The power requirement is 80 to 120 hp., depending on the pressure applied to the blades. He reinforced the underside of the frame and the hitch to compensate for the increased stress on the frame.ĭuring operation, Klein travels at around 5 mph with the leveling blade lifted just off the ground, and he raises the original front wheels to reduce contact with hills. The wheels can be adjusted manually to control the blade height. Klein extended the rod-weeder frame in order to mount a second set of four “land leveler” wheels behind the grader blades.

“So we’re doing it about every other year early in the spring, and the ground is sure smoother than it was before.” “Three years ago we went over all 1,200 acres of our hay ground with the leveling shovels, and we did it again last year,” he says. At a cost of $90 apiece for the leveling shovels, Nelson retrofitted the 42-shank toolbar for $3,780. The chain helps to spread soil as the mounds are broken apart by the shovels. A drag chain is attached to each of the shovels fastened to the rear row of toolbar shanks. In 2017, Nelson fitted the 16-inch Haukaas shovels on a used 42-foot toolbar chisel plow with 12-inch shank spacings. While several designs of land-leveling implements are available, the leveling shovels offer a lower-cost option because they’re designed to bolt onto cultivators with either 43° or 50° shanks.

Nelson found that option when he stumbled across the Haukaas Leveling Shovels manufactured by Haukaas Manufacturing Limited (now Haukaas Industries Limited), of Mortlach, Saskatchewan.

Instead, I look for ways to extend the life of the stand.” I’m pretty careful about breaking up alfalfa. “We can get so dry here in western South Dakota, it might be years before we get a stand of alfalfa established again. “But I don’t want to rotate the ground out of alfalfa,” Nelson says. Rotating fields out of alfalfa and into an annual crop is one way of discouraging their activity.

Markets Analysis Back to Markets Analysis.

Mount and blade cattle disappear