Mowing Fields/ brush hog batwing

[firecatf7333]

Few questions- I'm placing a bid on mowing about 330 acres seperated in 10-30 acre fields. I'm going to look at fields and will post picture. Grass is around waist high, and may have some light brush but nothing serious. Hopefully nothing over 1". Grass needs to be cut to 6". Is a 15' batwing the right mower for this job? I called a rental place that will sell me a woods batwing 1 year old for like half price of new one. I'll be using a 100 HP tractor.

If using the batwing, what is a rough geuss on how many acres i can mow per hour? The fields are not smooth and can be bumpy. I'm hoping for 4-5 acres per hour.

Thoughts

[bucktaker]

I have no idea of acres per hr but 15 ft is a big swath I would be real leary of buying equipment from a rental yard Rent it from them the first time and buy the insurance when you mow

[JPRambo]

About 30 years ago I mowed acreage with a ford 6600 tractor(approx. 75 hp) and a 14 foot batwing. Most of the acreage was weed some grass and saplings but not waist high. I don't remember how tall I left the grass but I say less than 6 inch tall. I remember it to be about a 1 square mile housing development with a dozen or so houses scattered about. It usually took a month to mow, and I moved to another location and returned when done there. 1 square mile is 640 acres minus roads and home lots. My guess is that I could do about 3 acres an hour.

[smstonypoint]

TractorData.com - Mowing with tractors has a mowing time calculator -- you provide the mowing width, speed, and acreage and the calculator provides the estimated mowing time.

The last time I fiddled with it, I found the calculator assumed a field efficiency of about 90% to allow for turning, overlap, etc. The 90% assumption seems too optimistic based on the field efficiencies I have seen in ag. engineering reports (e.g., http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM696.pdf) -- 80% or so is more likely nearer the mark.

Steve