Off set mower recommendations. ?
I think I have finally wore out my big old brush hog,
It was a good one ,but after years of abuse , there is not much left to fix.
So iam thinking of getting a off set type of mower , one that will get under the trees , while keeping the tractor in the sod , away from the branches .
Hopefully one that will chop up pruning branches on the ground without breaking.
I am not familiar with the newer mowers,so looking for recommendations .
What do you recommend ?
30-50hp. Range
There are side mount flail mowers if you have the $$ or can find one used. That should handle modest sized prunings too. Most efficient, tried and true would be a sickle mower, mid mount so you can keep a good idea of where the end is, rear mount the operator needs to be in kind of an awkward twisted position to keep an eye in the end. Most big apple orchards where I grew up used sickle mowers. Little sticks sickles will handle, but anything much bigger than a pencil would risk breaking blades…
WoodMaxx has a nice 3 pt hitch flail mower with a hydraulic offset adjustment. They seem pretty reasonably priced. We have one of their PTO chippers and it’s been great. We’re considering a flail mower from them. They offer a few different sizes, with and without hydraulic offset.
I agree sickle mowers are great for mowing under trees. But actually, in my experience, sickle mowers are more durable than you allude.
I use a sickle mower under my trees. I almost never break sections (blades) no matter what I put through it. When I mow under my trees, many times the sickle “dives” under the wood chips and just chews right through the wood chips, which are pretty large chunked.
I’ve used it mowing friends pasture before, and cut trees which would barely fit in between the rock guards (easily 1" trees). Sometimes if my peach trees are hanging out in the aisleways, I’ll pull the mower up vertical and drive down the row “pruning” the overhang that way. Sometimes those branches are 1" plus.
Maybe the sections are tougher now than they used to be. The sections made nowadays will pretty much only break if they hit rocks. My sickle mower is hydraulic driven and generally stops when I hit a rock, but I think even PTO driven sickles will stop if the clutch is set right. I didn’t change out any sections last season, and I can’t remember for sure, but may not have replaced any sections the season before either (although I have one section on there which about 1/3 of the tip is broken off and needs to be changed).
I really like mowing under trees with a sickle mower. The only thing I don’t like about mine is that it’s too short. I think it’s just 5’. I’d like to have a 7’ sickle for greater reach.
A big plus for sickles is that they are generally pretty cheap, because everyone has moved to disk cutters for mowing hay.
I started mowing hay with a sickle mower at about 12 yrs age. Changed and replaced many blades. I’m going to look up disk cutter and see what the new thing is.
Thanks for the info everyone.
I don’t know much about disk / flail mowers
Have used a sickle bar befor, horse drawn.
They seem kind of fragile , I assume the newer ones are tougher.
Have seen people mowing hay with new mowers at 5 times the speed you could mow with a sickle bar…and they never seem to look back.
Thanks
Keep it coming ,if any one has ideas
Sickle mower do require a bit more maintenance. But I’ve not found the maintenance excessive. And they are simple. I absolutely abuse mine. I run it through anything.
I think if someone is mowing hay all summer, a sickle wouldn’t make sense. Too much maintenance running it eight hours a day, which is why most farmers have moved to disk mowers.
But for an orchard, unless it’s a huge orchard, not that much time is spent mowing, so there is very little maintenance.
Another advantage of a sickle mower is they take almost no horsepower to run. As Hillbilly mentioned, the old sickle mowers were wheel driven and could be pulled by beasts of burden.
A decent sized disk mower can take 80 horses or more, but they can mow faster.
Hillbilly, here’s a closeup. Don’t let the hydraulics intimidate. I think pto driven sickles work almost as good as hydraulics. Plus they can be removed easier.
