SaMASZ Demo Day in the Waikato
Our SaMASZ Demo Day on 19 September in Te Awamutu dished out plenty of wind and rain to make the mowing conditions challenging. But that’s farming, right? A huge thanks must be passed on to KJR Contracting who hosted us for the day – we appreciate your generosity guys.
Along with showcasing the SaMASZ family of mowers, the event was a fantastic chance to highlight a few maintenance and setup tips from our SaMASZ NZ mechanic, Jeff Cole. SaMASZ mowers boast quick change blades and modules, which is an excellent benefit for customers as it means costly downtime is eliminated. Jeff showed just how easy it is to change a module in the field – completing the job within five minutes.
By mid-morning we got stuck into mowing and enjoyed showing how well our gear coped in average conditions. The SaMASZ mowers we demoed included the 3m front mower with conditioner (in sharp new black and green colours) paired up with the 9.4m Groupers. We also had an XT390 3.9m rear mower showing its capabilities.
The team at KJR Contracting are the ultimate test pilot for SaMASZ gear - they know how to put a mower through its paces. Based in South Waikato, KJR mow between 1400 to 1800 hectares a year. We quizzed the owner, Kelvin on the performance of SaMASZ and it makes for good reading.
“I had a play with the rear mower, it’s easy to set up and it does a very clean job for such a big mower. Overall, it’s less time around the paddock and easy to manoeuvre, so it definitely reduces diesel and labour output.”
“I chose SaMASZ because the build quality is out-the-gate strong. One of the big things it has over the opposition is a two-year warranty. Most other brands only have 12 months, but we’re only mowing 6 months of the year, so the SaMASZ Warranty provides us with longer-term security.”
“We buy and sell grass, so normally we’d mow the night before and have to rake up the next day. But the grouper does the work of the rake (putting the grass into tidy rows) eliminating a tractor, driver and rake. Less headache and labour all-round.”
Owing to the mower conditioner with the groupers, a tedder and rake is no longer necessary, making it the perfect alternative to self-propelled mowers.
The team also found that for such a heavy mower, the XT390 had really good flotation. Its central suspension distributes the weight evenly for perfect ground following and its large tilting range makes it easy to use on different contours. Kelvin also appreciated how effective it is to manoeuvre in the field, with the rear mower arm folding up and making it easy to get through tight gateways and around narrow roads. A lot of bar mowers around this size don’t fold up like the XT390 (they swing around behind the tractor instead, which isn’t ideal).
Kelvin adds, “the weather on the demo day was rubbish, but the mowers performed as well on wet grass as they would on a dry day.”
Finally, a demo day is never complete without a hearty BBQ, and it was great to share a feed, spin a few mowing yarns and complain about the weather!
If you would like to find out more about a SaMASZ mower, please get in touch with the team.