Bright green, 19 feet wide and 25 feet long, the Schulte Spartan RWP-1935 Rock Windrower Picker piqued the interest of many passerbys at Schulte’s Ag in Motion (AIM) booth.
The piece of equipment’s first production model was released in December 2022 and the first pieces for purchase rolled off the line in February 2023.
It was received with such intrigue that even though Schulte didn’t have one at Ag in Motion or on their Saskatchewan lot in 2023, an out-of-province farmer who’d seen it online approached them at AIM 2023 and asked for the first one they got, said Mike Siroski, Schulte’s Saskatchewan and United States territory manager.
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Siroski added that the man didn’t care that it wouldn’t come off the production line until October.
The equipment made in February 2023 was sent to the eastern and midwestern United States. The market is hot there, explained Siroski, as their previous competitor in that area discontinued their product. In Canada, the most interest comes from Alberta and Manitoba.
“It puts two processes into one, eliminating labor,” Siroski said. “It’ll bring in rocks from a width of 19.19 feet wide with this hydraulically-driven wind rower. And then it’s connected directly to the rock picker. It’s got a rock picker built into it with a three and a half cubic yard bucket. So, you’re doing virtually two things at once: you’re preparing the ground by bringing the rocks in, and you’re picking them so you can haul them off.”
There doesn’t need to be two people driving two different units and using twice the fuel. Even though the equipment costs nearly $160,000, it could prove less expensive in the long run. Siroski explained efficiency comes not only from the incorporation of the two individual pieces, but from size. Their largest windrower is only 14 feet wide, making this 19-foot combination a quicker option.
The windrower also cleans off the dirt and levels the ground while pushing the rocks into a 1.5 foot row to be picked up.
The windrower rock picker needs a tractor of at least 150-horsepower, but it’s easy to transport. The windrower sides fold up, making the machine only 10 feet wide. The height to the top of the rock bucket is just over nine feet high, which makes for easy storage.
It has two hydraulic systems, one that attaches to the tractor and the other that the attaches to the PTO to run the windrower. Siroski added that the PTO system is a closed system, with its own filtration system and hydraulic cooling.
