CLAAS TRAC Magazine - Spring 2021

2021

SPRING

Incorporating

LIMITED EDITION ‘LE MANS’ PACKAGE TRACTORS PAGE 14

Getting closer to nature

PAGE 2

Striking new UK Headquarters

Silage on the farm

PAGE 4

PAGE PAGE 812

2

Spring 2021

Getting closer to nature At the beginning of last year most of you were at school, going out with your family and hanging out with friends. Then quite suddenly everything changed and we needed to stay at home to protect ourselves, our family and our friends from the Covid 19 virus. We were asked to limit our contact with people outside of our family to avoid spreading germs. We could still be outside however to enjoy the fresh air, exercise in the garden and take a walk in our local area. This new normal was quite an adjustment for us all to make but it did give us some unexpected surprises.

An upside has been living in a much quieter, slower paced world, a world that has been cleaner and less polluted by traffic and people. It has actually given nature a wonderful breathing space, and as a consequence our plant and animal communities have adjusted in a very positive way.

More wildlife With most of us spending a lot of time at home, we have seen more wildlife travelling further into our urbanised areas than we normally would. Places that used to be noisy and loud, with lots of people walking or driving around have been much quieter. Our animals and wildlife that are usually shy and sensitive to lots of noise, have become easier to spot as they come out of hiding. We have also had more time to slow down and explore the countryside, something many of us may never have done before. We have been interacting more with wildlife and nature which is good for our mental and emotional health and improves our mood. Numerous different species of birds for example have been spotted in our gardens and local hedgerows.

All animals are sensitive to loud noises and it can have a huge impact on their behaviour, stress levels and even growth. Did you know that sound can travel further and faster in water than in air? Which is why whales, for example, pause their singing when ships or boats are nearby.

Good vibrations As human movement has slowed down, so has the entire planet. Earth Scientists measure the vibrations of the earth’s surface. Most of these vibrations are sounds caused by cars, planes, construction work and other human activity. Our Earth Scientists have seen a drop of 50% in the amount of vibrations from sensors across the country during Lockdown. As Lockdown has been an unusually quiet period, scientists have been able to use this time to record signals from very weak earthquakes, which they wouldnt normally have been able to study, because of the noise pollution we all create. Lockdown could help scientists forecast future earthquakes and provide us with new information about our planet.

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Scientists have been able to record signals from weak earthquakes

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3

Spring 2021

Which animals did we see more of during lockdown?

During lockdown users of the website iRecord have recorded many more animals compared to 2019. Take a look at the diagram to see the amazing change to the normal sightings of our wildlife. Which animals have you seen in your garden or out and about when you have taken your daily exercise?

Squirrels

+33%

Dragonflies

+11%

Bats +143%

Deer

Bees

+66%

Hedgehogs

+13%

+18%

Source: BRC at UKCEH. Data entered into iRecord. Time perio is 23/3 in 2019 and 2020.

Farming during the pandemic Even though lockdown has given us a glimpse of a world that is quieter, cleaner and richer with nature, farmers have seen public footpaths that run across their fields become much busier, with more people wanting to explore the beautiful landscapes.

People have walked on crops instead of the muddy paths

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Lots of people on their daily walks have been using footpaths on farming land, but over the winter these paths have become very muddy and people have walked on the crop instead of the muddy paths which has ruined some planted crops. Farmers have continued to work hard to feed us all and these crops are our food and their incomes and, once damaged, they won’t recover. The soil below will become compacted and this can lead to more problems for the farmer when growing crops for next year’s harvest.

So when we are all in the countryside let’s work together and follow the farmers requests to keep to the designated footpaths. In this way we can all continue to enjoy nature and the wonderful outdoors long after Lockdown has finished.

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4

Spring 2021

Striking new CLAAS UK Headquarters The original site of MANNS and CLAAS UK at Saxham near Bury St Edmunds has undergone many changes over the years, the most significant period starting from 2014 onwards.

