John Leadingham, 2000 pigs at Turriff, Aberdeenshire:
“Spreading straw for the pigs has been transformed from a job which used to take a couple of hours every other day now takes a matter of minutes. It used to be time-consuming, hard physical work, and no matter what the weather conditions, you got very hot doing it.

“One important benefit is that the Spread-A-Bale does not tie up a tractor. The machine takes a matter of seconds to fit it to the telescopic loader, and is self-loading. It doesn’t chop the straw so there is no dust”.

Dave Etherington, 200 beef cattle at Sledmere, Yorkshire:
“We looked at a number of machines before choosing the Spread-A-Bale. It is hydraulic, so there is far less to go wrong.

“It saves us a lot of time and money. It now takes us about 20 minutes to straw up eleven pens, each of them about 40 feet by 45 feet, whereas it took a lot longer manually.

“It does not chop the straw when spreading it, so it makes a better bed for the cattle, as chopped straw tends to turn into a ‘mush’ to quick. That better utilisation probably saves 30% on straw usage”.

Nigel Armstrong, manager of 280 dairy cows/followers at Nottingham University:
“The machine is hydraulically driven rather than pto-powered, and because it uses no fast moving parts it eliminates the risk of stones or similar objects being ‘fired’ at cattle or buildings:

“Our old bale spreader used to tie up one tractor all the time, and a second one when it needed loading. The Spread-A-Bale is quickly connected and disconnected from the tractor or loader, and is also ‘self-loading’, which optimises tractor/manpower usage. Running costs are much lower than its predecessor and we get the work done three times as quickly”.

Father and son David and Chris Andrews, 1,400 beef cattle at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire:
“We are really pleased with it. It is a good machine”, says David. “We used to put round bales in the pens with a front end loader and then spread them manually.

“Now we use big square bales and distribute 12 to 14 bales a day. Spreading them is such a quick operation that the time it takes is actually more dependent on how close the bales are stored to the yards”.

Francis Read, 3000 beef cattle at Newmarket, Suffolk:
“We were looking for a machine to spread bedding but did not like the choppers and blowers because they create too much dust while chopping the straw, which can cause eye trouble, while the chopped straw does not last as long when spread in the bed. The machines can also fire stones and other objects out at speed, which risks injuring animals and damaging the buildings.

“It used to take 90 minutes to bed down the 400 cattle; now it takes 30 minutes and the job is probably done a lot better. It is a hell of a good machine and there is very little that can go wrong with it”.

Patrick Barrett, 400 dairy cows at Callington, Cornwall:
“We use it to bed down 15 yards in which dry cows and young stock are kept. We used to put the bale in with a loader and then spread it by hand, which could take over an hour a day.

“The spreader fits on the front of the loader. Other machines would have tied up one tractor when working and two when being loaded. The job takes about half the time; -the time saving and convenience are the key advantages”.