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Brothers Glen and Steve Stenzel farm in Hamburg, IA. They primarily crop corn and in 2007 they invested in a set of Tru Count clutches for their 16 row John Deere planter.
They plant with a 16 row John Deere planter with Tru Count clutches. They spray with a Rogator 854 that has a Raven 460 rate controller. They use the GreenStar 2 system for guidance with a StarFire2 signal.
One of the features that Steve likes was the sound that the RINEX puts out when it is working. “It is a different sound, and I like it. If you wanted to listen for it, it was there, but is not overwhelming like an alarm. You can’t rely on the map to set the timing on the delay for the clutches for the planter, with the RINEX and its audible tones it makes it real simple getting everything set and assuring that everything is working.”
Glen stated “we have a field that is 161 acres total. We use to always buy enough seed for this field to plant 200 acres. They are now planting about 166 acres out of the 161 acres that is total. We ended up saving about 8 bags of seed on just this field.”
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“Then when it comes time to harvest the areas that we use to double plant on those 40 acres you have a 50% drop in yield of what you would normally have. And on a year like this you would have almost nothing due to the dry summer in those areas. You also can figure in that the stalks will go down and now your fighting with staying on your rows when you come thru with the corn head.”
“The other thing is when you have a gap that you have to sow up with the planter. You use to have to over plant a bunch of rows to salvage 2 rows, or leave a gap to avoid the double planting. Now with the Tru Count clutches and the RINEX controller you really see the dollars add up when sowing up a strip that use to be a big dilemma.”
“We feel that with the seed savings alone it paid for itself in its first year. How can you farm without it when you’re dealing with those types of returns in the first year.”
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