[gladstonefarmer]

i am considering purchasing a bourgault 3320 drill and was wondering if there was any good advice from owners or people that use something similar. currently running a 5710 drill with a 6550 tank and have had very good luck with this unit.

 

[West Central]

Be prepared to have to spend money on more grain storage if you upgrade to 3320.

 

[nicemustang]

Look under planters/tillage section and do a search for 3320. There is lots of info on here.

 

[placeholder]

Moved thread to a more apt section. Good luck in your research!

KN Community Support

 

[redrider]

we run both a 5710/6550 with the pneumatic tires and a 3320 with the high floatation. not really any complaints about either. one cost a lot more, so I probably should tell you how wonderful it is 3/4 inch openers with v packers on 3320. we had a 3310 before the 20. 5710 is better on worked ground we find. Any real specific questions?

 

[gladstonefarmer]

have some concerns about trash clearance and field finish and how the unit will stand up over time. we are thinking of going with 3/4 in. openers and 4.5 in round packers seems to be most common combination in this area. we currently use 3 in openers and mrbs and will stay with mrbs. thanks for any info redrider

 

[redrider]

we have 1 inch on our 5710 and have midrows on both. really no problems on trash clearance with it. we aren't much for burning either. some low areas we did burn this spring but normally don't like too. the round packer will be way smoother field finish than the v. we had the round on our 3310. we had 1 inch on our 3310 and now we feel we have more stepping on 3/4. guess we should have slowed down, 5 mph but we were in seeding panic mode. We were surprised we didn't break more( one boot and one para link arm over 3 years) on our 3310, because our land is not stone free, flat. we traded for the high floatation and didn't really need it this spring.

 

[gladstonefarmer]

that isn't too bad for 3 years. does your drill have the qda option seems like a good idea but a little pricy but i guess what isn't. do you put phos with seed or in mrbs. wondering how much is safe in narrow row with seed as the reason we have 3 in openers now.

 

[nicemustang]

The V packer is what you want, a 1" opener and the V packer is the best and what the drill is designed for. The 3/4" is second best but it can be tricky to get good seed placement with it on certain soils and conditions. Theres been a lot of trials and data on this, trust me on the 1" openers and V packers. Field finish isn't going to be smooth, but packing and placement is excellent. Its a trade off. Plan your swathing intentions accordingly - don't want to be more than 20-30 degrees. Depending on soils, no issues with putting phos in seed row, that's where it NEEDS to be anyway. We put 30-40 lbs actual down with cereals and 25-30 down with canola and flax no problems.

QDA is a nice option if you seed a lot of different crops at different times. We usually change from cereals to oilseeds back and forth often because of when we can get on certain types of land, or to split up harvest so its good for us. And we have lots of different types of soils to deal with. An XTC is better if you have hills or contouring land which is same price as QDA. Seeding speed is about 4.5-5 MPH with this unit and banders.

 

[nicemustang]

More points...coming from a 5710 to a 3320 ourselves, could not believe how shallow you could seed and have every row the same depth. We struggled with consistency with our 5710 and usually had to seed deeper. This year I seeded flax and canola at 1/4" right after to before a rain (we had LOTS of moisture) and the crop was up in days and off to a rampant start! I feel like we couldn't do that with our 5710 and get good results.

You'll want to consider the high float option if going over 60' and using banders at least on the main section. Its a HEAVY well built piece of equipment and the main section will sink in muddy conditions in the front because those banders are heavy.

 

[gladstonefarmer]

the dealers in our area don't recommend the 1 in opener but seems lots of people here seem to like it. as far as packers round is more popular here but there are a good amount of v packers also.The reason we want qda is a few owners we talked to without it seemed to settle for a happy medium or try increasing packing pressure to go deeper. think it would be better to set it where you want the set packing pressure to what you want. we really like the phis with the seed even though a little unhandy at seeding time.

 

[nicemustang]

Increasing packing pressure is NOT going to put the seed deeper on these drills. Unless very muddy of course.

 

[gladstonefarmer]

i know exactly what you mean about seeding canola with our 5710 hard to seed that shallow consistently without lots on top of the ground.we are looking at 60 ft and don't think we need high flotation option we are not large farmers and can usually get enough good days to get it done.but they do look real good but have to stop somewhere.

 

[dumbfarmer]

Do yourself a favour and talk to someone at bourgault service. A V packer is a very bad idea if your in the mud. You will have very poor depth control in certain conditions. Also anybody that tells you a 1in point is better then a 3/4 in one should ask why 9 out of 10 para links have 3/4in on them( 3/4in will work in any condition or soil)

Also don't need high float option if you buy a XTC unless you really want to play in the mud. A XTC is 10 times the drill for accuracy that a regular para link is.

 

[gladstonefarmer]

pretty sure 3/4 in is the one we are going with and the qda our fields are fairly flat to somewhat rolling so i don't think we will need to go to the xtc drill.we really don't seed in to muddy of conditions so far anyway.

 

[nicemustang]

Do yourself a favour and talk to someone at bourgault service. A V packer is a very bad idea if your in the mud. You will have very poor depth control in certain conditions. Also anybody that tells you a 1in point is better then a 3/4 in one should ask why 9 out of 10 para links have 3/4in on them( 3/4in will work in any condition or soil)

Also don't need high float option if you buy a XTC unless you really want to play in the mud. A XTC is 10 times the drill for accuracy that a regular para link is.

Not that I want to argue but I know for a fact over half of 3320s go out with 1" openers and 80% go out with v packers. But don't have to believe me, it's not like I work there .

 

[Undertaker]

Have a friend with a 3310 that runs 2" openers and 4 1/2" round semi nematic packers he is very happy with the set up. We are Looking at a 3320 QDA HF on 10" spacing and we're thinking of going that way but now I'm wondering if 1" would be better after reading about 3/4" or 1" debate? Would running a 2" opener be crazy? Our thinking was the seed row would be a little blacker that is wider.

 

[nicemustang]

Would running a 2" opener be crazy? Our thinking was the seed row would be a little blacker that is wider.

Too early to tell yet and wasn't going to bring it up, that is being tested as well right now. I don't think it's crazy, more SBU possibly but you need have the right dirt for it. I'll let you know after harvest as of right now we can't tell the difference.

 

[gladstonefarmer]

our dealer says they have good luck with the 2 in opener leaves a little blacker row but he said your seeding speed is more critical with this opener where the 3/4 in is pretty forgiving.we would like the 2 in also but so many people prefer the smaller openers so they must be getting good results with them.

 

[SWMan]

I know people that have 3/4" and aren't happy, I don't know anyone who has 1" and isn't totally pleased with them......so I would have to agree with nicemustang on this one. I personally ran both on the same drill for a whole year as a comparison, I now have 1" openers with V packers. I'm not sure they are bad for depth in muddy soil but they can over-pack so you don't need to run much pressure on them.

I have a QDA and it takes a little over 3 minutes to change depth but having previously run a 1:1 opener unit (and being fairly fussy) I would order an XTC if I had to do it over again. Extra time changing depth would be worth it for the accuracy.

Below is a pic of wheat planted 18 days before picture was taken with 1" opener on 10" spacing. BTW that had 135# of 11-52/tiger-sul micro's and elemental sulfur in the seed row, I have never had an issue with phosphate in seed row.