An eagle eye for machinery innovation | Farm Weekly | WA

Up the far end of Richardson Street, opposite the CBH receival site, is Eagle Eye Engineering run by Brookton born and bred Daniel Watkins, 28 – a qualified boilermaker turned remarkable self-taught industrial designer – and his wife Whitney, 29.

It is now built in four sizes, from 2.5 to 4 tonne capacity, with particular design attention to the feedout choke and area around the auger so it will feed a variety of grains or lupins cleanly.

“We can make a significant difference to your feed program across 12 months by helping eliminate overfeeding or underfeeding with that pin-point accuracy through the smart system that we created and which no other feeder had ever been able to do before.

The trail feeders, bale feeders and Target Control have all won awards. including New Innovation, Farm Inventor, Best Emerging Technology and New Release, at Wagin Woolorama and Dowerin and Newdegate machinery field days in 2021 and 2022.

Like the enterprise with his wife, Calibre Spraying – which operates out of the same address in Richardson Street with Eagle Eye Engineering doing the manufacturing – started with repairs to a boomsprayer and transitioned on a handshake agreement to design and manufacture.

“Calibre is the middle ground in that it’s a trailed implement and the operator is sitting in a tractor, (but) as far as the booms go and the technology – which is what matters in getting spray to plant – you could take our technology and put it on the back of a $1 million SP sprayer and it would be competitive – no question – in terms of boom ride, performance and technology.