On 22 Feb we took our Claas Jaguar to Easton College to cut all the guard rows in a willow variety trial. These are the plants that remain after the yield areas have been cut out for yield analysis. In addition to being a part of the crop management, it also acted as a demonstration for the Agricultural Engineering & Arboriculture students at Easton College.
Our Claas Jaguar is an older and smaller specced version in comparison to those used by commercial growers such as Willow Energy and Energy Crops Consultancy, and the header is an early prototype of the higher throughput ones that they use. It may not be as high throughput as their bigger machines, but it serves us well for our needs at trial plot scale.