2017

2014

MANNS Used Machinery Centre

CLAAS UK Academy

MANNS Used Machinery Centre (UMC) was built in 2014 and was the first step in the whole Saxham rebuild project. The centre is used to store and display MANNS used machinery. Since opening the centre in 2014, MANNS have sold over

Since opening the new Academy in 2017, we have provided over

9,000 man days

of training for our customers and dealer employees. We provide training courses from September to July each year not only face to face training we also have professional video facilities to provide eLearning and virtual classrooms.

£50 million pounds worth of machinery from this building.

2020

Technoparc Official Opening

Technoparcs 1 & 2

Following three years of construction work, the headquarters for CLAAS UK and MANNS has been completely redeveloped. The Construction work was done in phases to enable day to day work to continue for the 130 people employed on site. The new building was officially opened by Cathrina Claas-Muehlhaeuser on the 16th October 2020 by Livestream.

We have two new full height, glass fronted Technoparcs, one for harvesting products and one for tractors. These Technoparcs are our show stands of the future, so instead of attending a national show for one or two days a year, we will be open here at Saxham all year round for customers to come and visit, and see our latest hi-tech machines. We have cutaway modules and operator interfaces such as CEBIS and CEMOS from our CLAAS Tractors, and our Smart Farming platforms can be tested on large screen displays.

The official opening video is on our YouTube channel if you would like to watch it!

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5

Spring 2021

2020 Seasons Restaurant

MANNS Service Workshop

Our visitors and customers will be invited to dine in our new SEASONS Restaurant, where 70% of ingredients are locally sourced and freshly cooked every day.

MANNS service workshop is a state-of-the-art building with ten ‘fire station’ type doors making the dealership one of the most modern workshop facilities in the UK.

We have brought the outside in

Customer Experience Centre

We have beautiful landscape views on every floor, complemented by huge farming images on the walls of the offices and meeting rooms. The Technoparcs form a central atrium around which all the offices sit, giving a lovely, airy open feel to the building.

New CLAAS UK Parts Warehouse The new UK Parts Warehouse covers over an acre with a floor area of 4,336 square meters which is equivalent to 17 tennis courts. It holds 47,000 line items or 850,000 individual items totalling 700 tonnes, with space to spare for future expansion.

Customers will soon be able to visit our new Customer Experience Centre to test drive our tractors and material handlers in different situations including towing trailers, driving over obstacles, simulating filling a silage clamp and loading grain. We can demonstrate our automatic steering systems, focusing on the accuracy with the physical footprint of the tractors in a sand filled area.

Our Sustainability Story We have a great sustainability story to tell that makes use of the latest energy efficient systems.

All the used machines that come into MANNS of Saxham are washed and valeted using water we harvest from the roof of the new building. By recycling the water we are saving over 1 million litres of water a year!

All the electricity that we use on site comes from an AD or biogas plant adjacent to CLAAS UK. Some of the crops that the farmer turns into electricity are grown on the Claas family farm nearby.

We’ve installed electric charging points for our hybrid and electric cars and these are powered by the solar panels on the roof of the new building.

So that completes our tour of the new site, 7 years in the making. We hope you’ve enjoyed our story and we look forward to being able to welcome our customers and visitors to our new site very soon.

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6

Spring 2021

CLAAS then and now

Unloading grain with a CLAAS combine.

A fleet of CLAAS combines in the field.

CLAAS forage harvesting machinery.

Putting grass into swaths with a CLAAS rake.

JAGUAR forager filling the trailer with rear AUTO FILL.

Stacking bales with the CLAAS Telehandler.

Drilling with the CLAAS XERION.

Bailing straw with the CLAAS QUADRANT

Chopping maize with the CLAAS JAGUAR.

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7

Spring 2021

Transporting CLAAS combines with a lorry.

Transporting CLAAS machines via Train.

