The farm roadway can very quickly deteriorate to a rough pot holed track that shakes tractors and implements, as well as causing lameness in livestock.
Repairing them is a job that is often considered too expensive or time-consuming to be undertaken regularly, to the detriment of both machinery and cattle, so any tool that can perform a repair in a timely manner is to be appreciated.
Such a machine is now available from Castleagri of Carrick on Suir, Co. Tipperary, who is importing a grader/leveller From Murray Machinery of Scotland.
One tool roadway maintenance
The model on display at was a fully-specced machine with all, but one, of the option boxes ticked, giving a demo machine that can perform the full range of functions.
The grader works by first breaking up the road surface with a set of teeth borrowed from a road planer.
It is recommended that three passes are made at walking pace before the teeth are raised from work, and the two sets of levelling blades are lowered to the freshly disturbed roadway surface.
The first set remove the loose material, filling in the holes as it moves it to either side, and the second set, which follows behind, draws it back in again to the centre, avoiding ridges running along side the track.
Keeping water away
Such ridges will trap water on the surface, rapidly undoing all the good work done by the grader, which is able to shape the roadway to ensure that water always has an escape route.
Ensuring proper drainage is a vitally important part of creating the new road surface, and so the machine has been designed to create a camber either in the centre, or across the whole width of the road, dropping to one side.
This is done by altering the angle of the leveling blades which can be done hydraulically. Accuracy may be further enhanced by fitting of an electronic angle indicator, which is the one item missing from this machine.
Having levelled the surface, the stone will need compacting and a pair plain rollers mounted at the rear perform this function.
Once lowered into work, they take the full weight of the machine which further adds to their effect, leaving a level and compacted surface which will alleviate the rock and roll of tractors and the help maintain herd health.