The wife is ready to buy a tractor (she'll be using as much as me!), but i'm the kind of guy who has 1 gazillion questions still. Lots of great info on this site, thank you all. I've been reading a lot and my head's spinning 
So i come to you, oh gods of tractordom, to guide me in the decision
Here's our situation:
We bought 7.25 acres horse property in November. About 2/3rds (guesstimate) of the property is horse pasture (no trees), the rest is lawn (front, back and side of the house, 1.5-2 acres total or so i guesstimate) and house and other structures etc. We have a riding lawnmower (Craftsman brand, maybe 17HP?) with a little trailer (200lb capacity i think?) which is handy for some small tasks. But with all the things we have planned we probably need a tractor of our own to take care of things.
The property doesn't have any really steep hills: The lawn areas are flat and the pasture area is a little bit terraced. We have some horses out 24/7, the others are out only half the time. So they eat down the grass a good bit, no need to mow it constantly. We actually rent another ~10 acres next door and the horses can roam freely across all ~15 acres. The guy we bought the property from said he normally went in with the bush hog twice a year or so, and he does the fertilizing once a year. He's our neighbor and he said he'd be happy to help out mowing the pastures with his tractor. He has a Kubota L3000D, which he said has been big enough for what he's done to maintain the property. That gives us a good starting point at least in terms of size tractor we need i suppose. The new equivalent of that tractor is the L3400 is our understanding.
Here's what we envision using the tractor for:
1) Bush hog the pastures a few times a year. We're probably going to subdivide the pastures so that one area can rest and grow while the others are in use. May increase the number of times we need to mow a few acres?
2) Mow the lawn! I do not relish the thought of doing all that on my little riding lawn mower, it'd take all weekend i bet! So if we're getting a tractor, it'll be doing lawn mower duty as well.
3) Sink fence posts and do fence maintenance. The front lawn is eventually going to be converted into another small paddock for a horse or 2, which means setting up 4 board fencing. We also want to modify / create some fences and such. We're talking several hundred feet of fencing at most probably.
4) Do riding arena maintenance. We need to drag the arena regularly to maintain the footing. Once every few weeks or so i imagine, depending on use. The riding lawn mower can do a light drag, but i figure the tractor may be enlisted to pull a real drag (heavier.)
5) Manure / composting management. Since we have 4-8 horses who are kept in stalls half the time, we have a decent amount of manure. We're thinking of building a manure pile (already got a good location scouted out for it) to compost it and use as fertilizer on the pastures. This means we need something to turn the manure regularly, and a few times a year to scoop it into a manure spreader and to pull the manure spreader through the pastures. We'd be looking at a decent size spreader, like a 50 bushel one i guess?
6) Create the manure / compost area. This would involve digging into a hillside a bit. We'd probably just rent a excavator instead of investing in a backhoe ourselves, since this'd be a one time deal as far as we can tell.
7) Pasture maintenance: This includes using a harrow or something to break up the manure piles out there and such.
8) Grass maintenance both pasture and lawn: Aerate, seed, fertilize, spray weed control etc.
9) Grade some land around a second house on the property. It currently has a level driveway-esque area with bit of a drop-off on one side. We want to change things around a bit and level / move / dig out a bit to make it a more accessible driveway. Probably about 200' long by 20' wide and maybe a foot high or so.
10) Install a few run-in sheds in the pastures. Means level some ground potentially, drag materials out into the pasture, dig holes for posts.
11) Redo a retaining wall (at another location). Dig out the existing cross-ties, dig into the hill some, haul materials (cinder blocks and such) down a steep driveway.
12) Maintain / slightly expand a gravel parking lot (100'x100' or so)
13) Move materials around, from gravel and such for stalls maintenance to wood boards for fences and cross country jumps in the pastures.
14) Some erosion control - scrape / level some areas, move dirt / gravel / logs around.
and i'm sure there'll be plenty other projects we'll think of once we have a tractor Obviously a front-end loader is a must. We'd get a tooth bar with it as well for the digging. We'd want a 4WD (technically front wheel assist i guess.) We'd want to get an auger as well for all the fence work, but those are easy to find both new and used. We may potentially end up maintaining the additional acres next door as well, but for the near future that's not the case.
So the questions we have is what size tractor should we get, and what kind of features should we look for? Like i said earlier, our neighbor's been maintaining all the land (ours and his) using his L3000, so that should give us an indication that that's a big enough tractor i think? We went to a Kubota dealer and a Mahindra dealer in our area (Georgia) to sit on and test a few tractors and get some recommendations from the sales people there. I'm 6'6 tall, so ergonomics are important to me, and thus sitting on the actual thing is useful.