The testing station in the CLAAS factory in Harsewinkel, Germany.

Parts Warehouse at CLAAS UK, Saxham.

The CLAAS UK Headquarters at Saxham.

The main factory in Harsewinkel, Germany.

Share your old photos with us.

Why not send us copies of any photos you have of your parents or grandparents on the farm?

Especially if they had CLAAS equipment.

We would love to print them in the next issue of TRAC. Transporting CLAAS spare parts via plane.

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Production of the 10,000th and the 40,000th JAGUAR.

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8

Spring 2021

Silage on the farm During the spring and summer months, livestock farmers will cut the grass in their fields to make silage to feed their animals for the coming winter. Let's take a look at how silage is made on the farm.

11

22

The tractor and DISCO mower go into the field and cut the grass and leave it in a swath behind the machine.

31

42

The tractor and LINER rake gather all the spread grass and put it into swaths ready for the baler, forage wagon or forage harvester to chop it up and gather it in.

51

The farmer can bale the grass with either a ROLLANT or VARIANT round baler or a QUADRANT square baler, depending on the size and shape of bale that he needs.

62

A SCORPION telehandler can be used to collect all the bales and stack them back at the farm. claas.co.uk

The tractor and VOLTO tedder spread all the grass that the mower has cut to help it dry out.

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The farmer could also use a CARGOS forage wagon to collect the grass and take it to the silage clamp.

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9

Spring 2021

Send us a photo! If you see CLAAS green harvest machinery in action near you, send us a photo to trac.uk@claas.com or via DM on social media.

71

82

A JAGUAR forage harvester could be used to chop all the grass and blow it into a trailer behind a tractor.

A TORION wheel loader can be used back at the farm to push all the chopped grass into the silage clamp to roll it down and squash it in.

What is fermentation?

Fermentation is when sugars in the grass are converted to acids and any oxygen present is removed.

91 Once the grass has either been baled or put into the silage clamp it is then sealed to keep the air out by either by wrapping the bales or placing a sheet over the silage clamp. This causes the grass to ferment, turning it into silage to feed the animals.

If there is too much moisture in the grass when stored, the fermentation process will release a liquid called silage effluent, which is very toxic to wildlife. This is why farmers have to try and harvest their grass at the correct moisture and at the right time so they don’t produce too much effluent.

10 CLAAS manufacture all the machines a farmer needs to make silage to feed their animals.

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10

Spring 2021

Tasty Tractor Biscuits Make your own CLAAS tractor fleet from your kitchen with our super tasty tractor biscuits Method:

Ingredients: • 2 00g unsalted butter, softened • 200g golden caster sugar

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6.

• 1 large egg

2. Put the butter in a bowl and beat it using an electric whisk until soft

• ½ tsp vanilla extract or 1 lemon, zested

and creamy. Beat in the sugar, egg and vanilla or lemon.

3. Slowly add the flour to make the mixture into a soft dough.

If the dough feels a bit sticky, add a little more flour and knead it in.

• 400g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

4. Cut the dough into six pieces and roll out one at a time to about 5mm thickness on a floured surface.

5. Using the template cut out the tractor shapes.

6. Transfer the biscuits to two baking sheets and with adult supervision bake for 7-10 mins or until the edges are just brown. Leave to cool completely and repeat with the rest of the dough. You should be able to fit about 12 on each sheet. If you are using two sheets, then the one underneath will take a minute longer.

7. When cool enough to handle, move to a wire rack and allow to cool completely and decorate to look like your CLAAS tractor.

Why not decorate your tractor biscuits with coloured icing pens, sprinkles and even marshmallows for the wheels! Keep them in an airtight container for up to five days.

How did your tractor biscuits turn out? We’d love to see a photo of your delicious creation. Why not send us a picture to trac.uk@claas.com

BISCUIT TEMPLATE Cut out the tractor template and use as your stencil for the biscuits.

