WITH Scotland’s normally wet harvest weather arable farmers and contractors have just a short window to get the crops combined and in the shed.

In order to achieve a drama-free harvest, combines should be in good mechanical order, and the dealer on speed dial in case of a breakdown requiring an elusive part.

And that’s exactly the sentiment of Andrew Mackay, who, with his two brothers, Joe and Ian, and father Andrew senior, run one of Scotland’s most northerly contracting businesses up in Caithness.

“When that window of opportunity comes we must be ready,” said Andrew. “Our combines need to be mechanically fit to leave the yard when the weather clears, and hopefully run the season without incident to get the harvest completed, not only on our home farm but on those of our customers too.”

Andrew and his family farm around 1,000 acres in total and also operate West Greenland Contracting, which predominately sows and harvests cereal crops.

“It’s a beef, sheep, and crop farm,” Andrew said. “We run 130 Simmental cross sucker cows and on top of that, we buy in and finish about another 1,000 head. I buy most of the cattle in Caithness, but also some in Dingwall and Orkney as well.

“Normally we grow up to 300 acres of crops every year, mostly spring barley, all destined for cattle feed. The rest of the land is in the grass,” he said.

The weather around Caithness can be quite a challenge for crop farming as there is a lot of wind and little shelter in the region. Rainfall is around 35 inches per year.

Andrew said: “We can get late springs up here and early finish to harvests, but it is easy to be caught out as when the weather breaks, that’s it.

“This year we finished all the harvest for both ourselves and our customers on October 2. Every year we combine almost 2,000 acres of crops, including our own 300 acres,” he said.

With that short combining weather window and quite a few acres to harvest, Andrew runs three Claas combines of his own and recently has had the opportunity to operate a new Claas Trion demonstration machine for a few days.

“We run three Claas Lexion combines,” he said. “They are a 570 Plus, a 550, and a 460, all varying from 14 to 20 years old, with the 460 being the oldest. There certainly is a bit of age with our combines but they are all well-maintained and run really well.

“With most of our workload being nearly all spring crops, our combines do not have high numbers of hours on them. As mentioned, they are only on the go for a short time and then retire to the sheds again once the harvest is completed.”

In fact, Andrew’s combining window is only around five weeks as he normally starts the harvest contracting season with spring barley during the last week in August.

He then aims to have all the crops combined by the first week of October as that is normally when the weather breaks for the winter.

“Both our 460 and 570 Lexion combines run with 25-foot headers and the 550 is on a 20-foot header,” said Andrew. “Due to the huge cost of a new combine, we purchased all ours second-hand. It isn’t justifiable to invest such a lot of money into a new combine, in my opinion, for it to only work a few weeks in the year, in our case.”

Andrew works closely with the local Claas dealer, W & A Geddes Ltd, based at Wick.

“We are mostly cutting barley and oats up here,” said Andrew. “Therefore, we need a combine that can handle these crops but also something that can produce straw with a bit of quality as this area uses a lot of straw in livestock production.

“In Caithness, we tend to need bigger combines than what they would use maybe 200 miles south of here, given the demand for combining in such a short harvest window.

“Once the weather says we can harvest, our three combines will be out on different farms immediately. We have run Claas combines since around 1987 and prefer the Claas brand due to the service we receive from the local Claas dealer, W & A Geddes Ltd in Wick.

“They have a good team of engineers and a good service manager who understands my needs as a customer. I’m a big believer in the philosophy that we need a dealer just as much as they need us.

“Every year the dealer services our three combines before we start the harvest. During this pre-season check the combines get whatever they need and the dealer gives us a list of the services and parts provided.

“This servicing acts as a kind of insurance for us to cut the risk of breakdowns mid-harvest. However, if we do have a breakdown like we did this year, I had a mechanic in the field within 20 minutes.”

While Andrew says his combine buying policy is to purchase the biggest combines he can find second-hand that suit his workload, he doesn’t rule out buying a new combine.

“Our oldest combine cut 600 acres this year and never missed a beat,” said Andrew. “It will probably do the same next year. We are currently looking at changing one of the combines, but it will depend on what is available.”

During this year’s harvest, Andrew was given the opportunity to demo a new Claas Trion 750 combined with a Vario 930 30ft header arranged by W & A Geddes Ltd sales manager Bruce Foubister.

“The Trion was tremendous, it’s a great combine,” said Andrew. “It’s a good entry level as a hybrid combine for some folk. It had a very quiet cab and was very easy to clean taking a third of the time it takes to dust down the Lexions.

“I used it to harvest oats, which were badly lodged, but still managed 35 tonnes per hour,” he said. “It was fitted with the optional TM6 sieves which gave a very good quality sample. All in all, I was very impressed by the Claas Trion.”

In terms of tractors, Andrew runs a familiar green and yellow John Deere fleet comprising six tractors namely a 7310R, two 6155Rs, a 6R 150, and a 6120M and a 6630.

When it comes to silage time Andrew runs a Claas Jaguar 970 self-propelled forage harvester, mows with a set of Krone CV1000 mowers, and bales with a McHale V660 variable chamber round baler.

Andrew added: “As well as our combining work, each season we drill around 1,200 acres of spring cereals with our 6m Lemken Solitair, and sow a lot of grass seed, probably around 2,000 acres.”