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sycle type mower vs discbine
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B Creech
Posted 6/28/2011 16:52 (#1839530 - in reply to #161298)
Subject: Re: sicle type mower vs discbine


E Central Ar
Jim - 6/11/2007 21:58

The uneven hillside pasture ground I was cutting had a lot of small dips and rises - most of which you could not really see under the heavy hay.  This is a pasture which had not had hay made in quite some time.  As a novice in the moco department, I just started along the fence and made circles around the field. This resulted in a lot of going up and down the hillside when I probably would have been better off trying to stay more on the contour, lifting and turning on the headlands as you would with a planter even though I'd end up driving over more of the end windrows.

The moco tires are a good 4 to 6 ft behind the cutterbar. With the undulations of the ground, when I came to a rise the cutterbar would cut much closer to the ground until the tires got to that spot.  Maybe there are some shoes under the cutterbar which could be adjusted which would have floated better but the double sicle did not look like it floated as on a flex platform at all.

I finally figured out I could not let the wheels down to the stops and ran it a couple inches higher. It did not plug there but also wasted a lot of  hay and left uneven stubble height.

One thing about trying something like a moco, it sure gives you an appreciation for the skills of the operators that I see in the field. A guy that can go around corners and keep a uniform width of cut and windrow size is a skilled person. We need to appreciate the skills that are required to run a farming operation.

Overall I agree that the discbine is probably much more efficient for most commercial operations if you have the acres and conditions for it.

Jim at Dawn



Jim
it sounds like the weight of the head was set to heavy and that will cause scalping on uneven ground
Here in southern Mo with our rocks and now the dang armadillos that have moved North I set my weight at no more than 25lbs and I prefer 18-20 that way the head will float over the object instead of cutting thru them
I cut a field yesterday that had terraces, several Diller holes and a few rocks that the cows turned over last winter
I only threw dirt 1 time on and that was on a big diller mound
You have to change the weight anytime you hook to a different tractor if the drawbar height is not identical
There is NO way I would go back with a sickle
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