00:00 We're here today at my farm north of Dow City, Iowa. Fent has been nice enough to let us demonstrate this five 16 loader tractor. 00:07 We're here with Chris from Fent. He drove down from Jackson, Minnesota to teach us how to operate this and 00:12 of course everybody knows my oldest son Vern, he's the operator. We've used this tractor to do chores now 00:16 for a couple days, things like that. What are the highlights for You? So normally we 00:20 do these chores in the feed wagon with a pay loader and uh, we used to use a skid loader, which are both nice, nimble machines to operate smooth 00:28 around and, uh, switch it to a loader tractor. I was concerned about just how nimble it was gonna gonna keep that functionality 00:36 and this machine here, I mean, it really makes up a lot of that. Sure. So, uh, that the CVT transmission utilizing the pedal 00:44 just keeps you moving smooth the whole time. And this loader on a joystick, a smooth operation from the return to dig to the return 00:51 to dump, and then you get a lot of visibility out of this curved windshield. So I really like how nimble it keeps, keeps it. 00:57 And then you've also got this 160 horse tractor around on the farm for other jobs that you could Use it. I like to say the 01:02 CVT transmission is an excellent fit, fit for a lot of things on the farm, you know, being in the loader tractor 01:07 and with the, uh, the pedal mode as you mentioned, that's smooth operation. I mean, no clutch packs, nothing that you have to use 01:14 to shift gears or find gears. Anything, uh, simple transmission as far as operation, you just hit a button to change from forward to reverse, 01:22 you know, so being ergonomically, you're sitting in the cab nice and comfortably, not hunting all over for buttons 01:28 or anything, you know, um, transmission designed in with the engine as well, you know, helps on the fuel efficiencies 01:35 and stuff, you know, keeps some RPMs down a little bit compared to what some of the other, you know, probably your pay loader 01:41 and other tractors are doing as well. And lower RPMs is lower fuel and it's quieter to operate. Absolutely. When we first got this 01:48 and Vern climbed into it right away, he liked that curved windshield because of the visibility. When he is got the loader up high 01:54 dumping into the feed wagon, as You can see the windshield curving up and around, so you don't have a, 01:59 a crossbar going across the middle of it. Um, and it gets it far enough up and around so you can see the entire range of the loader. 02:06 If you notice the windshield wiper kind of down here behind it's hidden down behind the, the hood, you know, so 02:13 that it's out of that visibility too. So I mean, you've got a clear visible picture of the whole thing. 02:18 So obviously a well thought out cab and visibility was put at a high priority when they built this together. 02:23 I've never seen a windshield like that. It looks like a spacecraft. It's pretty cool. This tractor has, uh, two joysticks, one for the loader, 02:30 the other one you could switch back and forth I understand from the steering wheel to the joystick for a tight operation to, to help 02:37 with the maneuverability, kind of like you would in a, in a skid loader or a pay loader, which we're used to. Do you like the joystick? Yeah. 02:43 Yeah. I love that joystick. You know, it's your right hand joystick running the loader and it's just one quick button you switch over 02:49 to from the steering wheel to the left end joystick, and then instead when you're backing outta here, pulling up to the feed wagon, instead of cranking that wheel 02:55 and making all these motions, you can really be smooth and precise with that joystick. It's Very ergonomic and efficient. 03:00 Yeah. You know. Yes. And the one thing I was concerned about when we first got this is we're always on a schedule. 03:05 There's always something to go do. The bucket on this is roughly half the size of our pay loader. 03:10 And I think you said that a bucket of corn stalks, you know, we feed ground cornstalks to the cows, a bucket 03:15 of cornstalks outta the payloads, 500 pounds, a bucket of corn stocks out of this bucket was only 250 pounds. But tell us what happened when 03:23 you started using the grapple. Yeah, so with those big solid chunks of corn stock, I finally started to use the grapple function on here 03:29 and I was able to grab enough that it was 500 pounds. Again, I doubled the size of the bucket just by being able to clamp down and grab a hold of that stock. 03:37 But it is nice that the bucket is smaller than our pay loader because of visibility. So we've got the visibility 03:42 with the same size of scoop of material. Uh, that's a win-win for everybody. Yeah, it just really hits all the points, 03:50 gives you all the functionality that you're looking for. It, it, it potentially maybe isn't quite as nimble 03:56 as a pay loader or a skid loader, but you've got one machine here instead of having to own several machines or a couple machines 04:02 because still this is 160 horse tractor. Mm. If we wanna put this on the bat wing mower, if we wanna put it on an auger, if we want to go haul hay, 04:09 there's different things that we can do with this that we can't do with the pay loader or the skid loader. So there's a nice array of operations 04:15 that we can perform with this machine. Front three point front PTO rear, three point rear PTO, it goes down the road over 30 mile an hour. 04:23 It just, it has so many more functions than a pay loader. The cargo prophy option comes 04:29 with other features on it as well. One of 'em is integrated scales on it. So you can weigh each load separately 04:36 and individually as you're going through it. Um, it's got what we call the return to dump or return to dig features on it. 04:42 So you can set the memory points in the terminal and just, we'll simply push the lever ahead and it goes to the exact same point every time. 04:50 The touch of one button and it performs a whole operation. Correct. Exactly. Yep. All about getting it done. Easy and 04:55 Smooth. You know, I thought it was just going to give a nice weight on the bucket and then when you were training me to use it, I, 05:00 we pulled up that screen and it's tracking all the buckets we've done so far and it can even split it down by product. 05:06 So if I scoop, take a scoop of soil holes here, dump it in or weigh it, dump it in, then switch over to the EEGs, 05:13 I can switch products and I can track every bucket across every product. Cattle feeding has historically tight margins. 05:19 We all talk about that. Being able to keep track of each product and what we fit. We know what the profitability is when that pen goes out. 05:25 We know how much it's costing us to feed these cows. Uh, the cows that we've got here today haven't calves yet, and we'll take 'em to grass. 05:32 I'm not in a rush to take 'em to grass because I know with our record keeping, it's costing us a dollar 60 a day to feed these cattle. 05:38 That's a great thing and I wanna be accurate instead of estimating and the cost going higher and things like that with the scale system of this tractor, 05:45 we know exactly what we're feeding and when we're feeding it and we can keep our costs in line. 05:49 And so that's a great feature.