Mowing How much power needed a 6' mower?

[Anonymous Poster]

How much PTO power is required for a 6' rear mower when cutting nothing but grass on a gentle slope?

I am looking at a tractor that claims to have 22 PTO HP. Some dealers have told me that is sufficient while others have told me I better stick to a 5' mower with that kind of power.

[DK35vince]

I have a john deere 850.engine HP 26 with 22 at the PTO.
I run a 6 foot belly mower and a 6 foot 3 point finnish mower.
It runs either mower very well.

[Dave41]

22 PTO should be fine with a 6 foot mower. My Kubota has 16 PTO HP. The 5 foot rear finish mower handles tall grass on gentle slopes without any problem. The Kubota 2410 has 18 PTO HP (I think) and a 6 foot RFM is an approved size. You should be OK going with a 6 foot deck.
Dave

[Gary_in_Indiana]

It could be that all the dealers are right. I've asked the same questions from the other side (What size mower with my tractor?) and here's what I've gleaned.

A 22 PTO HP tractor should be fine with a 6' finish mower. That same tractor would be far better served with a 5' brush hog rotary mower than a 6' model. I'm going with that combination (5' brush hog, 6' finish mower) with my 20 PTO HP tractor. I hope this helps.

[BB_TX]

I run a 6' rotary cutter with 27 hp to mow pasture. It does fine as long as I don't let the grass get too tall. But if I get into heavy green grass a foot tall or more, I have to slow down to a crawl. It actually cuts 5' tall weeds easier than it cuts 1' tall coastal or johnson grasses. Consider what you will be mowing. If you mow weekly, you probably will not have a problem with the 6'. If you let the grass get very tall, I think 22 hp will be marginal.

[Trev]

My JD 4300 with a 6 foot mower never changes its engine note no matter how high the grass is. I think it's around 28-29 HP at the PTO (would have to look at the manual which is at home) but even if it did slow down a bit, just reduce your ground speed a tad. I would think you should be fine in almost all cases. In fact, going slowly enough, I can't imagine you needing more power.

HTH,
Bop

[frank_f15]

it really depends on the type and length of grass u will be cutting. i use a 5 ft. finish mower with slightly less pto hp than u and i have no problem u could probably use a 6ft. if it is just grass and u don't let it get 2 ft tall.

[Dave41]

Good point Gary. RFM vs rotary mower will definitely make a difference. I was strictly thinking RFM.

[weedsportpete]

I'm looking at a rotary cutter that has an additional 'side arm', circular cutter for going under fences. The requirements list 22 PTO hp.. can I 'get by' with less? How much less?? Example: a BX2200 has 22 hp, with (I think) 17.5 PTO hp. Is that too under powered??

Pete

[RanchMan]

Like most things in life, I'm sure you could "make do" with the 17.5 hp [img]/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif[/img], but you are teetering on the edge of having something that "works" and something that "works well." [img]/w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif[/img]

While 4.5 HP doesn't sound like much, using a little math, you are basically trying to get away with a 20% less HP than their recommendation (which I suspect is not the max HP the mower could handle).

Under some conditions, you might not notice the difference in HP, but I suspect that would not be the case most of the time. Assuming that you want a larger deck to cut your mowing time, I suspect that you might actually get the job done faster with a smaller deck because you would be able to go faster and not "milk" it along due to a lack in HP.

Also, just as a side note, it might not be very healthy for your tractor to have it constantly "bogging down" due to trying to do more than it was designed to. [img]/w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif[/img]