Webinar:Is Your Sprayer Ready For The Season? Sprayer Management for High-Yield Farming

All right. Hey, welcome to the April 4th Extreme Ag webinar. We're so glad you're here. As always, informative and interactive, we are here because we want this to be useful and productive for you. So remember, you can raise your hand, you can, uh, go into the chat section and submit your question. We wanna make sure that your questions, your, uh, your input is received and utilize, because you know what, if you have the question, probably somebody else does too. We've got Kevin Matthews on here, got Bryce Ring. He's the mechanic, uh, part of the mechanic team, I should say, uh, at Garrett Land and Cattle. And then we've also got Lee Lubert. We were gonna have Chad, but Chad's actually planting in North Alabama. So Bryce, uh, stepped into pinch ship for us, and he's a great substitution because he's, uh, let's face it, the mechanical mind at Garrett Land. And cattle we know is certainly not Kelly Garrett. Uh, we're talking about is your sprayer ready for the season? Sprayer management for high yielding, high yield farming. Just before we hit record, Bryce said, Hey, you know, I'm kind of filling, make sure I'm prepped. And I said, all right. On an intensive management agriculture, we're going across these fields with a sprayer like a half dozen times. I mean, we're talking about every a gets hit, maybe a half dozen or more times with the sprayer. So you're using this tool a lot. It's become a very important tool in the arsenal, the weapon, in the arsenal tool, in the toolbox, whichever terminology you'd like to use. And we're using the heck outta this thing. Are you doing it right? Is there something, a tip or a trick that these guys can share with you that might make your sprayer 5% more effective, 10% more efficient? Maybe it's a timing thing. Maybe it's a mechanical thing. Maybe it's the tips, maybe it's calibration, ground speed, whatever those things are. That's what we're here to talk about. Our lead off is gonna be Lee Luber. Lee Lubers up in Gregory, South Dakota has not ever in the history of farming, and he's been at this a while, has never gotten the sprayer out of the shed in March this year. They have. So since he's already had his sprayer, it's one thing for Kevin to say, yeah, it's April 4th. Of course, I've already had my sprayer out, but in South Dakota, Lee, you got your sprayer out earlier than you ever had before. What'd you do? And then let's talk about this topic. Is your sprayer ready for the season? Well, there's a first time for everything. And, uh, we had a unique window pop up early in the beginning of March, uh, where we could go out and wheat as it broke, dormancy and do some experimentation, do some of the practices like Chad and Temple are doing on wheat. And we thought, well, let's go for it. Let's do it. And the whole reason we could is be because we had this small window few days and our sprayer was ready, it was in the shed, it was properly winterized, it was put away, right? So basically alls we had to do is juice out our over winter mix and load and go. So it, I mean, it gave us the opportunity that we can not only learn things, but maybe with the acres we covered, we could have made 50 thou, we could make $50,000 in this deal. And if we didn't take care of our sprayer and do it right, that window was gone. It was lost. Now the person that's saying, wait a minute, you're gonna make $50,000 doing what? Why is it you think that this equates granted the sprayer was ready to go? So that's always the important thing. You know, I'm, I'm an optimist. Uh, we're, we're gonna gain 50,000 bucks in three days. Alright? Our sprayer's gonna pay us back immensely. I, I feel what we did, doing some of the things that Temple and Chad and Kevin and guides do early, early on their wheat, and, uh, then we did some different trials. They're making it work. We can make it work too. So the point that you just, I mean, granted, you threw it out there, 50 grand. But the bigger point here is if you, if you said, you know, we're gonna get to that during the winter, and all of a sudden it's go time or, or mother Nature presents you a go time to get out and do something a little bit early, and you said, boy, we still haven't gotten around to, to prep in the sprayer, then your back's against a wall, you're, you're not gonna be able to seize an opportunity. So your whole thing is this was opportunity cost, not lost opportunity, cost gained. Exactly. If we, if we weren't ready, the window was gone. By the time we tried to play catch up, the windows passed and then the weather changed and we got rain and snow. We didn't, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have learned anything and we had zero potential to gain on income. Kevin Matthews, you and I did a recording, a podcast of the business of Agriculture and you talked about different things you do to, to put your sprayer away, right? You know, bleeding the lines out and, and, uh, then you know, the, the mix you do in there, you talk about sprayer tips, which Pint Air was one of our business partners talked about, making sure that your tips, because it's an easy thing to let go and for no more expensive than they are, it's probably better to be proactive on tips than to try and save that $3 when you're talking about massive amounts of product cost. So a few of those things, making sure your pressure's right, et cetera. You've already had your sprayer out. Did all the winter maintenance to Lee's point, uh, make it a lot easier on you to get going this spring? Yeah, absolutely. We, um, you know, there's so many different, uh, as Bryce can alluded to, uh, you know, plumbing, cracks, crevices, different areas that can get air pockets and you gotta do a really good job getting that thing winterized. And, and I don't get nowhere near as cold as bright them do, which we don't keep 'em in our shop. We're fortunate enough we can keep 'em out in the shed, but they still, they, we get blow freezing quite a bit. And we brought it out this spring, uh, to top dress our winter wheat and no issues. You know, Brad done an awesome job getting it winterized. We do use antifreeze, uh, recycled antifreeze from salvage companies. But, um, the big thing is going into this, you know, when we bring it out, we're, we're checking everything. We're taking all our nozzles out, washing them out, washing filters, uh, checking the filters, screens on the nozzle tips as well. We're looking for any damage to the nozzles that could have happened during the season that we just overlooked last fall when we just winterizing it, getting it put up. But then, uh, you know, the biggie is, you know, checking all your air pressures in your tires. 