New Member Wants a New (ok, used) Tractor

[TrctrGrl]

Great questions. I am 5' 3" and have rented some serious tractors to brush hog and barely lived to talk about it. The last year has been focused on looking at every tractor ad on Craigslist and researching for the perfect tractor to get the job done and fit my frame.

A man down the street was selling his used tractor and I took it for a drive. He was kind enough to drop by to look at my land and be honest enough to say "Don't buy my tractor, you need a 4 WD Kubota with Hydro and a FEL."

I debated and finally took the exciting plunge this week on the Kubota L3700 with quick attach bucket and easy 3 PT hitch set up. I also got the fluid in the tires for extra weight. The L3800 is replacing the L3700 so you can get a really good deal right now.

I laughed and asked the saleman that now that I have the Kubota do I really need a man too? He said, now that you have a tractor you are a real catch. Good luck and once you sit in the seat you will know if it's the tractor for you. The power will be there for your husband and the comfort and safety there for you.

Welcome fellow New Member - and my gosh at 5'3" you're quite tall (in my book). CONGRATS on the new tractor - sounds like you made a great choice! :thumbsup:

 

[Jaylyn]

Hi TrctrGrl,
I have a New Holland TC 29 that I bought in 2006, traded in my husband's Ford 1939 9N and Ford 1942 8N for it.

I needed to cut the fields, maintain the woods and archery course, landscaping, digging ditches, and everyday chores. One of my big projects with it was building a road, digging a foundation for a 28' x 50' house, spreading 450 yds of dirt, and putting in a septic system.

She does whatever I ask of her.

Like you, I was in the corporate world, healthcare software development in a cube 10 hours a day. My husband ran the tractors and didn't want me on them so I knew nothing about tractors.

In purchasing a tractor, this is what I did.
Research and select 3 brands that have the features you want. Familiarize yourself with the correct terminology prior to speaking with dealers.

Then talk to the dealers. Tell them exactly why you want the tractor and what you will be using it for. A good dealer/salesman will be asking and guiding you. Test drive the tractors. Talk with their service department and also their parts department. Ask all questions you can think of.

Ultimately it is going to come down to the tractor you want and also the support and service you will need from a dealer, whether you buy used or new.

The New Holland dealer was the only one that listened to me and asked me questions and let me test drive different tractors. He then introduced me to the service manager and the parts manger.

The Kubota salesman was nice but not helpful.

The John Deere dealer treated me like a dumb blonde and told me to come back with my husband. You should have seen his face when I walked in carrying my husband's Urn.

Needless to say I went with the New Holland, Brent, the sales manager went over the attachements we had and verified they would work with the new tractor. They also gave me lessons on the tractor.

Since you are a tech writer, then you know what I mean when I say RTM!! Once you have your tractor, read the owners manual. If its a used tractor chances are good you can get the manual online. Go through that manual while standing next to your tractor and learn everything you can about it.

Have fun, its so much better than being in a cube!
Just my 2｢
Jacky

 

[k0ua]

TractrGrl. While I don't have a lot of useful information to add, I would like to elaborate a few points. On the Gear vs Hydrostat question, one subtle point is not that you would have any trouble operating the gear tractor, but that you might feel better at the end of an 8-10 hour day operating the tractor in loader operations. As I have gotten older my left leg really appreciates the fact I now have a hydro tractor again (Kubota L3400HST). I read on another thread, were a gentleman put it in a humorous context, by describing watching his son operate a Non-hydrostat tractor as "swatting flies and stomping rats" all day. My point is a gear tractor is more work, and not as precise as a HST tractor. The hydro tractor gives you the ability one second to creep and the next second later to be at a high rate of speed, this gives a level of instantanous control that cannot be achieved in a gear tractor. It also gives a measure of safety letting you slow down for a fraction of a second, that you might not take the time to clutch and swap gears and just "risk" it. Not a big deal overall, but a "deal" nevertheless. In straight line operatons, (plowing, mowing in straight lines) The Hydro has no advantage, in fact the gear does, thru more power that is not lost as heat in the transmission. But all things weighed, I come down on the side of the Hydro tractor. By the way your thoughtful and articulate post's here are a breath of fresh air, I am very interested in how you make out with your tractor purchase, and look foward to photo's of your new tractor in use on your property. Best of luck.

James K0UA

 

[k0ua]

Mower: In discussing with a dealer, we're rethinking the bush hog mower. Our entire 30 ac (except for one tree line on one of the property boundaries) is pasture, converted from row crops with nary a sapling in sight. So the dealer was saying that maybe a finish mower would be better, given our situation. Any comments?

Don't let me talk you out of a finish mower, but a caveat, with a finish mower is that all of the larger rocks, have got to be found and disposed of or your new expensive finish mower will find them.. and that includes any rocks, that are just sticking up enough for the front end of your mower to roll up into the interior where the blades will wad up in a heartbeat, and and that loud squaling sound and that smoke you will see/smell is your belt disintergrating. Bush hogs just beat on rocks, turn them to pieces and throw them. Another option you might research is a flail mower, they do not throw rocks, and give almost as good a cut as a finish mower, or so I have been told, I do not have personal experience with them, but I mowed 7 acres for several years with a finish mower, and the place looked like a park. My point is a finish mower does a great job, but you have to be really carefully when starting out until all the big rocks are "found".

