Discbines Vs Conventional Haybines

My father wasn't on board at first but after one day on the tractor with the disc mower he swore he'd never go back and wished he'd had one 25 year ago!

I will say I'm sure or hope a new sickel haybine would cut and perform better then the early 70's vintage one we had. We cut a fair bit of hay and a 9ft works good for square baling which is all we do. In my area many farmers still use the 12-14ft hydro swing sickel machines too. Straight alfalfa in clean fields here a sickel machine works fine. Add mole hills and grass to the mix and it gets difficult some years.

Last fall a custom guy I know with a slef propelled disc mower was real busy cause sickel mowers simply couldn't cut last years second cut. It was one of those real tough ones.

So we got a CIH 3309 which is a New Idea 9ft painted red. NO comparison when it comes to cutting speed. Sure the old haybine cut hay but nothing like this disc mower. Some days with the old haybine I would be on and off constantly unpluging the cutter bar. Especailly in our 2nd cut with fine wet grass in it under the alfalfa. That stuff was a pain to cut sometmies but with the disc mower its no problem.

I will say though in fields where the alfalfa is laying down bad the disc mower does not clean it off as good when you travel the way its laying.

The blades last a long time too. As long as your not leveling out mole hills all day!!! Thats hard on them when you smash through mounds of dirt constantly at high speed.

I feel its best if you don't stick a 150hp tractor on a little 9ft disc mower etc. I use a 85-95 hp tractors on my 9ft mower and its seems about right. You can feel it when the disc mower is working hard etc. Also keep your blades sharp, its cuts way harder when you just have little chunks of metal left spinning around. Plus it doesn't make as clean as cut either with crappy blades.

I have not noticed any differance in regrowth over the last 15 years.

So I'd give disc mowers the "thumbs up" especailly if you have lots of acres to cover.

But if your only doing a small amount then it may not be economically practical when you can find old haybines for a few hunderd bucks.

I have shopped them 3 times and declined all 3 times. I hear what people say, and have seen fields cut by them, but I just don't like them.....an then there is the mounting and dismounting, the sideways load on the tractor, and the relative cost.

I like my JD 1209 swather just fine. The only thing that I can't cut is wire grass and I don't encounter that very often; usually not haying, but cleaning up a pasture. So I get out my bush hog thing and go to whacking; prefer that anyway as you never know what you are going to encounter cleaning up and I'd rather have the mower directly behind me than out to the side where it can get caught on something, or I misjudge an obstruction that I CAN see.

Mark

Tell me about the oil. I understand the towers on each end are oil filled as is the bottom where the gearing is. Have you had any problems with leakage? Is there any maintenance associated with that?

What PTO hp is the 168? Trying to correlate your tractor size vs 8' mower vs your comments.

Do you leave it on the tractor all the time or do you remove it after cutting? Hence how difficult is it for you to remove and replace it?

Thanks,

Mark