'cause you can really spend a lot of money, you know, running a tire under inflated and, and, um, and you get on some steep hills, which mine's not near as bad as what Bryce gets to experience, but you know, you kick one off the rim, then you got a bad day. But, uh, the, uh, the big thing, you know, software, we, you know, we, we check that software, we update that software on that machine, but, um, but later on in here we'll talk about things we do when you don't have a sprayer like ours and you have one, maybe just a tractor and three point sprayer like a lot of folks has got that are really good sprayers, but we'll talk about that as well. All right, Bryce, I heard from the other two guys and I wanna just point out here to the person that's the viewing public. Uh, before we go to you for the first time, since I've known Kevin Matthews in three years, he's wearing a North Carolina State University agriculture hat. Uh, in case you're not a basketball fan, I'm guessing you probably are. This is Final four weekend, this Saturday right here in my backyard in Phoenix, Arizona. Glendale, technically his NC State Wolf Pack take on the Purdue Boilermakers from West Lafayette, Indiana. And so I went and got my shirt on as Purdue Pete swinging a big hammer, which we hope he does against the NC State Wolf Pack on Saturday. That's gonna be like at 6 0 9 Eastern. What's interesting to me is, and I think, you know what, Kevin and I are good natured about the whole thing. I'm actually gonna go to the game with my wife, at least they're the two land grant schools outta the final four. You know, Yukon, Alabama, they're not ag schools. So if you're gonna pull for somebody, 'cause you're only about to pull four pull for either his wolf pack or my boilermakers. 'cause at least they're both ag schools and we're excited about that, as Will Oats, Arizona Wildcats are the Ag School for Arizona, right? But Anyway, and how, and how well they did, I just want to add that I, I know Kevin says he is worn it a lot. I've known Kevin for about five years. I've never seen him ever wear that NC State hat until this webinar. It's almost like he knew that you went to Purdue. And tickets are stupidly expensive. I do teach some labs at NC State about once a year, so, uh, you know, sometimes twice. Well, uh, the main thing is we hope that we, we hope that one of 'em can win it all and then we can have an ag school that wins it all. So we shall see. Uh, UConn looks pretty tough. Um, all right, Bryce, um, rolling out. Has your sprayer been in the field yet? Nope. Sprayers, what, what do you say? Is your sprayer ready for the season, is the question? And sprayer management for high yield farming. So take both of 'em. Is your sprayer ready for the season? Are your sprayers ready for the season? Yeah, so we just traded both of our sprayers the over the winter and just recently took possession of 'em. Uh, just 'cause you get a sprayer from John Deere, they're new to us. They're your 2-year-old machines. Uh, they winterized them. We fired 'em up. There was a couple leaks on one of 'em, just for instance like that, uh, when it's go time and just 'cause you get a new one, you pay all that money doesn't mean that it's ready. Um, so we did catch that and that was helpful. We're getting geared up to go do some wheat here. Um, the next coming weeks, and again, just taking everything apart in the past, we've gotten sprayers back and, uh, we've taken end caps off and there'd be atrazine buildup all the way in the end caps of our sprayers. And guys say they rinse 'em and rinse 'em and rinse 'em, but you gotta just make sure you're taking, taking everything apart, even though it seems like a pain. All right, so taking everything apart because you got a sprayer that's a couple years old and yes, it's been washed and flushed, but there's still residual product in the end cap. So there's one thing, uh, you found some leaks, even though it was supposed to be reconditioned, whatever, certified used, whatever. What else you got from me on the technology? Kevin talked about the technology. Is that your department? Oh, a little bit. Mike Evans does quite a bit of that with us, but we, we make sure our software's updated, make sure we got the latest, um, operating both of our sprayers talk to each other so we can see each other's shutoffs and we can spray in the same field. So we're always making sure that's all up to date. And, um, everything's subscription based, you know, anymore. So we're making sure those displays are up to date. And on JD Link. Um, yeah, just making sure your receivers are good. It's about it. Anybody that wants to take this one, what do you, and by the way, if you're out there listening and participating in this, you've got a question, a statement you wanna share, remember, go in the chat section or, and, and make it, and we'll, uh, we'll, uh, read it aloud. What do you think that a mistake that you used to make that a lot of guys might still be making whoever wants to take this a a mistake you made as recently as a year or two ago, that you think major your sprayer are less effective, that you think others may be still are doing? And it's not that they're too lazy to fix the problem, maybe it was like something that's just not on their radar. You got anything for me, Lee or Kevin? Uh, I go with, uh, we've done it for years. Like Bryce made a great point about residue buildup. We deal with any residue buildup from the season during that season right before as we're getting ready to prep for winterization, because that's how you get better winterization and, uh, you have a truly a clean system that makes your next spring so much easier to start out by doing that proper cleaning. As you're getting ready to prep for winterization, Kevin, any mistake that you used to make or anything, any correction or change you made in the last year or two that you think others are not, have not made that they'll, it'll, it'll help 'em a bunch. Well, let's go back many years ago and as a, as a young farmer, you know, dad and them, you took, we used a applicator, ground driven positive displacement pump, and you set the pump, and on a dial setting you set the John blue pump. They're still made today. There are many of 'em in use out there. They do a great job. They're even on planters, all sorts of, uh, application equipment. Go, we go spray and come to find out, did a poor job killing the grass. It just look bad. It is all fault. But when we go back, you know, why was it set where it was? Why was we using the nozzles we was using? We were supposed to have been putting 10 gallons acre out. Well, I got my neighbor to help me and we did a cal a quick calibration on it and found out it's putting seven gallons acre. So that's a 30% reduction in your herbicides and there's no re that's exactly why we did not have control. And it, it don't matter if you're running the big haggy sprayers like we run or the John Deere sprayers or if you're running a, just a three point hitch and a flow control. Yep. And your PWM, you've got to calibrate these things. Don't think that you're just because it's electronic controller that it's going to be right. And it's really simple, Damien, you can take two, two nozzles on 20 inch centers and you can tie, you can just take a Ziploc bag, put it on the nozzle, put you a zip tie around it, or that, uh, that bag's right there catching the fluid drive 103 feet at your normal spray speed and however many ounces you catch combined in those two bags is exactly how many gallon spray acre that machine is putting out. So not only have you verified that it's putting the correct gallons per acre out, you verified that your speed sensor's reading correctly. Also, it should maybe the computer's programmed to read off GPS. Maybe it's a wheel sensor, maybe you think it's GPS and it's reading the wheel sensor. So it's just a little simple test you're checking that's verifying your nozzles or putting out the proper amount. No math needed whatsoever. Just measure off 103 feet the ounces on those two 20 inch nozzles, which is a 40 inch spacing equals exactly the gallons per acre. So if you catch 12 ounces, you're putting 12 gallons acre, By the way. Really? That's a neat, that's a neat, and there's, people are saying, I don't need that because I've got a 2-year-old sprayer. Kevin's going back to the kind of stuff we used to do in the nineties, and you're saying it's maybe you should do it anyhow because just because you've got a we, Right? We