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East of Broken Bow | I have watered hay fields with gated pipe. Ran a ridger very shallow, with only every other shank down. Worked very well, and wasn't nearly as rough as you would expect. If you can lay the windrows close to the direction of the grooves, it helps as well.
As to swing arms, people have love-hate relations with them. First, as they turn on and off, they change the water requirements of the pivot, if your pump can't handle the change, you will hate it. They are great when they work, but the swing arms I have been around cause 5-10X the troubles as the rest of the pivot, but these are older systems. Perhaps the new ones are perfected now. However, I can drive you past several fields where the corner swing arm is laying outside the field in the weeds, and the corner is being watered by a little 1 or 2 tower used pivot. In many cases, you can buy a couple used 1 or 2 tower pivots for less than the corner arm would cost, and they will be more trouble free.
As for ruts, nothing I have used works nearly as well as these for minimizing ruts. On flat ground you can hardly tell where the pivot went:
https://agri-trac.com/
Edited by HuskerJ 5/7/2026 22:52
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Educate me on Center Pivot Irrigation
