Latest Morris bar stands up in ‘breaker country’

Max Cook (front right) is dwarfed by the new 24-metre Morris Quantum air drill that has not skipped a beat despite tough conditions during seeding this season on the family’s Salmon Gums property.
“Is it going to stand up to our country?”
When you farm in tight sodic clays, that’s always one of the major questions you grapple with when considering a new seeding bar.
After originally buying a farm many others wouldn’t consider and last year breaking 60 of 72 tines and having to weld the drawbar up to complete seeding, we can now understand this challenge has just gone to the extreme level.
Enter the latest 24-metre Morris Quantum air drill for 2024, and after completing more than one-third of the seeding program this season, including in dry conditions, it is all systems go.
Andrew and Francine Cook, together with their son, Max, farm some of the most difficult country in the Salmon Gums area in WA’s south-eastern wheatbelt, comprising a lot of heavy, tight, sodic gravelly clays, also interspersed with some granite rock.
After venturing to the region from South Australia with his father in the early 1980s, Andrew and his family bought the Salmon Gums property in 1994 before also leasing and later acquiring a neighbouring property and then adding another farm north of Grass Patch in 2019.
This has allowed their crop production area to steadily expand to around 3300 hectares, also sadly at the expense of a quality sheep enterprise, which is declining due to the poor market returns and government policy.
The Cooks have undertaken significant work to improve the country with lime and gypsum applications, and in recent years have achieved average yields of 3-4 tonnes/ha. They grow predominantly wheat, barley, canola and some faba beans, while they also plan to sow field peas again in the near future.

Max with some of the extensive stainless steel used with the 24-metre Morris Quantum air drill, which will help prolong its life.
The family has been using older Morris bars for some time and has loved them, but admits the tines have not been strong enough for their tight country.
A Morris Magnum chisel plough provided 340-kilogram tine breakout and then a Maxim III air drill allowed a step up in size to 18m, however the breakout was a little low at 250kg.
Andrew said the latest Quantum air drill, purchased through McIntosh & Son at Esperance, offered 363kg tine breakout and its weight and interlocking frame design, compared with other butt-welded bars, provided great strength.
“Hopefully it will reduce the cracking. We knew it wouldn’t be heavy enough for some of our country, but nothing can get in here with splitter boots because it is so tight. It’s like a concrete mix, in spite of applying more than 6t/ha of gypsum over the last 10 years,” Andrew said.
In dry conditions in some of their toughest country, hydraulic tine pressures of 1400psi are still not achieving the digging depth for faba beans to allow around 150kg downforce packing pressure. In better areas, this is being achieved at 600psi tine pressures.
Andrew said they were pleasantly surprised and impressed with the Quantum air drill’s performance and were planning to keep it for more than a decade – “so it’s got to be tough to go the distance”.

A variable packing pressure map created by the Topcon X35 controller in one of the Cook’s “softest” paddocks.
“It’s a big investment and we are really happy with the strength of the frame and drawbar. You can see it has got it – it is solid and strong.”
“It’s doing the job, getting into the tight seedbed across 80-foot, and hopefully over a longer period it will prove robust in our conditions.
“In this rainfall area (345 millimetres annually), you have to be in the ground before it rains if you can. Normally we want 50 per cent of our program dry-seeded if need be in April, and some years up to 100pc dry seeded before the end of May. We’re really happy the new air drill will attack any condition and come out the other side and that’s a big ask here.
“We also like the softness of the breakout and recoil compared with conventional spring release tines. It is much softer on the trip mechanism, which is pleasing and will hopefully translate to longer trip mechanism life.”
The Cooks followed in the footsteps of two of their neighbours, who had been using Morris Quantum air drills for the past three years, albeit in largely more loamy soils, and they took their investment up to the 24m machine set on 30-centimetre tine spacing to suit their tramline farming system, which is based on 3m wheel centres.
Tines are fitted with narrow, paired-row Rootboots for seed placement, which Andrew said were “like a surfboard to get in our country when it’s dry”, but they were very accurate at seed and fertiliser placement and they’re still dry sowing canola at a consistent depth of 15-20mm.
“They are robust boots and can handle our country well.”
The dual chute head kit also centre bands urea, which has suited their infrastructure since the late 1990s.
Andrew said, importantly, the Morris Quantum’s hydraulic parallelogram tine was performing to their expectation, whereas many other parallelogram systems struggled to maintain seeding depth in their soils, especially with a splitter boot.
“Seed placement is the key and with Gilgai holes (crabholes) everywhere here, this was a problem with our last bar – and if your seed’s not in the ground, then it won’t germinate in marginal conditions.”
For more information on the Morris range or to arrange a demonstration, contact your dealer below or see the range here.