do. Yeah. Because anybody else Know that If that PWM number's put in wrong, it's not going to do Right, but it's gonna show on that computer it's doing exactly right. It just takes one calibration number, just a little bit of error out there. So go ahead Lee. Uh, every year, uh, we check, uh, double check our TCMs, uh, two flags are your friends measure it out market. We check 'em every year because like Kevin said, you can have that punched into that monitor and you think that is your fail safe. Things can happen, things can just distort things. Nobody can even explain on the tech side can happen. So we do a mechanical check every year, because if that drifts or is off two foot, right, you wanna find out what pain is, start getting two foot gaps on the end. Two Oh, every, every, every sprayer pa every sprayer's, every hundred. You're either two foot short, two foot over. Yeah. So We double check it physically every year, both sprayers, it, it, it takes, it takes you a few minutes. Very easy to do. Yeah. Bryce is nodding in his head, and before Bryce goes, I wanna go All right. To remind me. For the person that's still learning, PWM is stands for Pulse width modulation. Is that, ain't that right? Bryce? Pulse width. Yeah, Sounds right. Yeah. Alright. And that's talking and that's, that's the calibration aspect of the ground speed and to the gallons, is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, it, it's basically your regulator, you know, on your old sprayers, you had a little, uh, twist knob, you screwed up and down, and this is the electronic version of it. All right, so we'll talk about gallons and per acre because yes, I'm sure there's a lot of people that are tempted to say, you know what, this is what my meter says. And, or they might, if you said, all right, I ha I had this many gallons in the sprayer and I did this many acres, so it must be right. Is that not a good way to do it? Versus the bag and the 103 feet trick? It might be a good way to do it, but you might find that out after 80 acres and That you were over, that you were over applying or, or s**t overlying Or under, yeah. All right. So gimme an overly unapply story or an example, Bryce, you got one. Oh, it, it goes back to when we were wide dropping. We put in some different tips and orifices, and we thought we had it all calculated out based on the manufacturer's recommendations on everything, and went through it and turned out we under applied and something so small as the filter was plugged up and we, we were just un simply under applying. We thought it was all going out, but it turned out it wasn't. So is it just a lack of, is it, is it, if you're under applying, like Kevin gave the example, you might find out you're only at seven. Anybody can take this question. You find out you're at seven gallons when you really need to be at 10 gallons for effective weed control or any other kind of control fungicide, whatever. Uh, Well, actually, so our target, we was mixing for 10 gallons. You know, that's what we was mixing for, but then the machine was only performing at seven gallons, so we was not putting near the, we was 30% off on product. And another thing, Bryce, Bryce said something that triggered to me, you know, I worked in the spray business a long time with my family, and one of the biggest issues we had over the years was not thinking you just get focused on the gallons per acre and gallons per minute, that tip that you need, but you've got to remember the density of the product of the carrier that you're using. If you're using a fertilizer that's a thicker density, then you can't use the same tip size that you would use to spraying round up in water. You're gonna have to go up maybe a quarter of a size, maybe a hole size on that tip, because what will happen when you get that thicker, heavier density product in there, you're going to build a lot more pressure at your normal ground speeds that you would be running at the same volume per acre that you would be running versus water. So you got a eight, 8.65 pound per gallon of water, and then you get a 10 or maybe a 12 pound per gallon fertilize. You need to think about that density and make sure you've got the right tips for the application that you're putting out there. So that's a really interesting thing right there. You were, your, your gallonage wasn't off because of a restricted flow. It wasn't because you had kinks in your lines, or it wasn't because you were going the wrong, you're going too fast. I guess it was because density of the, of the, the load Mine was because it had never been calibrated. And I'd done it exactly like my dad and uncle told me to do it, and I was not to argue with 'em, but they had forgot on the ground driven applicator when we put new tires on, the circumference changes. So if it's a ground driven rig and your circumference of your tire changes, it will change the output of a pump Because of the speed That is correct. The speed, Yeah. Well, it really isn't the speed it's there. It distance traveled. Okay. Anybody got anything? All right. So density of the product, Lee, when, uh, Kevin just talked about density of product and then, uh, calibrating then your, your tips. This is an interesting thing because now you're, you're talking about a whole bunch of different factors. You know, I'm, I'm good at math when it's this or this or this times this. We just brought in ground speed. We brought in, uh, sprayer height, we brought in, uh, density of the product, whatever the mix is. Now the tips, there's a whole lot of stuff going on. How keep me, help me get, help me keep from getting overwhelmed, confused, fused. It is all part of the process. Just good preparation. I mean, uh, you know, we talked about TCM calibration, whether you're over applying or running short as you're doing each pass, uh, your flow meter calibration, uh, that's something we, we keep an eye on all through the season. Uh, you can have all of a sudden a change and it can come down to density of products. Uh, you know, what you're putting on or just sometimes it'll decide to change and all of a sudden you can be off 10, 15% and, and, and no reason why you can't figure it out. She gotta recalibrate. So it's just part of the process. I mean, I guess we just call it good, uh, sprayer housekeeping, you know, just trying to stay on top of it. I mean, they're just small things you do. You can check through your monitor and and so on and make sure you're doing a good job because you're not, you know, you're not going out and spraying 40 acres. It could be 4,000 or 40,000, you know, you're covering. Uh, Mitch, uh, uh, adds a comment here, says, add a reclaim system fairly inexpensive and it'll save on those dead ends where chemical can get stuck. And we've talked about that, I think with one of our, one of our partners, didn't we? Maybe with the fence sprayer before. Uh, go ahead, Ross. I Think it was the fence or the, the, uh, RoGator. We had that RoGator for a while that did that too. Okay. All right. Anybody got anything on that? Yeah, we've got our Haie has got that. And of course, Deere now with their is exact apply systems has the, uh, boom reclaim phenomenal product. It works really well. It's, uh, the nice thing is, you know, a lot of people don't think about it. So when you switch products with 120 foot boom, it takes 37 gallons to get through your solution pump and all the way to completely fill your entire boom evenly with product. So when you're switching product, you're going to have to spray 37 gallons out before you get everything in that boom. But with a recirculation system and the recovery