By the time late winter arrives in the Free State, kraal manure has been sitting, compacting, and drying on the outside while staying dense and moist at the core. It is not the same material you spread in autumn. The top layer scrapes loose, the middle holds together like pressed bale, and the bottom can be wet enough to flow if you disturb it too quickly. A compact side discharge spreader like the 1008 will handle all of that, but only if ground speed, expeller speed, and gate height are set to work together rather than against each other.
Get one variable wrong and you end up with ridging: manure piling unevenly instead of laying flat. Get two wrong and you are cleaning stuck material off the pad and making a second pass on ground you thought was done.
What Late-Winter Moisture Does to Ground Speed
The core problem with pen-packed winter manure is density variation. The material does not flow freely the way summer-spread manure does, and that inconsistency punishes operators who set ground speed by habit rather than by what the machine is actually telling them.
A compact single-auger side discharge is smaller in volume than the dual-auger commercial machines, so the auger feeds the expeller at a rate that suits a tighter box. Move too fast across the paddock and the gate cannot pass material quickly enough to match what the auger is pushing out. The result is material building up against the door rather than exiting cleanly. You see this as ridging on the first few metres, then a thinning out as the box empties, then ridging again if the load settles and blocks the door.
In practice, operators spreading late-winter Free State pack with a 1008 typically need to drop ground speed below what they would hold on the same field in spring. The wetter the core material, the more it wants to clump at the door. Slow down enough that the expeller is never starved but also never overwhelmed. That balance point shifts as the load lightens during the run, so some operators make a conscious throttle adjustment halfway through rather than setting it once and walking away from the tractor controls.
The 1008 sits in the LEO 20 Series lineup as a single-auger model, positioned between the smallest 1006 and the dual-auger 2010 units. Its auger runs at 60 cm (24 in) diameter, which creates a wider base inside the box, steeper side walls to reduce sticking, and a lower loading height. That larger auger diameter is also what reduces tunnelling in pen-pack specifically: the wider sweep pulls material down instead of letting it arch across the top.
Expeller Speed and Gate Height: Starting Points for the First Load
Four things control where manure lands: door opening, expeller RPM, deflector shield angle, and tractor speed. On a compact machine in late-winter conditions, the order of priority matters.
Start with the door. The gate controls how much material exits per metre of travel. Late-winter pack at higher moisture will want a slightly smaller opening than you might use on dry summer compost. Too wide and the dense material dumps rather than flows, producing a thick uneven line on the first few metres before the load consolidates. Start conservatively, perhaps two-thirds of your usual opening, and open it out only after the first trial run confirms the spread is thin enough to lay flat.
Expeller RPM through the PTO sets particle size and throw height. The replaceable hammers on the 20 Series have a 56 cm (22 in) swing diameter. That larger diameter is designed for a finer, more even spread, but it depends on the PTO maintaining consistent speed. Late-winter pack resists the hammers more than loose material does, especially at the start of a load when the box is full and the auger is pushing hard. Running PTO at the lower end of the recommended range risks the hammers bogging briefly when dense clumps hit them. Keep PTO speed within the range specified in the machine documentation, and do not let a slow tractor engine pull it down under load.
The deflector shield governs spread width. Leave it at its standard position for the trial runs. Adjust it only once you have confirmed the spread pattern is landing where you want it laterally. Changing width before you have sorted out the rate and height creates too many variables at once.
If you are comparing how the 1008 stacks up against rear-discharge options for the same kraal material, the side discharge versus rear beaters comparison covers the mechanical trade-offs in detail.
What Two Trial Runs Should Tell You
Before you commit the full kraal to a set configuration, run two loads at your starting settings and inspect the result before adjusting anything.
On the first run, look for three things. Ridging at the start of the pass means the door is too wide for the speed. Thinning out before the box is empty usually means ground speed crept up, or the auger stalled briefly because the pack bridged over it. A fan pattern that piles at the outer edge instead of tapering evenly often points to expeller RPM being too low for the weight of material hitting the hammers.
On the second run, you should have made one change only. Not two. Operators who adjust door height and ground speed simultaneously after the first pass lose track of which variable fixed the problem, and they end up guessing for the rest of the day.
Walk the spread pattern after each run. The material should lie as a consistent mat, not a row of clods. Prod the thicker areas. If they are dense and wet, the door was open too long per metre of travel. If they are dry and fine but thin, the expeller is throwing material too far for the field conditions and you may need to reduce swing angle or drop the deflector slightly.
Check the pad after the second run too, not just the field. A clean-emptying machine leaves very little on the pad floor. If material is sitting along the centre line of the box and not reaching the door, the auger may need more time at the start of each load. Let the auger run for a full thirty seconds before you start moving. This is particularly important with cold, stiff late-winter pack that has not been disturbed overnight.
On larger dual-auger machines the same logic applies, though the two augers running in opposing directions give more even feed to the expeller from the start. For a deeper look at how the setup sequence differs on a bigger commercial machine, the first-day setup guide for the 2010 SLC is worth reading alongside this one.
Before the Full Spread Season Starts
Inspect the expeller hammers before the first commercial load of the season. The oil-impregnated bushings on the 20 Series hammers are weight-balanced, and a hammer that has worn unevenly will throw material inconsistently even if everything else is set correctly. Check that all hammers are present and seated, and that the bushing is not dry or seized from sitting over winter.
Look at the door mechanism. Late-winter cold can stiffen hydraulic seals, and a door that does not open and close precisely will give you variable rates even at a constant speed. Cycle it ten times before the first load to confirm it is moving freely through its full range.
The waterfall floor profile on the LEO 20 Series is designed without compartments so liquid drains toward the door rather than pooling under the auger. In late-winter wet-core pack, that drainage path matters. If any material is frozen against the floor from a previous season, clear it before loading. A frozen plug at the base of the auger will cause bridging mid-run that no gate adjustment will solve.
Spreader hammers take the hardest knocks in this kind of material. If you want to understand what the hammers on these machines are doing at speed, the detail on how side discharge spreader hammers work under load is directly relevant to what you are asking of them in late-winter conditions.
Two trial runs, one change at a time, and a walk of the spread before you commit the whole kraal. That is what separates a clean pad from a day of rework.
