Rethinking when you service the seeder: a whole-farm efficiency question

By Chanel Duggan, WMG Project Officer

Seeder maintenance is a standard part of every broadacre operation. The timing of it, however, is rarely questioned. For most businesses, the seeder gets serviced in late summer or early autumn, shortly before it is needed. That is how it has always been done, and in many cases it works fine.

But as farms scale up and seeding windows tighten, the pre-season period is carrying more and more competing demands. Workshop time, labour, parts sourcing and machinery readiness all converge in the same few weeks. For some businesses, that concentration of pressure is worth examining.

One question worth considering is whether completing major seeder maintenance immediately after seeding, rather than immediately before it, might suit some operations better.

The case for post-seeding maintenance

The logic is straightforward. Pack the seeder away in June or July with the season still fresh in everyone’s mind, fix what needs fixing, and park it ready to go. By the time February arrives, the pre-season workload is already one task lighter.

Judeen Farm near Warradarge is one example of an operation that has moved in this direction, with post-seeding maintenance allowing fault identification while wear patterns are still visible and operators can clearly recall what gave them grief during the run. Rather than relying on memory months later, issues can be assessed and acted on while machine performance is still recent.

There are broader efficiency arguments too. Moving major seeder servicing into winter may spread workshop workload more evenly across the year, reduce congestion in the already busy pre-seeding period, and make better use of staff during quieter operational phases. Machinery can be parked fully serviced and genuinely ready, rather than arriving at seeding with maintenance still in progress or recently rushed.

Trade-offs worth considering

This approach is not without its own complications, and whether it suits a given business depends on several factors.

Storage is the most obvious one. A fully serviced seeder sitting unused for eight to ten months needs appropriate undercover protection, and some operations may not have the shed space to accommodate that. A pre-season check before the machinery goes back to work is also worthwhile regardless of when the major service was done.

Winter labour is not always available. June and July compete with spraying, fertiliser applications, livestock operations and other servicing programs depending on the enterprise mix. For some businesses, the pre-seeding window is actually quieter and therefore a better fit for workshop time than the middle of winter.

Cashflow timing is worth considering too. Bringing maintenance expenditure forward by several months may not suit every business’s financial position or preferred payment timing.

A systems question more than a machinery question

The practical value of reconsidering maintenance timing is not really about the seeder itself. It is about how that timing decision sits within the broader operation.

If moving maintenance to winter reduces pre-seeding bottlenecks, improves machine reliability, smooths labour demand across the year, and increases readiness for a compressed sowing window, then the benefit extends well beyond the workshop. For businesses where the pre-seeding period is already stretched, that is worth examining carefully.

A few questions worth sitting with: Are machinery issues from the current season being forgotten by the time servicing comes around? Is pre-seeding workshop pressure creating bottlenecks that flow into the sowing program? Does winter genuinely offer better labour availability in your business? Is your machinery storage set up for long-term readiness? And if the break of season arrives in a narrow May window, will your seeder be ready to go when it does?

There is no universally correct answer on timing. What suits one business may not suit another, and the decision depends on labour availability, storage capacity, enterprise mix and how the pre-seeding period sits within the broader operation. For businesses where pre-seeding pressure is a recurring challenge, it may be worth reviewing whether maintenance timing is contributing to that and whether shifting the schedule would help.