They excel at more than just making artificial rain efficiently, is what the Reinke centre pivot irrigators prove to Mark Thiele of Paulpietersburg. Mark farms with 1 150 pig sows and plants mealies, barley and soybeans to utilise as fodder. In winter he also plants commercial wheat for marketing. The Thiele family have been satisfied Reinke clients for the past four years.

“We have two Reinke centre pivot irrigators – one a four-tower and one a five-tower,” says Mark. What made us decide specifically on Reinke, is the high quality of their galvanised pipes. Our aim is to spray pig manure as fertiliser in slurry form through the centre pivots,” says Mark

With the present system the pig droppings are collected and stored. It then goes through a series of sieves to separate the solids in the water from the grey water. The solid waste is used for preparing compost and the grey water is sprayed on the lands with travelling irrigators.

“We want to put the grey water through the centre pivots also,” says Mark. “To prevent the grey water from blocking the pipes, it is sent through a 50 micron sieve before being pumped to the sprinklers of the centre pivot. The grey water is further diluted with clean water.”

The whole system is controlled with Reinke’s advanced, but easily understandable, ReinCloud program. “This program makes it possible to control my centre pivots with my smartphone. It is very user-friendly and provides me with many options.”

Mark is very satisfied with after-sales service and maintenance. He says in the past four years he has had no problems with either products or servicing. The system is user-friendly and profitable and allows the farmer to irrigate with greater accuracy.

According to Reinke representative, Ralph Klingenberg, the secret of good control lies in the efficient control by the electric components in the Reinke pivots.

“The electronics are of the highest order and no cheap shortcuts are allowed.”

The control box of the centre pivot contains the latest touch-screen technology and is even fitted with a weather station which keeps a watch over weather conditions to enable planning your irrigation accurately so that there will be no waste, neither will plants be allowed to suffer drought. Mark makes use of all the information recorded by the weather station to enable him to make informed decisions.

For further information, contact Patrick Ellis on 031-350-4525 or send an email message to patrickellis@reinke.com.