An STCH takes on basalt and sandstone

Vegetation management on an Australian farm

This story takes place on an Australian farm located about an hour’s drive from Melbourne, in the state of Victoria. Based in the town of Kyneton, this facility specializes in livestock-primarily sheep-plus grain and forage crops. Pet Gramlick, the Manager, works there along with two other employees.

“We purchased a FAE STCH/HD-225 in 2018 for vegetation management,” said Pet. “The farm spans 8,000 square meters, 70% of which has volcanic basalt and sandstone rocks. We needed to make the grounds more manageable to be able to reach the livestock with tractors and get to several paddocks that were only accessible by motorcycle.”

The FAE STCH is a stone crusher with fixed-tooth rotor for tractors. There are three models available with working widths of 200, 225 and 250 cm, making it ideal for many different jobs, especially dealing with terrain that has a large number of stones.

“We paired the machine with our Fendt 936 and got to work immediately. We handled the sandstone with no problems, even in terms of tooth wear. The work was much more difficult when we got to the basalt, but the FAE handled it quite well regardless,” says Pet. “We have to work over 5,600 square meters of land that is 70% sandstone and 30% basalt. We still have 1,200 square meters left to go. Obviously, we had to turn to a machine with exceptional performance!”

How exactly did they do it?
“First, we pretreated the area before reclamation and removed the boulders that were too large to be crushed, leaving only the ones that were about 400 x 400 mm. Then, we worked the soil with the STCH with special STC/3/HD teeth and crushed all remaining rocks up to 2 cm in diameter. We worked up to a depth of about 15 cm at a speed of between 0.6 and 1.3 km/h. The average fuel consumption was 28 liters/hour.

At the end of the job, what do you think about your FAE? “It’s an impressive machine! We reclaimed a great deal of soil, and the extra revenue we made allowed us to pay for it in just one year! The teeth also lasted a long time-about 600 hours on the sandstone. Also, maintenance is very easy. We have never had any issues.”

We thank Pet for sharing his experience and wish him well with his FAE for a long time to come!