Yes-Tiller Replaces No-Till Rig

Yes-Tiller Replaces No-Till Rig ROCK PICKERS Rock Pickers 12-5-7 "I'm always looking for a better, more efficient way to reduce the number of trips through the field when planting small grains and hay into corn ground," says David C. McCoy, Fredericktown, Ohio, whose new "Yes-Tiller" replaces his former "no-till" rig. FARM SHOW's Vol. 11, No. 5 issue featured McCoy's home-built Spider Plow, a secondary conservation tillage tool that mixes chopped cornstalks with the upper layers of topsoil. It consists of a set of four gangs of intermeshed 21-in. cast iron spider wheels set in a V-shaped pattern. McCoy runs the Spider Plow through the field in the fall and then pulls his special-built double-framed grain drill - previously featured in Vol. 11, No. 4 - behind a light tillage tool for one-pass planting in the spring. Until he built the Yes-Tiller, he used a spring tooth harrow ahead of the drill but he had problems with constant plugging of the harrow teeth under the "trashy" conditions. "I needed a conservation tillage tool that wouldn't plug. The `Yes-Tiller' does the job providing light tillage to create an excellent seedbed without any plugging problems whatsoever," says McCoy. He built the Yes-Tiller using the cut-down frame of a Massey Ferguson 52 disk. He welded Oliver culti-packer rollers to the back of the frame. Under the front part of the frame, he mounted two parallel gangs of 2-in. wide no-till fluted coulters that lightly till the soil every 3 in. ahead of the culti-packer rollers and the grain drill, which trails behind. Like the Spider Plow, which he still pulls in the fall, McCoy says the Yes-Tiller doesn't do a lot of tillage but does enough to get the crop in. "The Yes-Tiller never plugs up and could be used under both conservation and conventional tillage systems. I also think it has potential as a pasture renovation tool. I pull it and the grain drill with a 60 hp. tractor," says McCoy, who has practiced conservation tillage for the last 7 years. He built the Yes-Tiller for $700. He'd like to find a manufacturer for it. For more information, send a self-addressed stamped envelope, to: FARM SHOW Followup, David C. McCoy, Rt. 1, 16413 Old Mansfield Rd., Frederick-town, Ohio 43019 (ph 614 397-4664).

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