At Kubota we looked at the L3400, both HST and gear. My wife and i are both comfortable with gear shifting, so that was not a problem. I can see HST being nice in some cases, but we're not sure if that's a "nice to have" or a "nah dont need it". They quoted the L3400 gear at $16,700 and the L3400HST at $18,900. They did have a L3240 from before the price increases, and so we could get that one for just about the same price as the L3400HST: $18,700 including the FEL. We were kind of steered away from the L2800, but we're now wondering if that might be big enough for what we'd need? The price was like $17-something i believe. We think the B series is probably too small of a tractor for our needs. But if you have a different opinion, please share!
At Mahindra we looked at the 2816, since that was the only model they had out there to sit on. They had another 55-something, but that's way too big, and they had some smaller ones that we didn't think would do the job. The 2816 is apparently the popular model. It sounds like it'd do the job for us? We could get a 2816 with FEL, tooth bar and auger with 9" bit for $15,500. We also asked about the 3316 (just because i'm not sure the 28HP would be enough, but that's why i'm asking you guys), and with FEL that one would be $17,250.
Between the Kubota and Mahindra we, as novices, do not really see a huge difference in features or quality. I'm sure they each have their pros and cons. Are there any significant differences we should be aware of?
We'd finance the tractor. Mahindra has a 0%/60mos on the 2816, which would be a very comfortable payment for us. The Mahindra 3316 would be financed at 4.49%/60mos. Kubota has no 0%/60mos, so that makes it harder to justify going with Kubota, purely from a payment point of view.
We also looked at some used options on craigslist and such. We saw a few nice package deals on used equipment. But financing used tractors seems hard to find, and then by the time you factor in the interest compared to the 0% when you buy new, the total cost of a used one often is not -that- much less than a new one on which you'd have a warranty. We did find a Kubota 3450 with 698 hrs locally, with a 4ft bush hog, 6ft trim mower, angle scrape blade, box blade, 7000lb trailer and auger for $13,900. That one has been tempting us as well, but we have a hard time finding places that will finance used tractors, and the one we did find said 6 years old or newer only. Do you know of any we could contact about this kind of stuff?
The Mahindra 2816 supposedly has a 2 stage clutch that supposedly is good to keep the PTO going when you're shifting forward-reverse, so that sounds like something useful. The L2800 doesn't have that i believe. Are there any options / specs we should be concerned about? Number of cylinders in the engine? Hydraulics? ...?
So, the wife is eager and ready to get the 2816. Obviously it would be foolish for me to stand in her way, but if there are other options we should look at, i can at least postpone the trigger pulling a little longer So if you have any thoughts on the size of tractor, which brand/model, if the prices i quoted are fair for our area, what kind of attachments we should look for etc, please share them. Thanks!
So i come to you, oh gods of tractordom, to guide me in the decision Here's our situation:
We bought 7.25 acres horse property in November. About 2/3rds (guesstimate) of the property is horse pasture (no trees), the rest is lawn (front, back and side of the house, 1.5-2 acres total or so i guesstimate) and house and other structures etc. We have a riding lawnmower (Craftsman brand, maybe 17HP?) with a little trailer (200lb capacity i think?) which is handy for some small tasks. But with all the things we have planned we probably need a tractor of our own to take care of things.
The property doesn't have any really steep hills: The lawn areas are flat and the pasture area is a little bit terraced. We have some horses out 24/7, the others are out only half the time. So they eat down the grass a good bit, no need to mow it constantly. We actually rent another ~10 acres next door and the horses can roam freely across all ~15 acres. The guy we bought the property from said he normally went in with the bush hog twice a year or so, and he does the fertilizing once a year. He's our neighbor and he said he'd be happy to help out mowing the pastures with his tractor. He has a Kubota L3000D, which he said has been big enough for what he's done to maintain the property. That gives us a good starting point at least in terms of size tractor we need i suppose. The new equivalent of that tractor is the L3400 is our understanding.
Here's what we envision using the tractor for:
1) Bush hog the pastures a few times a year. We're probably going to subdivide the pastures so that one area can rest and grow while the others are in use. May increase the number of times we need to mow a few acres?
2) Mow the lawn! I do not relish the thought of doing all that on my little riding lawn mower, it'd take all weekend i bet! So if we're getting a tractor, it'll be doing lawn mower duty as well.
3) Sink fence posts and do fence maintenance. The front lawn is eventually going to be converted into another small paddock for a horse or 2, which means setting up 4 board fencing. We also want to modify / create some fences and such. We're talking several hundred feet of fencing at most probably.
4) Do riding arena maintenance. We need to drag the arena regularly to maintain the footing. Once every few weeks or so i imagine, depending on use. The riding lawn mower can do a light drag, but i figure the tractor may be enlisted to pull a real drag (heavier.)
5) Manure / composting management. Since we have 4-8 horses who are kept in stalls half the time, we have a decent amount of manure. We're thinking of building a manure pile (already got a good location scouted out for it) to compost it and use as fertilizer on the pastures. This means we need something to turn the manure regularly, and a few times a year to scoop it into a manure spreader and to pull the manure spreader through the pastures. We'd be looking at a decent size spreader, like a 50 bushel one i guess?