system people, everybody's got a different name for it now, but you're able to hit that button and it just recycles it through the boom manifold is what Bryce is talking about. It goes right back into your solution tank. It just recirculates everything. And you don't lose, you don't spray any out on the ground. It's, it's just a huge environmental benefit. It's huge savings. Um, I'm, I'm a huge fan of that. I think it should be a standard option on all sprayers. Got it. All right. Um, we talked about calibration and, and you guys gave your input on doing that. How do we know we're getting coverage? You know, will and I spent time in a field down in Alabama summer or two ago in the middle of the night and getting bit by mosquitoes with dye in the tank to see if we were getting coverage down into the canopy, through the canopy and, and measuring it with a black light. I don't think that most farmers are out there doing that. How were that? And that was, it wasn't even for extreme ag. We were just doing that for fun. Well, we just, I mean, we were in Alabama, so we were like, we can gig frogs. We had nothing else To do. Let's get some dye, get out there for flashlights and have a good time. So I don't think most farmers are out at 10 o'clock at night getting bit by mosquitoes, putting d running dye through their, uh, their sprayer and walking around with a black light. And it's not because I'm being mean to 'em, I just don't think they do it. I, I'd never done it until we did it for the purpose of extreme ag. What, why, how do I know if I'm getting the coverage? Whoever wants to take that. Bryce, you wanna go, Lee, you want to go, how do I know if I'm getting coverage on, on all my plants? Is it equal? You just talked about a two foot gap. What if there's not a two foot gap, but it's not getting where it needs to be still, and, and it's worse than a two foot gap across 120 foot boom. There's a lot of room for error. I would think Something very basic you can do is just spray water on concrete, uh, come back or watch the drying pattern. I mean, that's just gonna tell you if your nozzles are performing right, um, which a proper nozzle, proper performance nozzle will lead to better coverage. Um, but, uh, that coverage, going back to what I was saying, you can spray on concrete and if you come back and the wet, the darker spots obviously got heavier coverage. And so you can see, you know, maybe, maybe you're not, you're on twenties and you're, you're spraying like basically what you should be on fifteens, for instance, on your spacing. But that's just something crude. You don't have to be out in the dark with die or anything like that. That's a start to your coverage. Kevin's laughing. Kevin's laughing, by the way, will and I did this. They don't realize that we we're out there. I think, you know, we got insect, I was Prouder. Could have, we could've gotten malaria. We could've gotten malaria and we're out there, you know, that would've been dam Damien, we were in a cornfield in Alabama. That's the, that'd be the least of our problems, I would think. Was it human? So anyway, Kevin, what do you got besides laughing at us for this experiment? I mean, seriously, when the product is so expensive, I mean, that's the one thing. These input costs have not gone down. They've gone up and, and you've got a hell of a lot of money invested. I would think that you accept a certain amount of application error. You know, it's kinda like there's slippage or there's a little bit of wastage, but you know, if it's more than a couple percent misapplied, you're talking about some pretty serious dollars. Yeah. In this economy, we can't, we can't afford to be, we, there is no error there, there, there's no room for room for error in this economy. Um, and also timing, um, you know, we're talking about getting this plant, this sprayer ready to go for the season and hopefully everyone's got 'em ready. But if you're just getting it outta the shed, you know, this is, you know, we do this pretty much, uh, you know, weekly if not daily, but you know, you need to check that machine, let that boom on down on the ground and check and check for cracks on the welds or anything. You know, Bryce talking about a brand new one, and I agree with him. You can have a brand new sprayer sitting right there, and it'll amaze you the boats you'll find loose and stuff. I don't care who makes it, it just happens. And, um, so look for, look, if it's a used sprayer, one that's been running, look for, look for some movement or some rust around those washer. See, you can tell if that bolt's been loose, it'll have that, uh, kinda that sort of gray look around the nuts and the bolts where it's not been tight. Be sure to check your lug bolts and, uh, you lug nuts. Check all that. I mean, it don't hurt to put a torque wrench on some of that stuff and make sure everything's right. Because if you have something that's cracked or broke and you catch it before it actually falls on the ground, Bryce will be the first to tell you, uh, you can assemble something a whole lot easier then, then you can't have to recreate it, can't you? And, uh, so that, that's just a big deal. But the problem is, is when we have a downtime, and I, I couldn't even imagine being Bryce's shoes. 'cause if, if something breaks down, I mean, Kelly, he, I mean, what does it, does he give you 30 minutes to get it fixed? How does that work? It ain't long, is it? We just don't let him know. We just Don't, don't tell. Kelly Operator calls me and we just go to the field. He doesn't know where. Hey, uh, One thing I was gonna point out here, and this is just something that Will and I had communicated about. I mean, I'm not gonna throw anybody under the bus at Gartland and Cattle, but some people in the Seal team six up there say the reason, the reason that, um, the reason that Bryce is so good mechanically is because he breaks so much stuff. He has to figure out how to actually fix it. That's just what, what I've heard you going with that. Yeah, That's fair. All right. Hey, so we've kind of spent a lot of time as your sprayer ready for season sprayer management for high yield farming is the second part of this webinar. And we are now in the second half of the webinar just about. So remember, if you've got any questions, if you've got any comments, if you got anything you wanna share, uh, put 'em in there. But I want to get prepared now for sprayer management for high yield farming. During the season, you're getting this thing out. You're going across all kinds of acres, all kinds of different types of acres. Maybe it's hilly, you've got some, uh, you got some different terrain, also different kind of crops. I want you guys to be thinking before I take this question or this statement from Mitch and read it about what things you do during the season that you think other people might not be doing. And it might be costing them money or harming their, um, their output because they are, there's maybe a few little things in between, in between passes, moving from one crop to the next. So be thinking about that. All right, from Mitch, he says, adding to what Kevin is saying, if you are running a PWM system, they function on duty cycle, which is the amount of times the plunger in the nozzle is cycling. Uh, the wilger tip wizard will calculate the size tips for the PWM sprayers. You'll need slightly bigger tips with PWM. So anybody want to take that and, and explain that to somebody like me that's, uh, less knowledgeable about sprayers? Yeah, so like on our exact apply, it has the PWM nozzle body and it's pulse, pulse width modulation on