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11

Spring 2021

Fun Facts – how your flour is made

Flour comes from wheat that is grown by farmers and harvested using a combine harvester.

You might be thinking that flour and wheat look nothing alike, so how do we make it. Well, the wheat arrives in a lorry from the farm to be milled which means grinding up the wheat to turn it into flour.

To make all the flour we need, over 5 million tonnes of grain needs grinding in a mill every year!

First the wheat needs preparing before it gets milled which has 4 stages.

1. Clean the wheat – Using magnets and other machines metals and stones are removed from the grains of wheat.

2. Blow dry the wheat – The air currents carry away any dust that might be on the wheat.

3. Give the wheat a shower – Next the wheat gets a shower which softens the outer layer of the grain.

This is important as the outer layer is too tough to make good flour.

4. The wheat undergoes ‘grafting’ – This is where they mix different grains in different proportions to make different types of flour.

Now the wheat is ready to be milled! Milling happens in three stages:

1. Cracking – the grains are cracked which makes the outer coat of the wheat even looser.

2. Rolled – The grain is then rolled to release endosperm and wheat grain

3. Sieved – Finally the grain is sieved so that they can collect all the different parts and make the flour.

The different flours are then packed and sent to bakeries or supermarkets. Flour is used for many types of bread as well as pies, cakes and your yummy tractor biscuits.

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12

Spring 2021

Product design – the new Y Design is all around you. Look at the chair you are sitting on, your favourite fizzy drinks can, the logo on your parents’ car – all of that has been designed.

The Y design on the LEXION combine claas.co.uk

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13

Spring 2021

At CLAAS we have a dedicated Industrial Design team headed by Alain Blind. Alain Blind and his team of 10 colleagues are responsible for combining art and engineering to design and produce innovative CLAAS products that not only work well but look fantastic too!

In 2015, CLAAS began to work on a central element to establish a consistent design across all future machines. And the Y concept was born.

What’s the Y design all about?

The Y is the key element and is a protected trademark and serves as a three-dimensional visual framework which showcases the power of the machine. Familiar shapes such as the boomerang on the wheel arch and the light-gray seat as a background for the logo are all part of the concept.

Even though the design and layout of a combine are different to a tractor, both machines should still have a uniform appearance. It’s about striking a balance between performance and emotion.

What does the future look like for the Y design?

The next products to receive the Y design will be tractors, followed by foragers.

We have already gone further than that with our balers. We want to establish the family design across the entire machinery range over the next three to four years. Just like the kidney-shaped grilles on BMWs, the Y should be at the forefront in the visual design of all of our vehicles – it’s unique in the industry.

TM

What is a trademark? claas.co.uk

A trademark helps give legal protection to a product or idea, so other people can’t just copy it. A trademark can be a name, word, phrase, symbol design or picture

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14

Spring 2021

Stand out in your field

With the new Limited Edition ‘Le Mans’ Package Tractors from CLAAS. On our ARION and AXION tractor ranges you can now have a choice of paint colour and finish – black, gunmetal grey or metallic green.

Which colour would you choose?

Smart chrome sticker decals on the bonnet give the tractor a really awesome look. The package also includes a set of lovely chrome air horns.

There are extra LED lights over the number plate and inside the cab and strobe LED lights next to the side lights – everyone is sure to see you coming!

An additional screen alongside the radio for Apple Car Play, allows you to listen to all your favourite tunes.

Limited edition mat.

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15

Spring 2021

Welcome to CLAAS KIDS! Make, draw or paint a map of your favourite walk.

Show us where you have been walking during lockdown.

Maybe you can make a collage using photos, blocks, seeds or toys, or how about making a map in Minecraft or plotting your walk on an electronic map? We have put some ideas together here to give you some inspiration, but now it’s up to you to decide how to depict your favourite walk. We really look forward to seeing what you come up with. Our winners will receive their own pair of CLAAS overalls with their name embroidered on them.

