Bourgault disc drill © Jonathan Page

Bourgault is best known for its huge, prairie-roaming seed cart drills, but at Agritechnica, the Canadian maker was showing off its first compact machine.

The CD848 uses a pair of angled disc coulters, which are mounted at a 10deg vertical and 5deg horizontal angle to cut into the ground without causing too much disturbance.

In its standard setup, these are set to 16.5cm spacings, but there is an option to take this to 30cm.

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Once the seed is in the ground, there is an angled rubber wheel to close the slot, followed by a press wheel to firm the ground.

Each unit is mounted on its own parallel linkage with individual hydraulic rams for down pressure adjustment.

The CD848 model pictured is 8m wide, but folds to less than 3m for transport – the first Bourgault drill to do so.

As standard, it comes with a split 4.8cu m hopper featuring two metering units, and there is the option of adding hoppers for more products. It’s also available with an integrated bag lifter for loading seed.

At present, the only European dealers are in Hungary, Lithuania and Bulgaria, but as the drills are now suitable for smaller roads, they could start making their way further west.