that one. And it, you, you have to run a larger tip than tip size than what you would normally run without that. And those things are phenomenal on helping aid with drift and coverage. They just do a good job. And if you got turn compensation, now the, the one thing that we run during the season in ours, we run dawn in every fill up. We will just put several big squirts of dawn. And when we started doing that, those little plungers that he's talking about, um, they do not bind up. They stay, it's just enough grease in there. It keeps 'em slick. And it is absolutely the best thing you can ever do. And it's the original dome is what we found works the best. Dish soap, dish soap. And you're talking about in like 1500 gallons and a few squirts of soap is all it takes to keep it looped. I put about three or four real big squirts in it. I'll just squeeze the bottle, probably put more than I should. But it's amazing the difference on those PWS On 1500 on on. Isn't that like a, don't you have like a thousand or 1200 gallon tank? Well, 1200 yes sir. And, and four sprays of liquid soap is enough to make those things lubed. You look at it this way, a lot of the products we use are less than an ounce per acre to kill everything on that acre. Yeah. So you think of it in that nature. So speaking of, um, that, so sprayer man, so he just talked about, so sprayer man or high yield farming, uh, everyone's go, Lee Haven heard from you for a while during the season. You're moving from wheat to soybeans to corn, you're moving from different maturities. Um, you're, you've got different geographies, different field styles, whatever. Is there anything that you now do that a couple years ago you did not and you're like, damn, that's really made a difference for us on, on uh, maximizing the, uh, you know, maximizing the utility from the machine or something like that. Did we lost Lee? Uh, well we used to, we've always been big on, uh, triple rinse and even doing, doing it on high flow complete system and then running it on high. And uh, then, you know, years ago we always just ran it one time 'cause that's what was recommended. And sometimes you could see a little glitch when you pulled into the next crop and like, this isn't cool. So then we went to doing it two cycles. So you sit there longer and then now what we've got for system, and it is work, regardless of what crop we're doing, how we're switching, this has worked really well for us. When we get done, we're running two complete triple rinses on high system rinses. And then what we do is we take our rinse tank and then we, uh, we've had really good luck with this product from Precision Labs. It's called Erase. It's a tank cleaner system. Cleaner is what it is for the complete system. We throw, uh, a jug, part of a jug into our sprayer and then run your, uh, rinse tank into there and then agitate it up. And then usually, you know, you're partway through the day or it's late in the day, we just go and we park it for the night and then we go in the morning and we clean that out and switched over to the next crop or the big project. And we've had zero issues doing that. I know it sounds a little bit fanatical on the cleaning side, but we have alleviated any kind of residue issues and our system from the tips, the boom and the tank is spotless. When we do that, by adding those extra steps, uh, we have found a system that we feel is trouble free. There's that we've had zero issues with it. Got it. Uh, I wanna go into the thing about product changes throughout the season, other than cleaning it out. Are there major adjustments I need to make for my sprayer to still be effective on the third time using it, fourth time using it from product changes within it? Well, I'll tell you what Lee just said about leaving it erase in overnight and having it, you know, he's done sprayed it out through his boom systems. He's got, he knows it's in all his, you know, meant to all his nozzle tips and in his agitation system, if, if you have adductors on your sprayers, you need to run it through those systems. And he is so correct, and I can't stress this enough, is you need to leave it setting overnight as longer you can leave it set in there because you take products like valor and, and then of course atrazine different things. They stick, they stay in places and crevices and they, you can get some residual in there. Let's say, you know, guys face it, this dicamba deal's a big deal and you know, we're being forced to go to the E three soybeans and leaving the dicamba. And those things were sensitive. We had some damage last year. We cleaned the sprayer out two times. The one time it worked perfect the next time. I don't know what went wrong, but we got some damage on those soybeans, uh, and some research plots. And he done a very thorough job, but obviously he didn't do a good enough job. So I just can't stress enough how important it is to do these clean outs during the, during the season when you're switching, say you've been spraying corn and you're gonna switch to soybeans, or maybe you've been spraying, you know, dicamba in your cotton and you're, and then you've got some EE three soybeans that you're having to spray with two, four D uh, you've got to do some serious cleaning out. And, and Lee, how many hours does it take you to do a clean out? Four or five hours? Yeah, it, we, we've got it shortened up to less than that. You know, by the time we cycle through, sit in the sprayer and it's totally done, uh, it's probably, we've got it down to about sub three and you go, man, that's a lot of time, but go scorch a bunch of acres. That's a lot of money. So we're alleviating that issue. And usually by the time you get done spraying on a big project, it's time to walk away for part of the day, go see your family, go to a ball game, go, go, go check fields, go do something else, get back in the next morning and be fresh and avoid a chance of an accident so that, you know, few hours that we're spending doing that, that has paid us, you know, huge, the last few years been a huge payoff. So we're talking a lot about cleaning and then I remember the dicamba thing. Is there something from a sprayer management? We're talking about sprayer management, high yield farming with all the dicamba and all these, you know, that stuff's pretty harsh stuff and we've, we, there's lawsuits about it. I mean there's a lot of controversy about that. Is there a sprayer management and sprayer setup that we should be doing that our guys that are listening right now should be aware of that? Maybe they're not. Is there something, is there something there on that, because dicamba, you know, there's, there's neighbors that get, you know, in spats over this thing. Can we alleviate some of this by the correct, uh, sprayer management? Yeah, I mean, you know, we gotta be using the, the nozzle tips that the label on the products require us to use. We're regulated on that, Damien, but the biggest thing is the environment that we're spraying in. We gotta be very respectful the environment and spraying the right conditions. Uh, there's getting to be so many more than less soybeans out there. And, you know, we had some drift issues last year and it, you know, I I wasn't happy about it, but, um, but I will say that, uh, we still cut 104 bushels and, and that field got, you know, won the state yield contest and it looked pretty rough from the dicamba damage. So the soybeans will recover lots of times they'll be better. And they are certain growth stages that you can have some damage. But when you spray, if you, if you do have a drift issue or something, go to