Does Bruce Have NZ’s Largest Slurry Tanker?

‘The greenwater is all going out through the pivot, but we’d still have to suck the ponds out once a year to get the sludge out of the bottom of them. It’s just one of those things, for smaller farms you can just tanker everything, but once you start getting to 1600 cows you end up with a lot of stuff. The screwpress does a good job, but one system can’t do everything.’ Bruce said.

Bruce strives to utilise every inch of the farm, and with re-grassing and crops being regularly planted, the effluent nutrients are always being put to good use. His old brand of 18,000L tanker didn’t have the same capacity, autofill and pump to keep up! 

‘The old tanker was just too small basically, for what we are producing. The reason for buying the big one is to be able to do things a bit faster, and we’ve got the new tractor now to be able to hang onto it, so we can utilise the big tractor as well.’ Bruce said.

Having previously bought his pump from Nevada, which was going well, when it came time to upgrade his tanker Bruce gave us a call. ‘We chose Nevada because you’re a local (NZ) company really. We dealt with you in the past with the pump and it all went good, we’re happy with the product you sell, and we wanted a company with a good parts presence.’ Bruce said.

Bruce had already done the calculations based on his 18,000L tanker and the horsepower of his new tractor, and he knew the massive 37,000L Nevada Slurry Tanker had his name written all over it. 

‘Now we can spread over the entire 500Ha, not just the 160Ha under irrigation. It gives us a lot more flexibility to spread when and where we want. We have to clean ponds out once a year anyway, but it’s better being able to do it in house. Then we don’t worry about potential smell issues with spreading in one area, and the money is flowing the right way.’
Bruce Turpie – Dairy Farmer, Ashburton