Send us a DM (direct message) on our Facebook or Instagram pages.

Or post your entries to: Emily Baylis CLAAS UK LTD, SAXHAM, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP28 6QZ email your entries to trac.uk@claas.com

8 letter word: COMBINES 5

E A

L

I

O

S

A

T 8

A

C

R

1

A

3

1. A pea.

2. A potato.

3. An onion.

F

M

R T

3 4

M M

9

1

B

E

O

L

A

W N

B

4

I A

7

K

2

D

PINWHEEL PUZZLE

2 5

9

A Cow CRACK THE BINARY CODE:

BRAINTEASERS

4 6

11 20

5 9

15 26

46

WHAT AM I?

E

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B

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6

Hay Bale Bundle claas.co.uk

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16

Spring 2021

Fun Sheep Facts • In New Zealand there are more sheep than people • A female sheep is a ewe (say you) • Sheep do not have teeth on their upper front jaw.

Instead, the lower teeth press up against a hard upper palate to breakdown food • Sheep have incredible memories. They can recognise over 50 individual sheep and people and remember them for years!

•T he process of giving birth is called lambing • Lambing can start as early as December and go on to as late as June • 15 million ewes give birth every year • A mother sheep can recognise her lambs from their own unique call or ‘bleat’.

•S heep have an excellent sense of smell • A large group of sheep together is called a flock • Sheep are mammals and are related to goats • Sheep have four parts to their stomach that allows them to digest plants and grasses.

•A male sheep is called a ram • Sheep eat vegetables, plants and grasses • On each foot a sheep has a hoof split into two toes.

•T hey have thick fur called wool that grows all the time like your hair does •W ool is cut once a year. This is called shearing, and people who do it are called shearers •T he wool is made into warm clothes for us to wear.

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17

Spring 2021

1

ENTURES O V D A F

ALY ARION

the

ALY ARION

2

Spring is here and another 20 lambs were born last night. These all now need moving out of the barn to make space before the next lambs are born.

3

“Aly can you please move the new lambs and their mums into the field,” asks Farmer Green as he is very busy himself feeding the rest of the animals on the farm.

“Yes of course!” says Aly and he spends the rest of the day going backwards and forwards from the barn to the field with a trailer full of little lambs

4

Now the sheep and lambs are happily playing in the field in the sunshine and Farmer Green is really thankful to Aly. “Well done Aly the ARION.”

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18

Spring 2021

PINWHEEL 8

1

See page 15 for solutions

Read the clues and put the four letter word answers into the grid, starting from the outer squares and working in.

When all the clues are completed you will find a eight letter word in the grey squares, clockwise starting from number 9.

2

9

15 5

9 7

6

3

2

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

5

The title of this magazine.

Ex-Hire or Ex-____.

Agricultural land.

A baby sheep.

A green fleshed fruit with hairy skin and black seeds.

4

6. Jack grew a ____ stalk.

7. Hay bundle on the farm.

8. A CLAAS tractor range.

8 letter word:

________

Hay Bale Bundle Can you fill in the hay bales with the missing numbers? The number in each space is the total of the two numbers below it.

Convert the binary codes into images. Leave all “0” pixels clear and colour all pixels that have value “1”.

0000001001000000 0011001111001100 0111110000111110 1100110000110011 0110100000010110 0011100000011100 0001110000111000 0001011001101000 0001111111111000 0001111111111000 0000110000110000 0000100000010000 0000101001010000 0000101001010000 0000110000110000 0000011111100000

BRAINTEASERS What am I? A seed with three letters in my name. Take away two and I still sound the same. What am I?

I have eyes but I can’t see.

I live in the dark until you need me. What am I?

Take off my skin and I won’t cry, but you will! What am I?

Look out for TRAC in Summer 2021.

Do you have a story or a video link to share with us?

Email trac.uk@claas.com claas.co.uk

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Colour me in

Clue: All vegetables

6

4

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