Need advice on buying a mower for tractor

[luvmyjersey1]

We have about 10 acres in hay and would want to mow it ourselves before the baling crew comes to put it up. Also would mow pastures as we rotate stock out. Flat, no rocks, mixed grass. We have a 55hp 4wd John Deere. Something uncomplicated would be great. Looked at sickle bar mowers on Ebay. What to you folks suggest? Thanks in advance!

[sammyd]

Drum mower
much less complicated than a sickle.

[genebo]

You can mow pastures with a bush hog or anything else. You need to cut hay with something that only cuts the grass once, like a sickle mower or disc mower. A flail mower will also work, but is really high maintenance.

Mower/conditioners are the best for cutting hay for dry baling. A haybine is a combination sickle mower and conditioner. A discbine is a combination disc mower and conditioner. The conditioner helps the grass cure faster. Sometimes that makes the difference in getting in a hay crop, by curing the hay a day sooner.

If you're baling wet hay (haylage), the conditioner is no help.

Your tractor should be strong enough to pull any style mower you want. A consideration is how narrow a track the tractor/mower makes when transporting. Some haybines or discbines won't tow directly behind the tractor, so need a wider path or gate to get through.

I'm still cutting with an old JD 39 sickle mower. Like most haying equipment, it breaks too often and costs too much to repair. I'm looking for an opportunity to move up to something better and more reliable. I still use the sickle mower because it has another purpose, mowing alongside the pond banks.

[Jennifer L.]

Get an older New Holland Haybine. You don't have power enough to run any kind of discbine and you'd be a fool to spend the money on one with only ten acres, anyway. OK, I take that back, you might be able to run a New Idea 5209 with a 55 horse. But it would be pushing it.

The NH machines run forever, if you have no rocks you shouldn't ever have serious trouble with the knife. It's mainly a matter of keeping gear oil in the gear case and greasing it every day. With ten acres anything you buy will be still in the barn when you quit farming.

Have fun! I'm not really nuts about haying but I enjoy getting mowing most of all.

Jennifer

[Tad]

You might have trouble running a discbine with a 55 horse tractor, the smallest one we had was a 9'7" and ran it with a 85 horse tractor. I don't think the make that model anymore either. I would look for a old new holland sickle mower, they are a project to fix sometimes but if you have very few rocks and only ten acres you should be fine. We had a JD 1218 moco before our first discbine, if you find one of those RUN THE OTHER WAY!