XtraBlatt Issue 02-2020

ON-FARM
1 2 3
1 Because ideal cutting and curing
windows in the hay season for quality
horse forage are relatively short, the
brothers apply a machinery fleet that
ensures highest harvesting capacity.
2 The main enterprise on Oberberghof
is a horse pension.
3 Hay and straw are almost exclusively
pressed into square bales.
two American miniature ponies and two
Deutsche ponies share the paddocks.”
OWN FORAGE
Alongside a riding hall and another
all-weather riding facility, both of which
feature special textile-mix floor surfaces, the
facilities include a solarium, a horse exercising
system and bad weather paddocks with
sand floors. “Our grandfather also started a
riding school”, recalls Florian Kneer. “Nowadays,
however, we’re purely a horse pension,
although a certified groom on the payroll offers
riding lessons and trains horses. We have
a second employee for feeding, mucking and
carrying out other jobs around the yard.”
While many stud farms buy-in their feed,
the Kneers prefer home-grown forage. “We
harvest hay, haylage and silage, although the
silage is sold off the farm. Straw is bought
in the swath from other farmers. We bale it
ourselves with large square balers also used
for our hay baling. For the haylage and silage,
a round baler with plastic foil binding is put
to work. We’ve had good experiences with
this system.”
One of the two large square balers is a
Krone BiG Pack 1270 VC with multiblade
cutting system. Now, one might think that
such high technology might make more
sense on a dairy farm, and rather less so
with horses. Moritz Kneer argues against
this: “For over 90 % of the straw, we bale
for horse litter with all 51 knives fitted. The
great advantage is that the chopped litter
is more moisture-absorbent and makes for
easier and cleaner mucking-out. On top of
this, the resultant dung is a better fertiliser,
degrading faster in the soil. Initially, we
had our doubts about chopping, the litter
looking less comfortable as bedding to our
customers. But the advantages mean we
have never had negative feedback.”
WORK CAPACITY
WISHED FOR
The mowing machinery mainly hails from
Emsland too. A front-rear combination
without conditioner is used for smaller
parcels. For larger fields, a rear-mounted
butterfly mower from another manufacturer.
“The decision for the Krone F 400 CV
front mower was because of its 4 m working
width. We need that here because, among
other points, it gives an overlapping action
especially useful on side slopes”, explains
Moritz Kneer.
A pulled KW-T 1300 teds hay. The brothers
are very satisfied with this. It’s extremely
manoeuvrable, even in small areas, and still
offers high work capacity – very important
for main forage hay. Quality hay means that,
within the small time-slot,all crop should
be turned, especially important for first cut.
For the same reason, a suitably dimensioned
4-rotor swather, a Swadro 1400
Plus, is also on the inventory. “At first we
had a side-swather, then a central delivery
swather, running both of them for a period”,
recalls Moritz Kneer. “Now all the work is
carried out by a single machine. Optically, it
gives the impression of great size although
in reality it’s just as agile as a two-rotor
side swather and is especially suitable for
collecting grass cleanly out of corners.”
The Krone products, incidentally, all come
from the firm Steinbrenner in Wörnitz,
which also takes care of service and
maintenance. This is despite the workshop
being around two hours’ drive from the
farm. Says Florian Kneer: “We got to know
this dealership because we were contract
harvesting nearby. Especially with more
complicated machinery such as our large
square balers, the team working around
Willy Waldmann and workshop master
Stefan Sarke impressed us so much that
we’ve stayed with them. The work is either
done in the dealership facilities or sometimes
back on our farm.”
THREE CUTS
Hay and straw are harvested from around
450 ha, the large square balers produce
some 6,000 bales per season, the round
baler managing between 3,000 and
3,500 bales. Most of the machinery and
implements at Oberberghof are also used
on other farms. “We’ve always aimed to
have spare machinery capacity”, points out
Florian Kneer. “This is because for feeding
horses we can only use the very best forage.
The same applies to the straw litter. To
enable fast and flexible work we started
in 2005 with our first big machine, a large
square baler. Neighbours then increasingly
asked if we could also bale for them on a
contract basis. This enterprise has steadily
expanded.”
As a rule, three forage cuts are made on
grassland, the first exclusively for hay, the
second, depending on weather and growth,
for öhmd (the local term for aftermath hay)
and/or silage and the third for silage only.
Mainly, the last cut takes place mid-October
with the brothers careful that the sward
doesn’t go into winter too long because
this gives best conditions for field mouse
overwintering. Haying mostly starts in mid-
June. Work peaks can mostly be spaced out
well because the contracting dairy farms
have differing harvest times, although this
year haying proved a non-stop operation for
two entire weeks.
On their own fields, Florian and Moritz
Kneer aim for a high-quality mix of grass
and herbs in their leys. Deliberately, they’ve
stayed clear of stewardship schemes that
lay down limited mowing times because
they like full control of their haying operation.
They’ve had the experience that
some weeds in the sward have multiplied
massively during recent dry years. Their
answer: rolling, tine harrowing and reseeding.
Brought-in for the control of poisonous
pasture weed saffron crocus is a prism roller.
STAYING FLEXIBLE
Part and parcel of horse farming is the
production of solid manure from litter and
its spreading. Used for this is a 24 t, 22 m³
Annaburger spreader. For contracted and
own silage, maize and chopped forage
transport, a Krampe hooklift trailer has
been invested in. When asked about the
rather smaller transport capacity with the
body-swap system, Moritz Kneer explains
that flexibility is more important, with both
skip and flatbed bodies used.
The flatbed platform is also used transporting
construction and landscape-care
machinery including mobile backhoe,
tree-grip attachment, tracked mower and
tractor for steep slopes – all used in the
brothers’ contracting enterprise. “A further
big advantage is that we can use the trailer
at speeds up to 60 km/h (36 mph) on the
road, pulled by an Agrar-Unimog or a Fendt
926. We’ve been driving Unimogs for a very
long time. They’re maybe not optimal for
all farm jobs but we like them a lot: they’re
low-wear with economic fuel consumption
and high road speeds.” The rest of the tractor
fleet comprises mainly Fendt machines,
some of them getting on in years, but all in
top condition.
While it’s true Oberberghof is not the main
enterprise in the Kneer business, it is run
very professionally indeed. And listening to
the brothers’ considerations on purchasing
decisions, their experiences with machinery
and other technical details makes it clear
that both are farmers with great passion
and therefore real professionals, with an
amateur love of the land! «
36 37