AFTER battling through rocky paddocks and snapping tynes while seeding year after year, Kainton cropper Andrew Dayman has done away with a spring seeding system and moved to "gentle" hydraulics instead.

This will be Andrew's third season using a Flexi-Coil 5500 18.2-metre hydraulic tyne seeder and he said this year's "almost perfect" start on the Upper Yorke Peninsula meant he could finally see what it was made of.

"For the past few years, we have not had decent rain until June and we had staggered germination, so the seeder's performance was unclear," he said.

Andrew, along with his father Jeff and brother Michael, began seeding on April 21 and cropped 2300 hectares of wheat, barley, peas, beans and lentils.

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The Dayman family's previous seeder, a 15.3m-wide machine, had a spring tyne system and in 2017, about six tynes and 10 knife point tungsten tiles were replaced after it ran into trouble seeding rocky paddocks.

"The tyne would snap back too fast after hitting rocks and snap the pin - as the spring compresses over the rocks, it shoots back, whereas hydraulics are very gentle, it eases back into position," he said.

"It was costing a lot of money to keep maintaining it and it also caused a lot of downtime fixing it."

So, Andrew said the Flexi-Coil's hydraulic tyne system was its main attraction but also its pressure adjustment function.

"I can easily increase the pressure greatly to suit each paddock," he said.

Using knife points was also a priority for Andrew.

"We have looked at a disc system but we were concerned about knocking bearings out and also bending discs over the rocks," he said.

"Hairpinning can be an issue with discs on softer coastal soils and it causes seed placement issues.

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"It tends to push into the stubble rather than cut through it and the seed sits in the stubble groove and does not germinate. "

But Andrew said the new seeder was able to easily glide through a large amount of summer weeds and prickle bushes.

"The pressure adjustment has a lot to do with that too and seed placement has been great - it goes under the soil at the correct depth and that's all I worry about," he said.

Despite gaining an extra 3m in width when compared with the previous seeder, running costs have remained the same.

"I am sowing at about 9 kilometres a hour and using the same tractor as before - fuel costs have not changed," Andrew said.

But, he did cut his time in the tractor at seeding this year by almost a week.

Despite having a brilliant run with a well-timed break and follow-up rain, Andrew said the new seeder was able to cover more ground and had better efficiency than past seeders.

"I was able to sow about 160 hectares a day in about 12 hours, whereas before it was about 135ha," Andrew said.

"It has a better sowing area and it is amazing that by increasing the seeder size by just 3m, it has saved us so much time."

Previously, Andrew would take 21 days to get his program knocked in but it has decreased to just 16 days.

It is not just its ability to "skip along" paddocks that makes the Flexi-Coil 5500 suit Andrew's paddock soil type, but also its ability to form moisture-saving "ridged" furrows.

"The soil type out here varies between grey loam, red loam and sandy flats - it copes with all soil types well," he said.

"It ridges up the soil and forces all the moisture into the furrow.

"Even if we just get 3 millimetres of rain, the ridge washes it into the seed bed and acts like a corrugated roof."

Andrew also said the press wheels that followed the knife points completed the job well.

"It makes it so neat," he said.