While many businesses suffered from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, one ‘niche’ enterprise that has mushroomed has been the raffling of various different pieces of agricultural machinery.
These raffles started small, with prizes such as farm 4x4s and livestock trailers, but have recently upped their game significantly.
One such ‘raffling enterprise’ has decided to go ‘all out’ with an eye-opening and mouth-watering prize up for grabs.
One lucky individual will walk away from this particular raffle with no less than a full fleet of silage-harvesting equipment that would match, or surpass the kit owned by many agricultural contractors.
The prize includes:
- New Holland FR-9060 Self-Propelled Forage Harvester;
- JCB 414S Agri loader;
- New Holland T7-200;
- New Holland T7-190;
- New Holland TM130;
- 2x Kane silage trailers;
- GPM silage trailer;
- New Holland mower;
- Lely 30ft Rake.
The impressive bundle will be taken home by one lucky winner once all the tickets have been sold and will, no doubt, attract a large interest from members of the farming community in Ireland and further afield.
Winning machinery
In other machinery-raffle news, a father and son from Co. Longford recently won almost €400,000 worth of machinery in just eight days.
Shane Keenan and his father, John, who are from Abbeyshrule, began entering online agricultural machinery draws around a year ago in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We were at home with nowhere to go and I suppose out of boredom I was flicking through Facebook and Google when I saw the Lucky Day and Pristine competition draws,” Shane explained to Agriland.
John Keenan has worked as a contractor involved in land reclamation and site clearance projects for over 50 years.
“He’s mad into machinery and that’s what he lives for. He’d be running the business mostly himself, I’d be only in it on a part-time basis,” Shane, who works as an engineer, said.
Jackpot
The first of two windfalls for the father and son happened last January 14, when their ticket was pulled out at around 11:00p.m.
In that draw, they won a 2017 Hitachi ZX135US digger, a 2016 John Deere 6155R, a new Barford tri-axle low loader and a 16t Kane half-pipe dump trailer.
Shane said they were shocked looking at the machinery when it was delivered to them last week.
Then, last Sunday (January 23), the pair decided to enter another machinery draw “for the craic”, only for lightning to strike twice.
This time, the Keenans won a “slurry bundle”, which included a 2017 John Deere 6155R, a John Deere 6413, a new NC 3000S agitator and a new NC slurry tanker with a dribble bar.
Shane estimated that the two machinery windfalls are worth between €380,000 and €400,000.