6) Create the manure / compost area. This would involve digging into a hillside a bit. We'd probably just rent a excavator instead of investing in a backhoe ourselves, since this'd be a one time deal as far as we can tell.
7) Pasture maintenance: This includes using a harrow or something to break up the manure piles out there and such.
8) Grass maintenance both pasture and lawn: Aerate, seed, fertilize, spray weed control etc.
9) Grade some land around a second house on the property. It currently has a level driveway-esque area with bit of a drop-off on one side. We want to change things around a bit and level / move / dig out a bit to make it a more accessible driveway. Probably about 200' long by 20' wide and maybe a foot high or so.
10) Install a few run-in sheds in the pastures. Means level some ground potentially, drag materials out into the pasture, dig holes for posts.
11) Redo a retaining wall (at another location). Dig out the existing cross-ties, dig into the hill some, haul materials (cinder blocks and such) down a steep driveway.
12) Maintain / slightly expand a gravel parking lot (100'x100' or so)
13) Move materials around, from gravel and such for stalls maintenance to wood boards for fences and cross country jumps in the pastures.
14) Some erosion control - scrape / level some areas, move dirt / gravel / logs around.
and i'm sure there'll be plenty other projects we'll think of once we have a tractor
Obviously a front-end loader is a must. We'd get a tooth bar with it as well for the digging. We'd want a 4WD (technically front wheel assist i guess.) We'd want to get an auger as well for all the fence work, but those are easy to find both new and used. We may potentially end up maintaining the additional acres next door as well, but for the near future that's not the case.So the questions we have is what size tractor should we get, and what kind of features should we look for? Like i said earlier, our neighbor's been maintaining all the land (ours and his) using his L3000, so that should give us an indication that that's a big enough tractor i think? We went to a Kubota dealer and a Mahindra dealer in our area (Georgia) to sit on and test a few tractors and get some recommendations from the sales people there. I'm 6'6 tall, so ergonomics are important to me, and thus sitting on the actual thing is useful.
At Kubota we looked at the L3400, both HST and gear. My wife and i are both comfortable with gear shifting, so that was not a problem. I can see HST being nice in some cases, but we're not sure if that's a "nice to have" or a "nah dont need it". They quoted the L3400 gear at $16,700 and the L3400HST at $18,900. They did have a L3240 from before the price increases, and so we could get that one for just about the same price as the L3400HST: $18,700 including the FEL. We were kind of steered away from the L2800, but we're now wondering if that might be big enough for what we'd need? The price was like $17-something i believe. We think the B series is probably too small of a tractor for our needs. But if you have a different opinion, please share!
At Mahindra we looked at the 2816, since that was the only model they had out there to sit on. They had another 55-something, but that's way too big, and they had some smaller ones that we didn't think would do the job. The 2816 is apparently the popular model. It sounds like it'd do the job for us? We could get a 2816 with FEL, tooth bar and auger with 9" bit for $15,500. We also asked about the 3316 (just because i'm not sure the 28HP would be enough, but that's why i'm asking you guys), and with FEL that one would be $17,250.
Between the Kubota and Mahindra we, as novices, do not really see a huge difference in features or quality. I'm sure they each have their pros and cons. Are there any significant differences we should be aware of?
We'd finance the tractor. Mahindra has a 0%/60mos on the 2816, which would be a very comfortable payment for us. The Mahindra 3316 would be financed at 4.49%/60mos. Kubota has no 0%/60mos, so that makes it harder to justify going with Kubota, purely from a payment point of view.
We also looked at some used options on craigslist and such. We saw a few nice package deals on used equipment. But financing used tractors seems hard to find, and then by the time you factor in the interest compared to the 0% when you buy new, the total cost of a used one often is not -that- much less than a new one on which you'd have a warranty. We did find a Kubota 3450 with 698 hrs locally, with a 4ft bush hog, 6ft trim mower, angle scrape blade, box blade, 7000lb trailer and auger for $13,900. That one has been tempting us as well, but we have a hard time finding places that will finance used tractors, and the one we did find said 6 years old or newer only. Do you know of any we could contact about this kind of stuff?
The Mahindra 2816 supposedly has a 2 stage clutch that supposedly is good to keep the PTO going when you're shifting forward-reverse, so that sounds like something useful. The L2800 doesn't have that i believe. Are there any options / specs we should be concerned about? Number of cylinders in the engine? Hydraulics? ...?
So, the wife is eager and ready to get the 2816. Obviously it would be foolish for me to stand in her way, but if there are other options we should look at, i can at least postpone the trigger pulling a little longer
So if you have any thoughts on the size of tractor, which brand/model, if the prices i quoted are fair for our area, what kind of attachments we should look for etc, please share them. Thanks!
