Degelman Industries unveiled a new product at the Launch Pad during Canada’s Farm Show on Tuesday.
The HDSR series of staggered ripper is being introduced in Canada after a soft launch in the United States over the last eight months, said Derek Molnar, Director of Marketing for Degelman Industries at the show.
“It’s not so much of a testing phase as it is the more impact areas at the moment, right?” Molnar said of the American launch. “So they have more familiarity with what they’re looking for and they’ve been doing it for numerous years and with the amount of tillable acres down there, the compaction issues are more widespread than we’re seeing, you know being a minimum till kind of an area, so the U.S. is not so much the guinea pig as it is the primary kind of landing point for them overall, long-term.”
“The Staggered two row layout provides better trash flow and lower draft than an in-line ripper. It also allows for shorter implement contour length, easier transport, and better compaction shattering ability than a V-ripper.” read a description of the implement on Degelman’s website.
“We found through all our testing that that just gave us the best performance in the field when it comes to draft. Not pulling up large rocks because of the staggered two row set up and we know with rocks up here that’s going to be a major sticking point, so it gave us a better opportunity to have a more productive product in the field.” added Molnar of the layout.
He says the final version of the Ripper was aided by producer feedback.
“In my presentation, I mentioned we did some work with PAMI (Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute) to do simulations for Western Canadian soils because the seasons are so short, right? You can only get so much testing in in a fall, so that helped us a lot but also just the feedback we got talking to farmers and customers down in the U.S. in those really high tillage areas. We learned a lot about what the compaction looks like for them and how they manage it and we took that up here and started to see a lot of similarities, so it was a great stepping point to get us here now; now it’s time to start listening and talking more with Western Canadian farmers to see how it benefits them. We’re already seeing people that are praising the practice of ripping on their farm, so we’re excited to see where we can take it.”
It features an automatic leveling system so there is no need to manually adjust it. Customization is one of the notable features of the product with multiple shank, shank tip, trip force, and ripper point options to suit a producer’s needs.
Degelman is ramping up production and is now taking orders for the new Staggered Ripper for next year.