Also, I dont think anyone has mentioned the bucket on the front end loader, if you can you should try to get a Skid Steer compatible Quick Attach model. This will allow you to take the bucket off of the loader in a few seconds and then hook to to a set of Quick Attach forks, or maybe later a grapple, or a snow push blade in just seconds. A good place to go and learn about this is here:
How To Video Demos - Implements & Attachments

I dont have SSQA compatible loader, and I wish I did, in fact so much so that I am thinking about "biteing the bullet" and paying the extra to get it retrofitted. I would highly recommend you do get SSQA if you can.

James K0UA

 

[kday64]

Blower vs Plow: I was surprised to see on another post how many of you recommended a blower instead of a plow for a long drive with snowdrift problems. From what little I've seen, a blower means you have to attach it to the back and then drive backwards the whole time to clear the drive. Forgive me if I sound like a whiny girl, but that sounds hard to do. I stink at backing up (in cars anyway). Do you guys really look over your shoulder for 1000'+ feet of driveway?

TG,

I just poked around on the Kubota website and there are some larger tractors that can be equiped with Front Snow Throwers. I would recommend against this though because I recently needed my FEL and my rear snow thrower to deal with the 26" of snow that fell on Southeastern CT last week.

My driveway is only 150' long. However, in this last snow storm I did get to clear my entire street of snow. I figure that I cleared about 1/4 mile of a two lane road using Jinny and her BX2789. (The city did not plow my street for some reason.) Unfortunaltly the BX2789 is only 51" wide so it took 6 passes to clear the entire street. My neck felt fine after this but I am pretty sure my wife would have stopped after the second pass. I was loving it. Oh yeah, please remember that I don't normally have to deal with this much snow.

The FEL was of great value because it allowed me knock down and move some of the larger piles I created near the curbs and at the corner. I just wish the city would take the same care. Some of the snow piles created by the city have created dangerous blind corners.

~Kevin

 

[Jerry/MT]

Yes, warm season grass (WSG) is a bit of an oddity 'round here. I used the income after several years of renting out the property (soybean/corn) to invest in planting the pastures in for our future use. I selected the WSG and cool season grass (CSG) combo (in separate fields) for several reasons that I won't go into here, except to say a primary hope is to provide forage for a rotational grazing program from roughly April through Dec. The first year (2008) was an act of faith for the WSG, as it was way more weeds than grass even though I had started with a near ideal situation. I had the seed drilled into a clean field following soybean. However, by the summer of 2010 the WSG field was a gorgeous thick blue-green sea and the neighbors got two highly productive cuttings from it.

As you noted, CSG encroachment will be an issue. I hope to use intensive early spring grazing to knock back invasive CSG in the WSG fields. Limited spot spraying and small scale controlled burns (legal but yikes for neighbor relations!) are other less desirable options. For now, things are under control and I can often be found walking the fields with trusty scythe in hand to go after the errant bunch of whatever. Where there's a will there's a way, eh? So far so good, but time will be the real judge on how our little prairie matures. As you can see, I'm really interested in forage, some might say obsessed. So I'm all ears if you have more you want to discuss more - but we may have to move it elsewhere.

And now back to tractors...

In my other life, I lived near Seattle, WA and worked for a big airplane outfit (whose name I won't mention) as a propulsion engineer. In 1993 I was accepted into a volunteer program run by Washington State University (WSU) Cooperative Extension called Livestock Advisors. We were trained by the university and certified to provide advise to small land owners. The Extension agents were swamped by small land owners questions and had difficulty finding time to support the full time farmers as well as the small ones. So they trained Livestock Advisors to pick up the workload. Most of us were small producers who had been at it for awhile and had some experience. My specialty was Pasture Management and Beef Cattle. We also had some post-Certification training and I took that also. We were volunteers with the title of Extension Livestock Advisor. After I retired but before we started our Montana ranch, I did volunteer work with a Forage Agronomist at the WSU-Puyallup Research Station for about three years.

I'm curious as to how you selected the variety of bluestem to use on your place? Was it a recommendation from a local Extension Agent? Did it have properties that favored success in climates more suitable to CSG? Generally, it's difficult to maintain WSG in such circumstance and you'd be fighting battle you can't win because the climate favors the CSG. We live in a climate that favors CSG and we have irrigation. Our Springs and Falls are cool and our summers hot but I would never think about trying WSG grasses because it's a losing battle.

I have used managed intensive grazing on a small acreage when I lived in WA state. It's a very powerful tool and I would like to use it here but I have to develop watering facilities for our cows to make it work.

