The only gold award for technical innovation to be presented at this year’s Royal Highland Show has been won by Methven farm equipment company, BD Supplies.
The business, owned by Brian and Joanne Donaldson, took the top Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland (RHASS) prize in Scotland’s Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design.
The award is for the KVK hoof trimming chute, a specialist cattle hoof trimming crate which is designed and manufactured in Denmark. BD Supplies has the UK rights to the equipment which is mainly used by the dairy industry.
The gold award is presented for continuous outstanding merit to a previous silver medal winner. Joanne Donaldson explained that the company won the silver award in 2013 and had only remembered to apply for the gold honour at the very last minute.
“The equipment uses hydraulics to lift the crate up and hold the animal off the ground so that it’s at a good working height for the trimmer and it’s good for the cows too as their legs and feet are in a natural position and there’s no pressure on tendons. Since we won the silver award some extra work has been done on the crate’s motors and the footplate,” she said.
“We’ve been retailing it since 2011 and sell mainly to the dairy industry in Aberdeenshire, the south-west of Scotland, Cumbria, Wales and other dairy heartlands. We also sell a bigger version which is for professional foot trimmers.”
The standard on-farm model starts at £14,000 and costs up to £20,000 with all hydraulic equipment added. The bigger professional crate costs £34,000.
Three silver medals have been awarded by RHASS this year. One has gone to Kverneland for its 2500 i-plough, a fully-mounted plough range that RHASS suggests is perhaps one of the biggest innovations in farm machinery since the development of the plough itself.
Another silver award went to Vicon for its ‘Vicon FastBale’. This machine features a unique dual chamber design, and RHASS states that FastBale renders all other baler-wrappers obsolete.
Water Powered Technologies Ltd won the third silver award for its ‘Papa Pump’, a patented Zero Energy Water Pump that utilises the flow of natural water from a spring, stream or river source to pump some of that water to higher levels and pressures without the requirement for any electric or Fuels.
The innovation prizes are the oldest awards to be presented by the RHASS, which gave its first “premium” for an implement in 1793 to a “new-invented plough of an improved construction adapted for the culture of Highland farms.”
RHASS chief steward, John Mackie said: “These awards are to encourage and recognise innovation in the design and manufacture of machines, equipment and appliances which advance the effective and efficient practice of either agriculture, horticulture, equestrian, forestry, renewable energy or estate services. They are judged on individual merit and, as always, there was a wealth of entries that made it very hard to choose from.”
RHASS also awarded five certificate of commendation. They include: Stewart Duncan for a lamb feeding machine which is designed to ease the feeding of orphan lambs, with each lamb getting a controlled amount of milk with no interference from bigger lambs; JFC MFG Europe, for its DBL9 Dumpy Tip-Over Drinker, an all-new 3.5 litre rotating drink bowl that allows the farmer to empty the bowl by the press of a button; Massey Ferguson for its MF 5713 SL Tractor with ‘All-in-one’ system, a new genre of tractor that employs the latest refinement to the pioneering Selective Catalytic Reduction system (SCR); Quickfencer Ltd for its Quickfencer Woodprocessor, designed for the farmer or estate with a bio-boiler which needs to process large amounts of logs. This machine shears rather than saws the logs so they dry out faster; and Kramer Werk Gmbh, for a fully electric loader 5055e, an emission free, all-wheel-steering 5055e wheel loader with 80- volt technology.
