Tillage equipment required for grassfarming?

If you've got fair sod coverage and you're determined to do something, you can do a couple passes with a spring harrow to loosen things up and broadcast seed....let nature do the rest. (less is often better here..)

If It's in really bad shape, and you want it to be a 'first class pasture" disk at right angles till you've got it flattened and the soil is fiine & even. Harrow if you need to, Then you can broadcast seed followed by a 2 passes with light harrow at rt angles and roll it (or use a seed drill followed by a roller). Plan on this when there's going to be moisture to get the seed going.

Wait about 6 to 9 months to get good root structure before you mess around out there again. (This means no critters)

After that, if you don't abuse it and keep the thistle out (at least around here) you won't have to fool with it again for a long time.

Back to your original question....

A complete setup... disk, spring harrow, broadcast seeder (recommend it 'cause you can use most of them for pellitized fertilizer too)..., roller.

Depending on what you want to do with all that grass...

If you're gonna make hay, Flail type mower & rake or haybine, Baler (probably rectangular for a smaller farm)... or hire the baling out. Often done for "shares"...

The labor and liability laws have made it nearly impossible to hire high school kids... (my haybucking carreer ended about 30 years ago !)

Your ag agent can give recommendation for seed mixtures for your area. I think there was (still) even a program where the soil conservation service would give you enough seed to repasture 3 acres a year ....

W. A. Thompson's "The Pasture Book" Not sure if it's still in print. Last edition about 1975. Very good for what your needing.

Phosporus and Potash Institute's "Southern Forages" 2nd edition about $ 25.00

Both maybe located thru the "Progressive Farmer" magazine! www.progressivefarmer.com

Try your county agent or maybe a local cattlemen's association if there is one in your area.

E-mail me if you have a problem locating these books.

But like one of the other posts wrote. Once or twice a year with the brush hog to keep the brush down and rotate the stock. I know my place was weeds and brush when I bought it 8 years ago. I hired the neighbor with a big 8ft pull type brush hog to go over about 10 acres for the first 2 years. Then I bought an 8N and a 4ft brush hog and kept the cedars at bay and I now have very good grass where the soil was any count to start with. Hope this helps.

If your field is already SOD; #1 First with that little 9N ya gotta disc the He-- out of it while it's moist else you'll pull the guts outa the tractor.

That is if you're determined ta reseed it.

The ctitters eat all the good stuff, so you have to mow it once in a while to keep the weeds under control.

I do a complete mowing in the late november and late april. I also do a little bit each month, so that the whole pasture gets mowed once more throughout the summer - can't do it all at once or there will not be anything left for them to eat.

Just mowing it helped, but I could see that it was deteriorating each year. Topical application of enough lime to bring the PH of to 6.5 - 7 (it took couple tons/Acre altogether over three years) helped reduce the weeds - apparently the weeds prefered acid soil. I did a N-P-K test and found little nutrients, so lots of 20-20-20 have been going on it as well the last couple years.

Right now it looks real good. I haven't ran any impliments across it at all. One thing about grazing animals on a pasture is that, since they eat only the good stuff, they poop only stuff with good seeds in it. This tends to naturally re-seed the pasture.