Zimmatic-Blog
When You Need More Time, You Need FieldNET
21.01.2020
On the Daniels operation, it’s all about family.
“Some of the earliest parts of the ranch were settled by my great grandpa in the late 1800s, making me the fourth generation,” said Dan Daniels. “It continues to be a family operation. We have one son working for us full time with two sons, a son-in-law and their wives helping out where they can. A few grandkids are also getting to the age where they can start helping out, too. The hope is to allow the operation to stay right here in the family for many generations to come.”
With more than 1,200 acres of crops and 200 head of registered, purebred Hereford cows on their Eastern Idaho operation, finding time to spend with family can be a challenge. That’s one of the reasons Daniels added FieldNET to all seven of his center pivots.
“The biggest benefit to us is time savings. At any moment, I can pull out my phone, check my FieldNET app and get a look at all the pivots in real time. I don’t have to spend an hour driving around checking on each individual pivot,” he said. “Being able to get a comprehensive look at the where the pivot is, a pressure reading or whether the end gun is running is very important to us. In addition to monitoring, if I see something that needs to adjusted, I can take full control of the pivot right from my phone and make the change.”
Because he can’t afford downtime, Daniels also likes getting real time alerts if there are potential problems.
“The climate we are in can be very difficult to manage. The growing season is hot and dry, so keeping enough water in the root zone can be challenging with our ET (evapotranspiration) rates. If a pivot goes down, for whatever reason, we’ll be playing catch up,” he said. “The alerts that are sent immediately as a text message are vitally important to limiting downtime as much as possible. We can get one of our guys out there to address the problem and be running again within 30 minutes, in most cases.”
Daniels’ first two pivots were Zimmatics – equipped with Vision panels and FieldNET ready. However, as their operation grew, they added ground with pivots of other brands.
“We had never run pivots without FieldNET, and we were not about to start. We didn’t hesitate adding FieldNET Pivot Control boxes to retrofit the other machines,” he said. “Getting all of the pivots, no matter what brand they are, on the same system is huge and makes managing our irrigation systems easy. Water, labor and energy all affect the bottom line of the operation. When you can effectively and efficiently manage each of these, you know you’re onto something good.”
For more information about FieldNET, talk to your local Zimmatic dealer or visit www.Zimmatic.com.