what do I do with 100 acres of pasture?

[Latestarter]

I was told you should have a tractor with horsepower about equal to the number of acres you'll be dealing with. Not sure how that works on thousand + acre spreads Personally, I wouldn't go less than ~30-35HP. I mean if you think about it, most of your bigger lawn mowers are using 24HP motors.I know that's what's on my 50" mower. I own ~20 acres, maybe 10 of it in pasture, and have my heart set on a 40-47HP Branson. Though I'd get the 35HP model if the price was right. I'll take just about any tractor that's running if offered free...

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

One thing I forgot to add in my previous post where I asked about the kind of tractor is that I will need some help in identifying the kinds of features I should have or should avoid when I buy a tractor and and why I should do that. Also, I will need so help with the terminology, as I usually don't know what it means. For example, here is the copy from the web site of the company where I bought my used John Deere Gator a couple of weeks ago:

"Kubota L-2800 4wd $xx,xxxx. L-2800 with loader, R-4 Ind tires, 8 speed trans, only 358 hours and in very good condition."
"Kubota M-8540, 4wd $xx,xxx. Just in, M-8540 4wd tractor with cab, heat and air. This is a very nice tractor with the hyd shuttle, loader, quick attach bucket, dual remote hyd, big rear wheel weights and only has 2067 hours. It is a local tractor, has been kept in garage and is in very good condition."
"John Deere 5083E 4wd W/loader $xx,xxx. Just in local tractor with brand new John Deere H-240 loader. Tractor has triple hyd and Euro quick attach. Also has 12X12 power reverse, econo 540 2 speed PTO and air ride seat. This is a very nice tractor, does not have exhaust burner or use DEF. Only 1089 hours on this one, and is a very good tractor."

The above copy resembles English, but where I would expect to see nouns I find instead a sequence of letters that have no meaning to me, such as "R-4 Ind tires", "hyd shuttle", "dual remote hyd", "triple hyd and Euro quick attach". Huh????

See, I told you that comparing Texas Aggies to lettuce was insulting to the lettuce.

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[Latestarter]

Generally, the numbers after the name indicate horsepower... so 2800 = 28HP, 8540=85HP, 5083=50HP. More HP = more $$ to purchase. R4 industrial tires indicates the tread pattern. There are different patterns for different tractor applications. Since you'll be "farming" the R4 is a good pattern for you. Not a tire tread you'd want to use on a golf course... Hydraulic Shuttle means the transmission is like an automatic vice standard with clutch. 2 speed PTO (Power Take Off) is a very good thing to have as different attachments require different PTO speeds. The PTO is what turns the shafts of the auxiliary equipment you're pulling, like that bush hog. Some aux equipment requires higher PTO horse power as well as speed. 4 wheel drive is really important if you're in a place that get's wet. You don't want your tractor sucked into the mud in the middle of your field. Most tractors now use quick attach implements like the bucket, hay forks, fork lift blades etc that are easy to swap out on the arms of the front loader arms, etc.

I wish a certain member was present as her husband works on tractors and would probably be better able to give sage advice. I believe @greybeard worked for Kubota so might also have good input to give. From my limited database, I personally shy away from those big green machines as most of their stuff is their own company stuff so you can't use aftermarket equipment for repairs, hence repairs and maint/upkeep is mucho dinero.

 

[greybeard]

There are different patterns for different tractor applications. Since you'll be "farming" the R4 is a good pattern for you.

R4 is an industrial tire tread, and usually do not perform well if pulling or pushing dirt implements but are sometimes used on hay work tractors. There are other tread types between each of these.

Ag tires are closer to self cleaning than the others..they push or sling the dirt and mud out of the treads. Only place I've ever seen R2 used is in the rice fields. They are aggressive grip, but wear quickly on harder ground because there are so few rubber lugs sticking up around the circumference.

My place as been known to get a little wet and muddy. I've never had a need for 4wd on a tractor or a pickup. 4wd does come in handy if you do a lot of front end loader work because the load on the front means not as much weight on the rear tires and the rears won't grab as good.

 

[Baymule]

My little Kubota has a quick change attachment feature instead of 3 point hook up. I love my quick change! It is easy and fast to change attachments. I don't know how far up the horsepower number a quick change can be used. You might keep this in consideration.

 

[Bruce]

and cut the pasture myself, would the cut grass help to return nutrients to the soil the same way that mulching grass for a lawn does? Or would I just be killing the grass if I did not rake and bale it?

See, you know more than you think or you wouldn't have asked that question @greybeard can correct me but I think if you are cutting and not baling a flail mower will chop it up better than a brush hog.

They mentioned growing pollinator covers

Oh, nice idea for the non "hayable" area! Get yourself some beehives and be a friend to everyone around! And they can pollinate the fruit trees you plant in that area

Did anyone ?? If not, well I just did.

 

[greybeard]

See, you know more than you think or you wouldn't have asked that question @greybeard can correct me but I think if you are cutting and not baling a flail mower will chop it up better than a brush hog.

