Nigel Harper manages two dairy farms with 700-head of cattle and a further 380-head of youngstock that spans 1000 acres in Cheshire: The Dairy Farm and Hollins Farm. Alongside managing these, Nigel also runs a contracting business, where he and his team carry out silaging across 18,000 acres, with a further 30,000 acres of other services such as cultivations and sowing, making it a busy enterprise.

To help with this, Nigel’s fleet includes an Optum 300, three Puma 240s, three Puma 200s and two Puma 165s, all hired from Ashbrook. For a lot of the work on their own dairy farms, they have two Farmall 55c tractors, for which Nigel and his team makes the most of their versatility.

“We mainly use them for scraping out the cubicle sheds, but also use them for operating the straw choppers and even some light field work such as moving heifers and youngstock,” he comments. “Having not had Farmalls three years ago, we can no longer see ourselves without them anytime soon because of the great job they do.”

“Their small size makes it easy to navigate around our farmyard and inside our sheds, and it’s a perfect balance of weight and power really for what we are wanting it to do,” he continues. “Being a dairy farm, it can get quite messy, so another handy feature is the ease with which we can clean them.”

Above all else though, Nigel feels the Farmall’s reliability is their most valuable asset. On his farm, slurry scraping is one of the most important jobs, and the peace of mind from knowing the Farmalls will start without any problems is invaluable. “It starts every day, and we don’t seem to have any problems with it at all,” he concludes.