just bought the drill a few weeks ago and other than some test "passes" I haven't seen any results yet. Therefor my review will be an ongoing thread rather than single big post.

A little background. I have about 200 acres of property in northeast Arkansas. Around 170 acres is mature timber and the other 30ish is creek bottom / pasture / plots. It's really a nice habitat in the making. I've owned the property for just under 10 years and over that time have tried hard to get good plots in and had some successes and plenty of failures. I've got all the traditional tillage equipment and in the past have disked, tilled, dragged, sprayed, planted, etc (not necessarily in that order) and have found it to be extremely labor intensive (hours that I don't have) and therefor only was able to plant ~ 5 acres max of soybeans / year. I used an older 2 row JD planter that did a great job. Rows were 22" wide (as narrow as I could get them). 5 acres of soybeans on 22" rows did not do well for my property. The deer density is too much and the fresh clean dirt seedbed made the rows stick out like a sore thumb. That was year one. Disaster. Year two and on I did the same thing but invested heavily ($ and time) by using electric fence (solar). Beans did amazing but the hassle of fencing / maintaining fencing, and only having ~5 acres of beans when all finished made it less than ideal. I was still happy with my results and the deer hunting in the fall was good too.

I (like dang near everyone else) am a fan of Grant Woods and had been drooling over a Genesis drill for a few years. The $12-15K price tag wasn't appealing but I was willing to bite the bullet if needed. One concern I had was my tractor is a 32HP JD 4300... and the 5' light Genesis drill was a concern for me to carry.

In comes the Tar River... The 507 is a 6.5' NT drill that weighs in at 1400 lbs (empty). 10 rows at 7.5" spacing. (you guys can look up all the additional specs). Two weight shelves to enable me to make it as heavy as I want. Empty my JD 4300 picked it up no issue so I started adding weight. After about 300 lbs on the shelf my 3 pt started to strain a little. I had also put some weight in the FEL bucket to help balance the tractor.

The instruction manual is pretty thin so a lot of my "figuring" just came from looking at the drill and figuring it out as I went. It's not rocket science.

Into moist soil the drill would easily cut 1.5- 2" deep and get the beans into the ground just right. This was into 100% unworked ground (old pasture). Again, this ground was very moist. NOT dry and not muddy.

The roll cage / crimper on the back does crimp the standing vegetation over and I'm not sure how that will translate into the fall if I want to do the buffalo system. I suppose I could fabricate a wheel system to replace the cage if I wasn't happy with the pressing down of the beans... However, no way will I do that at this time. I'll see how it does this year. I know in the past I've had beans stand up that were run over by the actual tires of the tractor / 4 wheeler so I am optimistic some will stand. Less than a wheel system like the Genesis? Very likely. Enough to matter? We shall see. Also assume that if I plant 20 acres of soybeans I could easily buffalo and skip rows to plant say 10ish acres of the fall planting leaving 50% of the beans untouched? I'm sure there will be some experimenting going on.

Back to the weight of the planter. I was concerned with the 10 rows / 1400 lbs as that's only 140 lbs / row of pressure. However, I also realized that it's a 6.5' planter. If I were to remove the outer row (all parts) and make it a 8 row planter that would turn it into a 5 '3" planter with 175 lbs of pressure / row... before adding any seed or shelf weight. So I could easily get it to 200 lbs / row and still have a 5' planter. I don't plan on doing this for starters but the option will remain.

I'll stop the review here for now. Pics to come. So far VERY pleased. For $6k I am having a hard time thinking it's less than half as good as a Genesis 5.

My 507 will be in at the end of the month.
Just wondering about calibration. How many turns of the drive wheel/cage does it take to equal an acre? It may be in the instructions, but as you said was pretty thin and wasn't sure. I saw where you said one of the seed gears was dropping more/less than the others and you had to make a minor adj. so that was going to be one of my first things to do was to weigh each drop to make sure they were close. Thanks for your review.

 

[Turkish]

Bump. Any more experiences, reviews?

 

[breddick]

Still happy with mine. To exponentially increase my food plot sizes in a fraction of the time... while maintaining the top soil integrity... No way I'd go back to traditional tillage. I need to take a few new pics. My plots aren't completely weed free as this is year one to do no-till. But man they look good!!! We had a couple moderate hot and dry stretches (I started planting mid August) and the plots never wilted or acted stressed. Neighbor tilled and cultipacked some turnips in around the same time. His plot looked fantastic until the second dry stretch. Most of his burned up.

My plots are insane. Could not be happier.

 

[Bassattackr]

Would love to see updated plot pics!

 

[breddick]

Here are just a few pics. Like I said they’re not weed free but they’re heavy with organic mulch from previous weeds / grasses. Hopefully over time the organic matter will include more desirable plant material and the weeds and grasses will get phased out. It will take some timely spraying in the spring to make that happen I believe.

In the one pic you can see where I missed a place or two with the drill. That kind of helps to show how it did where the planter was put to work small circular field is not really made for planting. But doable since it’s 3pt

 

[breddick]

Note the top field was planted a couple weeks before the bottom two fields. The top field is Eagle Seed Buffalo blend. Bottom two pics are my own blend of cereal rye and Tall Tine Tubers (PTT from WI) Given how well the planter does I was astonished at just how little PTT seed is needed when planting like this. Whitetail institute suggests 6lbs / acre of Turnips. I think about 2 lbs PTT added to a 50lb bag of cereal rye give plenty of turnips. Easy calibration too.

 

[habitataddict]

Thank you for sharing this information!

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Most plant WAY to heavy when it comes to brassica, IMO.