The runner-up of the complex category of the 2023 Farmers Weekly Inventions Competition is Alistair Craig with his lorry slurry pumping trailer.

Remote umbilical slurry pumping trailers and nurse tanks are all the rage these days, but Northern Irish farmer Mr Craig has upped the ante by blending the two into one self-propelled machine.

The starting point for his project was a former Dennis Elite bin lorry, which came with a large six-cylinder Cummins engine and a big radiator to keep it cool when working at a standstill.

To this, he grafted a 35-litre Doda pump on the right-hand side, which is belt-driven from the main driveshaft.

After sourcing a split-shaft gearbox with pto unit, he was also able to power an eBay-sourced 260cfm compressor for blowing out pipes at the end of the job.

See also: Graham Hayllar’s custom umbilical slurry pumping trailer

For the nurse tank element, he bought a scrapped 20cu m Redrock mixer wagon from a neighbour, which was just the right size to fit where the dust-cart body would have originally been.

He stripped out the internals and welded over the outlets to create a sealed 4,000gal tank, which can be used as a buffer when carting slurry to remote fields with a tanker.

The project cost about £12,000 in total, with the lorry only setting him back £1,600 of that figure.