Mowing Large acreage to finish mow

[sawtooth]

I can't wait to get started on my new wild game farm. I plan to raise Deere and wild turkeys. Lol. So will I be called a nature farmer? Going to plant 10-20 acres in food plots, 20-40 acres in cut over / bushes, 21-25 acres of ponds and creeks, 150-160 acres is big timber. Rest will be finished mowed grass. Just rough estimates.

 

[MossRoad]

So whereabouts in the country are you?

 

[Grouse09]

Absolutely gorgeous. Here is my 4 acres, cut every 4 days with a 60" grasshopper. The hills are steep, but I have a pattern to save the mower a undue stress

 

[MF283]

I used to help maintain a farm part time years ago, diesel ZTR with 5' deck, could mow 12 acres easy in a day, at times it would require twice a week to keep that manicured look.
Regardless of what mower you go with, make sure it has a suspension seat, your body will thank you. If it were mine, i'd mow a path wide enough for a truck or UTV & fish the lake instead of mowing:thumbsup:

Ronnie

 

[flusher]

I just purchased 270 acres and want to finish cut about 10-15 in grass. It's already being cut now by a Grasshopper mower. Takes him 1.5 days to cut it at 8 hours per day. So if I were to buy the perfect or best equipment for this type job what would it be? Terrain is rolling with some obstacles like trees barns etc but most is fairly open with no super steep hills. Mainly rolling land with light hills I would say. Thank you.

The least expensive large tractor mower is the rotary mower (aka brush hog, bush hog, shredder, slasher). A 6-ft wide brush hog costs about $1500 new and half that price used.

You can sharpen the normally blunt edge blade to a sharper edge (like you have on a riding mower), tilt the mower so the front is about 2" lower than the rear, and get a cut that approaches the quality of a finish mower.

Depending on the condition of the weed field (roughness, potholes, etc) you can expect to cut 3+ acres per hour.

I used mow my 7-acre hayfield field in about 2 hours with a 2008 Mahindra 5525 tractor (55 hp engine, 45 hp pto) and a 6-ft wide Hawkline brush hog.

Good luck

 

[LD1]

^^^^^ Agree

I have one account that is 10 acres. It gets mowed once a month. A month is too much growth for a finish mower. But a walk in the park with a rotary and sharp blades. Takes me about 2 hours to mow all 10 acres, and the results look excellent.

 

[flusher]

^^^^^ Agree

I have one account that is 10 acres. It gets mowed once a month. A month is too much growth for a finish mower. But a walk in the park with a rotary and sharp blades. Takes me about 2 hours to mow all 10 acres, and the results look excellent.

View attachment 483205

Yep, excellent job. That's what I'm talking about. You can do a lot of large acreage mowing efficiently with a rotary and a sharp blade and still get the result to look very good. You don't have to spend a ton of money for a finish mower or something more elaborate.

 

[LD1]

Yep, excellent job. That's what I'm talking about. You can do a lot of large acreage mowing efficiently with a rotary and a sharp blade and still get the result to look very good. You don't have to spend a ton of money for a finish mower or something more elaborate.

For reference, that was about 10-12" tall grass. Gets done once every ~4 weeks.....which is just too much for a belt driven finish mower. I cut at ~4"-5" height. And go as fast as my tractor will go in M range, which is something like 7.3 MPH. And that was cut with a woods DS96, 8' rotary cutter. Bought that mower used and spent almost as much $$$ as a new howse, titan, kodiak, or similar lower priced cutters. One big reason for getting the woods....16k fpm blade speed vs 11.5k for the three others I mentioned. JD, landpride, and bushhog® and some other higher end cutters also have higher blade speeds.

From my experience with many different cutters, 11-12k blade speeds stop giving a good clean cut once you go over 5-6 MPH. I have not found the limits of this 16k fpm cutter yet, as M range on the tractor dont go fast enough. I have (on the job I pictured), mowed with it in H at probably 8-9MPH with pretty good results. But it was too rough of a ride for my liking, and H range isnt good for maneuvering at turns.

 

[sawtooth]

Wow sharp looking properties. Mowing grass maybe a pain but it sure looks good.

 

[daugen]

^^^^^ Agree

I have one account that is 10 acres. It gets mowed once a month. A month is too much growth for a finish mower. But a walk in the park with a rotary and sharp blades. Takes me about 2 hours to mow all 10 acres, and the results look excellent.

View attachment 483205

that looks nice. I sold my 7 foot LP bush hog, which I had sharpened the blades on to mow 18 acres for a friend.
Worked beautifully if the grass was dry. Not so hot when damp or wet, clumped pretty badly and left things looking lumpier than we were used to. Doesn't disperse the grass like a finishing mower but it really will mow grass, but not what I'd call lawn grass. Maybe "further out" grass. In close you pick your areas near the house, and maybe pathways to places and mow them with a zero turn or a garden tractor.

Some beautiful properties owned by our members. Really nice of you to share pics with us.
For a larger property, very likely you'll need at least one tractor, probably of "utility" size, say 50-100hp for weight in working the soil as well as forest work and lifting heavy logs. and then....a small SCUT for around the house work. And at least one dedicated mower. If you are going to be actively mowing all this acreage with something, you might consider sticking with diesel and getting a diesel tank put in. Compared to this equipment, a 275-300 gal tank costs very little.

I mow 5 acres of lawn and 3 acres almost like lawn at least once a week and it gets old when it rains a lot and it grows half an inch to an inch a day. Then you are going to want to max your mower size and minimize your time. You'll get plenty of seat time no matter what.