Somebody please tell me why...

I would love to have one and can think of a multitude of reasons why i should have one....the Mrs unfortunately can think of even more reasons why I dont need one.

I have no way of justifying the cost...but I sure would enjoy having one.

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The day I watched the herd of cattle being moved a guy used one kind of like that to keep the cattle from heading down the road. They had several horses and riders working the herd, but the little scooter thingie was zipping back and forth across the road and the ditches on both sides keeping the herd together on that side. That thing moved fast and the ditches didn't even faze it. Another night and a different situation, but a guy rolled his really nice pickup herding cattle. He wasn't happy about that.

Heck, $400 got me this (24 years ago...LOL! and I still have her) and it still does everything I could ask of it...

Matt

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Besides being able to haul a load to places a pickup can't go these machines are also great for those that can't swing their legs over a quad anymore. Age happens!

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A wise person speaks when they have something to say but a fool speaks just to say something

I dont get it either, I can buy a pretty good ford or ferguson tractor, put a tote box on it for 2 or 3 grand. I could also do a LOT more work with the tractor than the doodle buggy will do for the price of relatively cheap 3 point attachments. things like plowing, discing, planting, cultivating, digging post holes, driving fence posts, mowing, raking, baling hay, grading the drive, the list goes on and on. My feruson 35 is indispensable around my place. I paid 3k for it and the front end loader, bushhog, grader blade. I will put it up against any of those cute little buggies when it comes to snakin logs out of the woods too.







(This log is now my living room floor)

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"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain

Go in between trees.

My neighbor has a 4wd diesel powered Kubota with a heated cab and snow plow...
I doubt 10 grand would touch it !!!

As someone else mentioned, chase cattle. Horses are outdated nowadays except in rough mountain country. No way a pickup can keep up with the tight turns and stops of a rank cow. Use four wheelers too but some cows will lean on them. Kinda scary on fourwheeler. The polaris can push back.

Also, when your running irrigations pumps these things can go through soggy ground much better than pickup and not leave to deep of ruts in a field.

Field of vision is great. Makes driving a fence line a breeze.

Almost as good as a fourwheeler in rough country and much better than pickup.

Neibor has small toyota 4X4 and couple large ones, 2 four wheelers. The polaris gets used constantly.

Our neighbor has one.
"Easter Seals" bought it for him following his stroke several years ago.
The purpose of giving it to him was to enable him to better tend his garden...... and thus sell more stuff at our local produce market.

He uses it for all sorts of activities.
Gets him into areas of his farm that he would not otherwise get to.
He is not able to climb onto a tractor.
He can drive his pick-up truck, but his truck wouldn't fit down some of the trails he travels with this machine.

It's really been a God-send for him.

What I love are the people that get them that own less than 5 acres & then ride them up & down the road! A lot of that around here including several family members.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

I started to get one... but the 11k scared me. Went with a lifted Samurai instead... it'll go anywhere, and keep my warm (mostly) and dry in any weather. 4K beats 11k... and Sammy's resale easily, without much 'loss' in the deal.

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Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

If one farms, and is expecting to make a living farming, one has no problem seeing the myriad of uses for a machine like this. I don't have one, yet. Someday I may. I think people who don't farm for a living lose sight of the usefulness, and the payback of an investment like this. For a hobby farm? Tough to justify. But if you farm to make your living, $10 000 is a tiny molecule in relation to the machinery needed by todays farming operations.

I can think of dozens of uses for a utv that a half ton will fail at.

Fencing in tough terrain, getting at otherwise inaccesible land due to mud, chasing animals, retrieving game, landscaping work, hauling a sheep to the jug or barn, pulling grain augers from one yard to another, trapping remote areas, pulling behind your air drill or other inplements when you head out to your land 10 miles away so you have a way home if need be, carting out a new tire to your field, along with that heavy air compressor, welder, or other tools to fix machinery with. Hauling manure from barn to garden, hauling hot water for butchering hogs, hauling butchered chickens to the house for processing, hauling a bale to the sick or quarantined ewe, hauling mineral to the middle of a muddy pasture, etc...

