Kelly Engineering’s chain disc harrow has been limited to growers able to justify wider working widths of up to 12m in Europe. Now the Australian firm has a 3.4m to 4.4m offering for the small to medium farm.

Yes, you’re not going mad: we featured the Kelly Engineering disc harrow as recently ago as 06/2021. So, what’s changed to warrant another look so soon? Well, the version we focused on then was the much wider 8.80m model on a large frame, whereas the 1204 on the pages before you adjusts to three work widths spanning 3.00m to 4.40m, which should broaden the appeal of the disc chain set-up.

Like the wider models, the 1204 is produced in Germany for the European market. And while the brochure states a maximum working width of 4.80m, this is the actual width of the chain mounting on the frame and not the full working width of the ground-engaging discs. To see if the smaller 1204 is just as effective we used it to cultivate volunteers in some previously worked cereal stubbles before going to field number two to do a primary pass in forage maize stubble.

Slim and long
The semi-mounted Kelly cultivator measures around 8.95m from the hitch to the rear lights, and it is attached to the tractor by either a ring, K80 spoon or a linkage crossbar. At the headland, you can raise the cultivator out of work by using the lift arms and running gear. The track width of just 2.30m is intentionally
narrow so the 340/55-16 wheels fully clear the chains.

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