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that increases to about 2,300 gallons per day in Alberta with
heavier crop conditions.
“In a season, we buy about $450,000 worth of diesel,” said
Thacker. “So you can imagine the fuel man is our best friend.
We try to contract and forward price as much as we can.”
While custom combining rates vary, depending mostly on
crop conditions, he said margins are tight.
“With a new combine with two headers, and even if you can
pick up good used trailer units, you are looking at at least a
$500,000 price tag to get each machine to the field.”
Thacker said his rates for custom combining range from
about $32 per acre plus fuel all the way up to $60-plus when
they supply their own fuel and the trucking is included, but he
said there is a wide range of arrangements and rate structures,
depending on the crop and the individual farmer.
“You have to be very flexible and very adaptable in this
business,” he explained.
Ted Nibourg, an Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development
business management specialist, said the interest in using
custom farming services varies widely. Based at the Ag-Info
Centre in Stettler, he receives a lot of calls from farmers trying to
figure out the proper rate to pay a neighbour for custom work.
“A lot of it is just neighbour-to-neighbour, one-off type
work,” said Nibourg. “Somebody’s haying equipment breaks
down so the neighbour goes over and does some cutting—
what is that worth?”
Among the “professional” custom farming services, field
spraying is probably most popular, said Nibourg.
“Farmers may not want to buy a big field sprayer, they may
not want to bother with getting a pesticide applicator’s licence,
or they may just not want to bother working with chemicals.”
Josh Umscheid and his Big Slick Custom Spraying company
near Vulcan started with a sprayer and a trailer, but the
operation has since expanded due to local demand.
He has upgraded field-spraying equipment a few times,
now running a 120-foot-wide Case IH 4430 sprayer, complete
with auto-steering, GPS guidance and “all the bells and
whistles.” He also owns a semi tractor–trailer unit with a
52-foot flack deck trailer. It carries three water storage tanks
with a total capacity of 4,000 gallons, plus has room to carry
chemicals and other supplies.
And the work has changed too, said Umschied.
“The first year, I was trying to get the business established
so I was taking on all the jobs I could, and that meant 160 acres
here and 500 acres there,” he said. “It was a lot of travelling.
But since then, I have really narrowed it down to three main
customers,” totalling about 20,000 acres.
When he started, it was mostly applying a pre-seeding burn-
down, followed by in-crop weed control, “but the last couple
years I have been busy really fromMay until November.
“I am seeing clients show a lot more interest in fungicide
applications these days,” said Umschied.
Depending on the farm and growing conditions, he covers all
of those 20,000 acres at least twice, quite a bit of it three times,
and some of it four times.
“Probably our slowest year (due to weather) was about 40,000
acres, our best or busiest year was about 80,000 acres, and
probably we’re averaging 50,000 to 60,000 acres per year.”
Treatments include pre-seeding burn-down, in-crop weed
control, fungicide and pre-harvest treatments, and some post-
harvest weed control applications.
Custom haying services are probably the next most popular
of the custom services, Nibourg said. If a beef producer has
200 or 400 head of cattle, having one’s own haying equipment
may make sense, “but if someone has 50 to 60 head, in most
cases it doesn’t pencil out to own your own equipment.”
Although custom harvesting services are in demand,
timeliness remains the key factor.
“A lot or most farmers own their own equipment simply
because they want the crop harvested when it is ready,” said
Nibourg. “They’ll hire custom combines if they can get them
when they’re needed.”
Fall
2014
grainswest.com
37
ALL IN THE FAMILY:
Thacker and his son Dallas review the
work plans for the harvest of their next fields.