your, as soon as you find out, go talk to your neighbor and, and let 'em know, Hey, I, man, I've done this. Uh, we need to make it right. Don't, don't try to hide or dodge it or whatever. Um, 'cause it can happen to any of us. And I would be careful if you get drifted on, I'd be careful getting real mad about it because it might be you drifting the next time. Yeah, right. So Condition More than equipment, conditions matter more than equipment because you can do everything right on the equipment. You know, you gotta use a certain nozzle by regulation. You gotta use certain rate, uh, by what they recommend. But what really, really dense, humid, dense humidity is your, isn't that your enemy condition wise? Yeah, it is. Your inversions is what I'll get, get you. And this is being, you know, you gotta be smart if the wind's blowing, don't towards the sensitive area, don't go spray. And it ain't if people get hung up on the dicamba, but it's everything we spray. Yeah. We, we gotta keep all of our products on our crops. So we're paying a lot of money for those products and we need 'em on there. So we need to, we need the right tip, we need the right rate, we need the right height of the boom. And guys, if you, if you're going around spraying and your booms are cocked way up in the air on the tips on the end booms, and your ba and your backboard is sitting down at the right area, you're going to have problems. And you're not gonna have a good crop response. You're not gonna see these foliar do a good job. These boom levelers are amazing, but not everybody can afford 'em. We get it. I've sprayed without 'em many, many years. Slow down and get that boom at the proper height above that crop canopy that your target is that boom height is a big deal. Hey Chad, can you hear us? Yes, sir. All right. Yes. Chad Henderson coming to us from the field in northern Alabama. He's planting, uh, the topic we're talking about. Thanks for joining us, giving us a little, uh, a little shot in the arm, uh, from, uh, from the field. Is your sprayer ready for the season? It was the question we asked is your sprayer, your sprayer's already been out at least once, right? Our sprayers don't ever get put up. Alright, so what's your, what's your, uh, what's your input to the person listening to this that you, uh, that your rule that you live by when it comes to your sprayer? Maintenance management, uh, setting it up, calibration, everything. What's your, uh, gimme a couple of your Chad Henderson twi tips on sprayers? All the above. You can't over check too much. You know, I was just listening on what te Kevin said, and that's all that's so true. And it's, and it's so easy to overlook and it's so easy to jump the gun. We all get emotional when we have a lot of money in these crops, you know, and somebody burns us, but look at the stages that it's in, and sometimes it's a blessing in disguise, you know, uh, you know, you talk about burning back soybeans and stuff like that. Now I'm not saying everybody needs a, you know, get a good drift problem going on, but, you know, just, just don't jump the gun on calling and getting everything all spun outta shape on it. But yes, definitely the nozzles, you know, make sure you're clean your screens regularly. You know, we, we just say, oh, well when it quits spraying, we go cleaning the screens instead of making it, making it a maintenance issue, you know? So the screens are, are a big item to keep clean using the correct products to, to wash out with in between, you know, if you use a triple rinse deal, you know, however you need to clean your sprayers out between, you know, different loads you're mixing. That's a big deal. And, and you know, we just gotta live by that and we all try to check behind each other because I don't think we can check this stuff too much. That's, that's, that's good stuff right there. All right, Lee and Bryce, what do you got? Uh, based on what, uh, we just from Chad? Well, I guess an easy way to say it is if you take care of your sprayer, it's gonna take care of you. But the real way to say it is if you take care of your sprayer, it's gonna make you money. So you really wanna take care of that piece of equipment. Chad, you talked about getting in a hurry. One thing that I guess I'm, you know, as the person out here that doesn't run a sprayer, do we have, and then Kevin talked about slowing down when you slow down, if you're still putting out the same stuff, it seems to me that ground speed, if you're going too fast, you're not getting the right coverage. If you're going too slow, you're getting too much coverage. It seems to me that we haven't talked about ground speed at all as part of the calibration. Am I missing something? Yeah, they, the ones you're used to running is from Tractor Supply. No, I mean, you know, these things, like I said, most of us now, you know, well, we run one sprayer that's, um, you know, exact apply and those are steps that we're doing, that's individual nozzle control, and those are steps that we're taking to try to get this thing to where there's less drift. You know, the other one we have is 11 sections, you know, on the sprayer it's 120 foot booms on both of them, but both, both sprayers, you know, it's, it goes back to spraying in conditions just like these guys are talking about. The conditions need to be right. And we all, like you said, we all got acres to cover and we gotta get there whenever we can, you know, but, but there's certain things, certain fields you can run that have buffers that we can't run in other areas. So just gotta be mindful and look ahead on what the weather conditions are going to be when you get in those situations. We work a lot of ground that's in town, you know, I have to worry about somebody's garden because I don't know why, but if they wanna put their garden right next to my field, I think it's because I'm just showing them up in the field by what they going in a garden, you know, they think they got a green thumb, they're gonna hook me up out there, but everybody's guard wants be right on across the property ladder. Yeah, I think that maybe they're doing that to, to compete with you is right, or maybe they think that you'll nuke it and then you'll just end up buying 'em a year's worth of vegetables. Uh, okay, so, uh, so nothing, nothing on ground. The ground speed's not as much of an issue as I thought. Um, other calibration stuff. Bryce, you don't say anything for a while. When you go about calibrating and setting it up, what is it that you think is the most important? Uh, IM important thing you can share with anybody right now, Just back to what Kevin said a little while ago, uh, when we go on spray, it's all based on a rate gallons per acre, and you gotta make sure you're getting that same, that that target a target rate applied. Um, so doing those catch tests nowadays, we're going away from ground speed, ground drive pumps. So get your sprayer set up, get a stopwatch, get a catch deal, um, get it fired up to your desired pressures, stick your jug under there, one nozzle, time it, and uh, read the values. There's, uh, plenty of helpful tips, uh, more charts that'll tell you how much you catching is what your rate is. It's, uh, definitely doing that. Definitely doing, Yeah, I'll come back to you and talk about hills. So be thinking about things you do, you farm in some of the most intense, uh, landscape I've ever been to, uh, outside of the Palouse. So I want you to be thinking about, uh, tips for and trips and, and, and information, you know, from farming in places where you're on slopes like this. If I were do that, Randy asked