Many here probably cannot fathom the distance some of us may have to drive to get to the middle of a pasture. We who farm for a living don't have a 1500 square foot paddock, 300 feet of fences to fix, 12 acres of crops to care for, or five ewes to feed and move.

We might have a two mile drive through brush to get to a self feeder, a four mile jaunt on non-existant roads to reach our far grain fields, a thousand ewes to feed, 200 cows, 20 miles of fence to care for, or 3000 acres of crops to scout. Not to mention retrieving a moose 10 miles back in the forest, a 20 mile trapline, etc...

Again, I see a massive usefulness.

We went the cheaper route and bought a good size 4 wheeler and a cart with baloon tires on it. $5K for the $ wheeler and $500 for the cart. Don't know how we ever got along with out it, We would fix fence, I would walk pounding posts dad carried the supply bucket and we went back later to where posts needed to be replaced with the tractor later. Now I sit side saddle on the 4 wheeler, stand on the running board for more leverage to hit the post have the bucket in the cart at arms reach and all the posts I need on the back. 1 man does the work in half the time. We haul tons of wood with it, I can cut wood all winter long. We get 5 or 6 ft snow drifts that a tractor would never go through but we have a snow mobile trail that runs across the property, I can fly up and down that at 25 mph with a full load of wood and it is smoother than the road. Bringing calves back from the pasture is a breeze and in a calveing emergency it is a life saver. Once found a cow out flat and bloated I was the only one home. I tried to sit her up but she wouldn't budge so I put a lead rope on her backed up to her rear end put the rope on the ball hitch and sat her right up and held her with the parking break till the vet got there. Don't know how we got along with out it!

Okay, I'll concede the point on fitting between trees, etc., and maneuverabilty would be different. I've never had an issue with my truck not being able to go where I needed to go, and I've never had cattle that wouldn't follow a feed bucket anywhere I wanted to take them, but I can see where others might.

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Dispatches From The Conservative Underground

Four wheelers are impossible if you are 68, have severe arthritis, a shoulder injury, and loss of muscle mass.

Not all homesteaders are young, muscled, and macho.

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

I plan on getting one when I can afford it. I have a four wheel drive pick up, but a Rhino or Mule will go places my pick up won't. Lots of folks around our place have them. Open car where you can cruise around for a while after the day's work. Visit a neighbor, haul firewood, logs, stones, bricks, gravel, mulch, dirt...Yes, I have done all that for the last five years using nothing but a wheelbarrow over major hills. Why have a motorcycle when a bicycle will do? If a person wants to spend their own hard earned money on whatever, I say good for them. Why have a boat when you can fish from shore? Why have e mail when an envelope and a postage stamp will do?

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"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow the fields of those who don't."-Thomas Jefferson

I have one and I love it. I think it is the most used thing I bought for the farm. It will go places that my tractor won't and a lot safer. I pull my splitter with it and I have a cart that I pull to haul firewood out of the woods. The grandkids love it too.

"O"

Our neighbors have one, bought it used-that's the key. Handy for hauling horse feed, manure, brush, etc.
We have a golf cart-was 1400, lots of $$ for us, bought it 8 yrs ago. Handy to get around 20 ac, & can pull some stuff w/it.

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In my area, folks that have a wee bit of land, to a lot of land gobble these up. They are a 'homestead' status symbol.
Having one of these little sweeties says "yes, I have chickens, and look at the "Cadilac" my birds ride in!"

It's just like the Leuxs in the drive way or the Coach purse.

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I am sure of two things: There is a God, and I am not Him.
The movie Rudy

Fit easily through the center aisle of your barn.

My farm isn't big enough to make one necessary, but I can think of a lot of things I could use it for. A lot of larger horse farms use them in and out of the barn; so much easier than hauling bags of feed down the aisle one at a time...or hauling manure by the wheelbarrow load.