Our biggest problem with pastures here is invasive weeds(white top,canada thistle, bull thistle, etc). We have to spray on our 60 acres and a lot of our neighbors don't and that makes doubley difficult for those of us who try to deal with weeds. Weeds are so pervasive that we cannot use our irrigation water to water my wife's garden (she's a certified Master Gardener in WA and MT) because we will bring more weeds to the garden. We have some very tough weed laws in MT but our county does not so a good job enforcing them. This leaves us no other option but to spot spray, as a minimum.

I would certainly like to follow the progress of your WSG "experiment". I discussed doing this very same thing with my Forage Agronomist friend and he told me it wouldn't work in the long run. However that was 10 years ago and maybe there are some new grass varieties that would make it possible.

Best regards,
Jerry

 

[Jerry/MT]

Summary:
Trade off the HST to get more HP (on the ground) at less cost overall but granted less convenience in operation.
- OR keep the HST but back off of the HP (say, 40 max, add weight as needed)
Any further comments?

[Mower: In discussing with a dealer, we're rethinking the bush hog mower. Our entire 30 ac (except for one tree line on one of the property boundaries) is pasture, converted from row crops with nary a sapling in sight. So the dealer was saying that maybe a finish mower would be better, given our situation. Any comments?

I have an HST on my lawn mower and I honestly have no strong feeling one way or the other about them except to say they are horribly inefficient and costly when they break. However, tractor gear transmissions are probably the most expensive part of the tractor. But they've been around for a long time and are rugged as all get out.

As far a mower is concerned, in my opinion, a simple rotary cutter will meet your needs very well, unless you have mucho acres of lawn. It's cheaper and it will mow those areas around barns and building where you can't graze your stock. They are cheaper than a finish mower, can cut tall grass and weeds (not so with a finish mower), and more resistant when you find a rock or and old stump in the high grass. You need roughly 5 hp/ft of mower. I have a 6 foot mower with a 60 HP gearbox, front and rear guards, and a slip clutch which I like better than shear pin protection.

As you noted, you can get more tractor buying used then buying brand new. Since you've ruled out baling, your power requirements have gone down, but I would still recommend a 40-50 HP tractor because you will find you will want to do more with the machine AFTER you have it then you think you will right now.

 

[Verticaltrx]

While everyone on this forum seems to think bigger is better, they aren't the ones writing the check. I for one think you could do everything you mention quite well with a 30hp tractor and still have some money left over for implements. I will agree that 4wd, front end loader, and a hydrostatic transmission are well worth the money.

Since you said that you won't be baling hay, moving round bales, and probably won't be doing much moving of heavy building materials, there goes the main reasons for a bigger tractor.

We have 200ac here (50 open, 150 wooded),have a couple dairy cows, few beef cows, gardens, harvest firewood and about 20-30ac of hay ground. I manage all that with a '53 Ford Jubilee (31hp) and a Kubota B3200 (small 23hp 4wd w/ loader). I use a 5' bush hog and cut about an acre an hour when clipping pastures, use a 6' rear blade for clearing snow, and use the Ford for most of the haying operations. The little Kubota with the loader gets used a lot (also for my construction company) and is a great size for many farm chores and light field work. They both also work well for pulling small trailers, running a post hole digger, moving stuff with a boom pole, etc.

As for haying, I make a few hundred square bales a year with a $1000 baler, $700 sickle bar mower and a free rake and tedder. I found great deals on very good but old equipment and I know how to work on any of it if problems arise. If you are only making loose hay, you need a mower and preferably a rake. The low budget option here would be a sickle bar mower which can be found very reasonably priced, but requires a fair bit of mechanical knowledge to operate and maintain. The more spendy option for a small tractor would be a drum mower. They operate hassle free but also cost a lot more than a used sickle bar. For a rake I would suggest either a side delivery or a small wheel rake. Mow the hay, let it dry and rake it into windrows for collection would be the best bet for low effort loose hay collection.

 

[Jaylyn]

Regarding the Mower

My land is full of swales, boulders, trees, ditches, and two ponds. I use the old Ford 951B 60" rotary cutter. It's very forgiving when I go over rocks or fallen branches that are not visable. It has a good turning radius. This is what my husband used with his antique tractors and my dealer looked it over and said it was in excellent shape and the right mower for my terrain. He also showed me how to grease it everywhere. The other main thing is to keep the blades shapened.

I agree I think a 29 or 30hp is just the right size. The 4wd, front end loader, and a hydrostatic transmission are well worth the money. As I stated my 29hp put in a road involving 4 different layers and sizes of rock. I dug the foundation for a house with her. I have a Woods Backhoe with a 12"bucket and she handles that without problems.

I also snowplow the road but I just use the front loader, it may take longer but it works.

Sometimes less is more.
I reiterate make sure you can get service when you need it whether you buy used or new.

 

[flusher]

Welcome to TBN.
Your situation and tractor requirements are pretty typical.
Get as much seat time as possible on tractors you're interested in. That way you can check the ergomonics and performance.
For $15K for a tractor/FEL combo and your needs , you should concentrate on 30-40 hp (pto) tractors 5-10 years old. Check eBay for examples and prices. Craigslist is also helpful (I've bought 3 vintage tractors from CL so far with no problems in the purchase).