the question, Kevin, will you run dawn in every mix? You put it in your pre do you put it in your post? Do you put in your fungicide pass? You put in your nutrition passes? Is dawn, we're talking about dish detergent. Uh, dish soap, is it in every pass? Anything at the exact supply system that has the PWM nozzle bodies gets dawn in it every single load. Lee, you've got lots and lots of, uh, tips to always share with people. Do you do anything? He talked about using Dawn. Is there anything that you do that maybe others don't, that you're like, oh man, this, this sure has made my sprayer more effective. One little trick we do on, uh, sprayers, planters and air seeders when we know they are applying correctly and right, we go in the back of our nice stick owner's manual and we write down all the, the TCM numbers, flow meter numbers, all those values that Bryce talks about, you know, when you're dialed in, that's our fail safe. And then what we do is just every now and then, if you're waiting for a water truck or you're just eating your sandwich, go flip that out. Go double check your numbers. If something's off, there's, there's a why. Figure out that, why Get it back on track. Save yourself some money, make yourself some money. That, that, that's our fail safe. That's been a little trick we've done. And that is a real handy thing because you can't pack it all in here, you know? Got it. Bryce, topography, hills, hillsides, crevasses, ravines, uh, 50% slopes. This is what we call Crawford County, Iowa. That's not the same as farming a square as spraying a square, 160 foot, 160 acre chunk of ground. Um, what do you do different? Uh, going back, taking it easy where we are, auto boom, can't keep up necessarily. We're going through stuff where you gotta make sure that you're staying level, staying close to that canopy because it's really easy to get into a field, especially if you've never been into and start spraying. And, uh, pretty soon your left boom's all the way up in the air. 'cause it's gotta be and to clear in the middle section and your right's dragging on the ground. 'cause you're going through some nasty stuff. You just gotta pay attention. Keep that boom level slow down. With these new sprayers, we're able to slow down and adjust on the fly. So that's nice. Um, just take the time. We're all in a hurry. I mean, I'm, I'm guilty of it. I run one of ours, get in a hurry. We got Mike Evans pushing us that the weeds are going, then he wants to hold the reins, then he gives it to us and we just take off, take off. Um, but you gotta take time. Slow down. They're, that's really the moral story. That damn Evans. All right. Uh, Mr. Hey, how many Sprayer, uh, Bryce, how many sprayers have you rolled now? Two, Uh, no row crop sprayers, just, uh, two plant food sprayers. But yeah, good to bring up the scoreboard there. Will, Hey, by the way, if you're listening and you're wanting to judge Bryce, I'm telling you, if you go and look at some of these fields, uh, I've all, I've almost fallen down and rolled down like some kind of a runaway, runaway pancake. So listen, it's not his fault, I don't think. Hey, speaking of working on those hills, how the hell do you keep your, your load, your water, your liquid in there is all slosh into one side? Are you sometimes getting to wear toward the end? It, you don't, you're not even able to. You're, it's not getting through. Sucked out to go to the boom. I mean, you on stuff. You, you can't, you can't finish, you can't finish with five gallons left in the tank when you're on those hills. That does happen when you're getting towards that bottom half of the tank and you start pulling your hills, you gotta make sure you're getting the right rate. 'cause that pump will start surging and, uh, you'll notice it. So yeah, there would be a lot of times you can't get it all the way empty or gotta start in the hills and finishing the bottom the Level. So that's a management, that's a, that's a management decision. It's not really, there's nothing you can change about the sprayer because you can't, there's nothing you can do for that. All right. For, uh, same question for you. You, you get picked on by the Arkansas guys, Kevin, about farming 14 acre, um, fields that are, uh, you know, uh, river's on one side. It's a good field, man. So what do you have to do anything different with your sprayer management for doing small oblong weird shaped fields? Uh, you know, the biggest thing, we try to drive down the road and we, we do run all wheel steer sprayers now because we have so many headlands and so many turns to try to eliminate extra spray tracks. The, the tracks is, uh, very costly. So with all wheel steer, we're cutting 'em in half. We, uh, we are fans of the front boom. Um, we have a New Holland and we have a, a Haggy, the New Holland's pretty neat. It's kinda like a hillco kit on a combine. It, it levels the chassis for you as you're going. So the sprayer body will be set in level even though the machine's sitting on a steep hill. So, um, it's, it's a lot better on the heels than our haggy is. But both of 'em do a good job. Our small fields is, you know, it's kinda like what Bryce is dealing with, you know, it's just the train that we gotta deal with and it's what we got and we just make the best out of it. And that's all we've ever done. Um, I did enjoy it being in Chads field yesterday, planting a Jackson was complaining about the field size being patches. I said, Jackson, you need to come up there. I think we mm-Hmm, we planted a 160, 180 acre field there yesterday evening. No problem. So, uh, um, we've got some one acre fields, so, you know, you just make one loop around, fold up and you go back. You gotta keep the hinges greased real good because you're folding up a lot. Yeah. Right, right. All right. Anything, any last tip on spray management? 'cause I think it's, this is not a sexy topic, but you know what, I think we led off with Lee saying that it's a, it a, it's a, it's a hot topic. It's an important topic because of effectiveness. First off, he got in the field sooner than he normally ever has. And he's, he's, he's banking on a $50,000, uh, payback on that. That's big. The other part of it I'm hearing is be, be ready to go. Uh, don't say we're gonna get to that in spring. Be ready to go. That's, that's a big one. And I heard about then the one the makes the most important. I guess contemplation for me was when Kevin talked about the viscosity, if you will, the density of the load. Different products have different densities, which means a whole different new set of considerations when you're setting up your sprayer. So, um, what else did I hear? Uh, I'll say one thing, Mr. Damien. Um, when I was young, I had an opportunity, I don't know why they invited me down, but it was a, um, it was a large producer as I top producer type group, uh, was down in Florida. I was invited down. I was a small farmer at the time, but one of your guys, um, uh, I wanna say Dr. Boley from Purdue was there. And I'll never forget what he told us there as an economics guy, if I remember correctly, on his position. But he said, you know, and to be successful in agriculture as a farmer, there's two pieces of equipment that are more important than anything on your farm. He said, you need to have the best planter that you can possibly build or have performances absolutely critical. And he said, you need to have your sprayer in the best shape possible. He said, you can go borrow a tractor, you can rent a tractor anywhere you need to. You can rent a combine, you can do all that. But to get a good sprayer and a good planter, he