John Deere at The Dairy Event 2008

The Dairy Event and Livestock Show, Europe's premier two day business to business exhibition for the dairy industry organised by the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers, takes place at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire on Wednesday 17 and Thursday 18 September.

John Deere is once again sponsoring the main mixer/feeder wagon machinery demonstration area on Avenue Q (adjacent to the John Deere stand), which this year features at least seven different makes from Abbey, Keenan, Lely, Shelbourne Reynolds, Strautmann, Harry West and WestMac. The working demonstrations are designed to provide visitors with a unique opportunity to compare models from different manufacturers, working under the same conditions.

The photograph shows dairy manager Nigel Armstrong at the wheel of a John Deere 7820 tractor pulling a JF-Stoll VM 30 feeder, one of the family of WestMac machines that will be featured in the demo area at this year's event. It was taken in the dairy buildings at the University of Nottingham Dairy Farm, Sutton Bonington Campus, where a herd of 225 dairy cows are normally in milk.

John Deere's HarvestLab system will be on display in the Dairy Event's 'Forage for Livestock' exhibition hall. The HarvestLab dry matter sensor is a near infra-red (NIR) unit that fits on the forager spout and provides an easy to use, fast and reliable method of checking dry matter content in the field and on the move, allowing the operator to view continuously updated moisture and yield information on the cab's AMS GreenStar display.

It can also be easily removed from the spout to allow it to be used for stationary feed analysis of different forage ingredients. John Deere will be demonstrating how, by providing accurate analysis of the silage dry matter content, the HarvestLab system can allow dairy farmers to know the precise amount of dry matter fed to their animals, resulting in increased yields and improved animal health.