What size, brand, and number of hours of tractor and mower do you folks think I should get, if I get one? Of the 100 or so acres I have, 10-15 are not worth cutting for hay (and the hay baling folks could not cut those pastures, as they are already growing up with small saplings and the hay balers' flailing mowers couldn't handle them). Yet I hate to let those pastures turn back to forest. There is a second spring-fed pond in the far back pasture that is as nice as the one in the picture I posted. But it is starting to get overgrown. So I would like to cut down all of that grass and the samplings and weeds. (Miss @farmerjan , I am way too late to get the weeds this year, but if I get the tractor and mower, I promise I will get after them next year! ) I don't want to buy too small of a tractor but not too large of one, either, as I don't plan on plowing or baling hay and don't want to waste money on things I don't need. So recommendations are welcome.

To answer both.
Flail mowers don't do well in heavy thick grass such as bahia, coastal bermuda, Tifton, and other grasses that spread by runners. You 'can' cut it, but you have to slow your speed down quite a bit. If the ground is loose or a little damp, a flail mower will pull some of it up by the roots too.

Grass such as tall fescue, bluegrass, ryegreass they will do better on.

Saplings? Depend what kind and what diameter they are.
In all the years of using a rotary cutter mower (brush hog) I've broken exactly one blade, and for several years, was cutting anything the front of the tractor could bend down, run over and get over, and I could usually run pretty fast with it. I think this one is a 6' Rhino behind a 50hp Leyland 2wd diesel, but it may be the 6' Modern brush hog.

After

A brush hog does leave some big stuff chunked out the back end, depending how big it was before you ran over it, and some people want their cuttings to be little bitty stuff that will decompose quickly.
Nowadays, I haven't hooked on to either of those mowers in 3-4 years, maybe in 5 years.

The stuff that comes out the back of the mowers I use now looks like this:

I don't believe in cutting/mowing down cow feed.

 

[greybeard]

Oh, I forgot...the guy I sold 17 acres that adjoined my place, brought a flail mower here from his horse ranch out in Molson Tx where he had been using it to cut Klinegrass...it's a bunch grass. He tried cutting the bahia/coastal mix on that 17 acres and I looked over and it looked like a mosquito fogger. He smoked 2 sets of belts on it.

There are several youtube videos where a side by side comparison of flail versus rotary mowers is done, but every one I've seen are a staged event, cutting short grass and they intentionally have the tractor with the rotary mower running slower than it should be...it's a sales gimmick. Here's one of them. I guarantee , I can, using the same tractor and same mower, can cut that piddly little grass 3x as fast as the guy is in the video. It's a joke.

A brush hog is able to multiply it's torque by way of inertia that the spinning mass of the blades and blade arms build up. It's like a big 6' diameter flywheel, and because the blades pivot on the arms, you can start it spinning from a dead stop even in high grass and pretty heavy vines and crap. The flail mower has a smaller diameter drum, maybe 2' in diameter including the flails, and it has to rely solely on it's gearbox and the tractor engine's hp to make torque.
If you will watch what happens around 7:25 in the following video, you will see why I do not like flail mowers.

 

[Donna R. Raybon]

Please find someone to educate you on safety, too! Having grown up farming, it was just part of my background and repeatedly hammered into my being by father and grandfather. You can get maimed, crippled and killed so easy even when you KNOW what you are doing around tractors and machinery. I can easily give you a list of folks I know who have broken limbs and been killed in farm machinery accidents. Rolling tractors over, getting run over on the road hauling hay/machinary, sucked into baler while trying to unclog uptake, cutting a leg nearly off with a brush cutter, and so forth and so on. Knew the victims personally.
I consider myself lucky that I have pretty much gotten to 'retirement' from farming with mostly minor injuries.

Found something that works a lot better than a JD Gator, too! An old four wheel drive Subaru station wagon or hatchback is great!!! With all terrain tires will go about anywhere you want, has heat and air, and you can take on road if you want. Get a pretty decent one for under $2K. I have hauled goats, hay, feed, calves, foals, people, machinery parts...... in one. Never cared for price or the ride in a Gator as they are too rough and bouncy.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Miss Donna ( @Donna R. Raybon ),

Thank you for the caution regarding safety. In my search for info about tractors and implements, I will also try to find some info on safely operating that equipment.

I wish I had looked for a Subaru back when I was looking for a UTV. One of my neighbors advised me to get a Toyota 4x4 pickup instead of a UTV. When I searched for them, I couldn't find one with less than 250,000 miles and they were all north of $10,000. So I decided to buy a used JD Gator. But dummy me never considered buying a AWD Subaru!

After searching and searching for different tractors on tractorhouse.com and not understanding most of what was written there, I decided to see if I could find an introductory book on tractors. I was excited when I found a book titled "All About Tractors". Then I read the description of the book: it was 8 pages and intended for young kids! Dang! (Although it probably would have fit my Texas Aggie I/Q!) So I will keep looking for a source for such info. One thing I don't want to do is buy something only to find out later that I could have used a particular feature that would have made things a lot better if I had only known. I remember when I bought my first pickup, a 1987 Chevy S-10 extended cab demo. I wanted reclining bucket seats in it. It had bucket seats but they didn't recline. I didn't discover that until AFTER I took delivery. What would have cost me $60 to upgrade before buying was now going to cost me over $1000 after buying the truck. Doh!

So if anyone out there knows where I can find a primer on tractors and other farm equipment, please let me know.

Senile Texas Aggie