said, you don't go borrow them. You own them and you look after 'em. And he said, if you've gotta borrow money on equipment, put it on the sprayer. It will make you money. As Lee said, the sprayer makes us money and it's used on more acres than any other piece of equipment we have in our shed. Mike Bulge, agricultural economists from Purdue University. That's who you're talking about. Yep. So, uh, Lee's nodding his head right there. Um, what I'm wondering is then, you know, do you think there's a lot of, uh, farms out here that are putting on the wrong rate because they seriously, they, it's like they rely on the technology or they just say, ah, I don't know. I don't to put, I don't need to boot tie bags up to it and drive 103 feet or go out there with the flags and all that. Seems to me that's where the low hanging, as Kelly likes to talk about, low hanging fruit, it seems to me fixing your rate, correcting your rate is the low hanging fruit. Am I right Lee Bryce? Well, if you, uh, take anybody listening tonight, look at what you spend in chemical fungicides, fertilizer, things that go through your sprayer in the air, and think about if you're off five, 10 or 20%, how much that affects your bottom line. That could be your profit for the year. That could be it right there. Yeah. That's It's worth paying attention to. Yeah. Even if you're a smaller operator, you still put, I don't know, $300,000 of stuff out and you're off 10%. That's 30 grand. And on a tight year, that could be your margin right there. I mean, it really could be. All right, brass. You got anything on the way out the door? You've rolled two plant, you've rolled two plant food spreaders, you've never rolled an actual row crop sprayer. Good for you. Uh, you're, you're good mechanically because you, you, you fix what you break. You like the musician that can not only sing the song, you can also write it and correct it. Go ahead. What do you got for me out the door? Advise sprayer management for high yield farming. Get 'em out earlier than you ever think. Guys, get 'em out. Get 'em out. Now, uh, planter like in our area, plans to ride around the corner. Guys, wait on the planters. They suck to work on. The sprayers are overlooked. Get 'em out now. Just fill 'em up, spray 'em, uh, spray 'em right in the yard. Just get 'em out and get 'em running because time's coming and we're gonna need 'em. Or you're already using them. That's a good one right there. Yeah, because even if you think you're a couple weeks out, then if you're gonna discover any little problems and and whatnot, and you're gonna get your familiarity up there. All right. Is that it? Everybody's got their last word on that. Kevin, you went Bryce Lee. We're all good. Uh, be thinking if you have any other thing you wanna share In the meantime, thanks for being here. We do these every month. We're gonna do it again on Thursday and our next one, first Thursday in May, it's May 2nd, the art and the Science of Spoonfeeding Plant Nutrition. Playing a little bit off of this right here about the expensive nature of the inputs. If you're going to be in a tighter commodity price scenario, which we are, and you're going to want to maximize the effectiveness of your crop inputs, we're gonna have Kelly Temple and Johnny, and possibly Matt on this call, the art and the science of Spoonfeeding Plant Nutrition. Uh, you know what, uh, just had on Tommy Roach with a different podcast recording and he talked about, I don't think we need to be out here worrying about fertilizing soil. We need to talk about feeding plants. You know, and you talk to our friends agro liquid and they kind of talk about the same thing. Is it, is it really just we wanna fling a bunch of dry fertilizer out there and talk about what our soil tests are or is we wanna talk about what's actually occurring in the plant. So that's the may. That's gonna be on May 2nd, Thursday, May 2nd, 7:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM Central, also Field day startup. The extreme ag field days begin and we wanna invite you, this is an awesome situation. If you are an extreme Ag member for your seven $50 a year, you get data, you get access to the guys for question answer platforms, but you can also come to the field days a day early, meaning the evening before May 16th is our first field day of the year. It's at Chad Henderson's, the guy that was just calling in. He's planting. We're gonna be there starting at 8:00 AM You're an extreme Ag member. We do a VIP dinner the evening before. You have to register for this. You cannot just show up. You have to be registered for it. And you'll be able to talk to the extreme ag guys and our sponsors the evening before at a dinner. So we're gonna have a dinner on the May 15th evening, and then we're gonna have the 8:00 AM field day. We'd really like you to be there. Of course, you're can attend the field day if you're, uh, not a paying member. It's just that the evening before dinner's kind of a special treat for those that are the extreme Ag members, which you can become one for $750 a year and get, uh, some of the access to the guys the question answer platform, the trial day to et cetera. So encourage you to do that. May 16th, mark your calendar. Henderson, uh, farms in Madison, Alabama. We also have then two field days in June. We're going to be at Garrett Land and Cattle. We're gonna see our friend Bryce June 13th. Uh, two weeks after that we're gonna be down Arkansas with Matt Miles. I think it's June 27th if I'm not my dates right. And all these field days, by the way, we're gonna be posted on the Extreme AG website, but go ahead and get registered for the Henderson Farms. May 16th one and every one of the field days will have the same thing with a VIP event. Uh, the evening before, uh, field days that, uh, Mr. Uh, Kevin is going to be in August. August 8th, right? Yep. August 8th. And then two weeks following that is at Temple Roads in Maryland. So we want you to come to our field days. Awesome stuff. This has been, uh, a great topic as your sprayer ready for the spring and for the season, if you will, and as sprayer management. You heard from Bryce Ring, uh, with Garrett Land. Cali. You heard from Kevin Matthews, you heard from Lee ERs and then occasionally you heard from me. And Will ote thanks so much for being here. Uh, I will be at the game on Saturday watching my Purdue Boilermakers take on Kevin's NC State Wolf Pack. Uh, go Boilers. They're a nine point favorite, but you know what? I always, there's no such thing as a given, but either way, we want one of them to end up winning it because at least we didn't have an Ag school. So anything else, Kevin, you get last word, which I know I normally don't let you do. Well, you know, I wish I could be in Arizona and get to watch the game with you guys, but maybe you can let me watch state play the next game after the one to Purdue. Well, we'll find out. We'll find out if that's the case. I'm gonna have a very expensive ticket to, I'm gonna have a very expensive Monday ticket to unload. Actually two of 'em because Mrs. Mason's favorite sports college basketball. So this is kind of her, uh, her birthday treat. Anyway, thanks for being here to next time, Lee, Bryce, Kevin, me, and will, uh, awesome. Great information tonight. But remember you can go back and look at all the stuff we've covered on this topic before in the podcast, the Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, hundreds of videos that we have shot in field, and also hundreds of podcasts at Extreme Ag Farm, all there for free. Go check it out. Thanks for being here. Till next time.