Do I have any business trying to use a rotary cutter on this?

[jeff9366]

5.5 flat acres. If I can get away with a rotary cutter and a Kubota 'B' weight/25hp tractor and a rotary cutter that would be ideal since we'll have the tractor forever.

Largest trees we could find are 2-3 inches and softwood the bulk of the work would be the stupid vines and such.

No one offers 48"/54" Rotary Cutters able to withstand cutting anything thicker than 1" routinely that I know of. A NEW 48" Rotary Cutter will cut 2" for one or two days, then it will go in the shop for unbalanced blades, new stump jumper or bent sheet metal.

When mowing thick stuff most of us back the cutter into the vegetation. In order to do this you need optional chains on the rear/exhaust of the cutter, not sheet metal. No one offers a 48"/54" Rotary Cutter with optional chains for the rear that I know of.

If you are new to tractors you will soon discover how unstable they are unless all four wheels are on level ground. I would not attempt clearing without the rear tires being filled with liquid for stability. A 350 pound Rotary Cutter will hop when it encounters a 3" high stump or rock concealed in leaves.

If you fill the rear tires, a 'B' might be too heavy to employ mowing turf with a finish mower without rutting. If we had your location we could advise better.

I recommend a Ratchet Rake attachment for the bucket if you proceed. Nothing better for pulling vines out of trees and consolidating debris.

 

[mcfarmall]

You can do it carefully. Get a 5' rotary cutter with a deck that has the 45 degree angled back corners and is straight across where the tailwheel sticks out...the shape of the TSC County Line or King Kutter decks. Do all your clearing, slashing, chopping in reverse concentrating the tree whacking on the straight area where the tail wheel sticks out.

The top edge of the deck will start the sapling over then the exposed blade will chop it off near the ground. Also when moving in reverse, the tail wheel will caster around and raise the deck another 2" or so giving more leverage on the saplings as the edge of the deck pushes higher on the trunk.

Do all you work in REVERSE and then once everything is chopped down to a 6-12" height THEN carefully work in a forward motion to pulverize the stuff into mulch.

Been using this method for years without a hole in the radiator.

The only time I run in forward is in previously managed grasslands.

Sure, if I had unlimited resources I'd rent/buy a forestry cutter to do the job but unfortunately I was blessed with good looks instead of money.

 

[ZTMAN]

Hired this machine, with operator, at $110 per hour, two hour minimum, $90 move in fee. I did not mind the move in fee because he had to drive 1.5 hours to get to our camp. Does an awesome job.

 

[ericm979]

You can get it done fast with a forestry mulcher (and hiring it out makes it even faster). It might be hard to save the trees you want with that method.

About half of my 20 acres is covered in brush, most of it is a lot thicker than that. I've been working on it for a while. The rotary is only good for cutting the small stuff and maintaining the areas that I have cleared. As stated it'll cut up to 1" material but that's about it. I have 5' Kodiak on my Branson. Most of the clearing I do is by hand with a chainsaw, and I chip most of the material I cut using a PTO chipper. Since the land is steep and I can only get vehicles to parts of it, I do a lot of hauling by hand. It's good exercise. I also use a grapple on the tractor a lot, and a dump trailer behind a UTV.

It's a lot slower and a lot more effort on my part, but I can decide what trees to save (even small ones) to make a nice mixed forest later.

If you want it scraped clean now, hire it done.

Whatever you do, consider a larger tractor than a B series. I originally wanted a B3350 to replace my old B7100 and ended up with the much larger and heavier Branson. It was the right decision for me.

 

[rangerfredbob]

When I bought my property almost 5 years ago it had been sitting vacant for at least 2 years with only the bank hiring it mowed occasionally to make the property presentable, and the person that leased the field next door went into the area over my drain field (luckily not hurting it apparently...) and planted about an acre of wheat with just a rough discing. I had to level the land and figured I'd need a tractor anyway so went to craigslist and found my Kubota L260 (2 cylinder 26hp diesel 2wd, 4 speed PTO) which was built in the 70's with a loader and a 5' brush hog. Since it's WAY more simple than a modern tractor there isn't all that much that's vulnerable... The plus side is that whole package was $3500 so really it's way cheaper than something new and if I do something slightly stupid I don't feel as bad... I go to auctions locally (there's 3 per year close with just farm equipment) and they always have 5' brush hogs for $100-600 so not a huge issue.

A nice sturdy tractor should be able to handle what you are looking to do, I've taken saplings of Hawthorn and cherry trees 1-2" diameter with my brush hog, worst case is it doesn't cut it all the way down, just watch out on those as they could pierce a tire...

 

[TheMan419]

Will the 25hp be enough for when you are done? Might think about a larger used machine. Do the heavy work you need to do with it and then sell? Probably won't actually lose too much on the deal if you buy it right.

Depending on how quick you need that cleared I would attack it with my 25hp NH and TSC cutter. One option would be to hit all the smaller stuff you know you can take down (1" or smaller) and leave the larger stuff. THEN rent the bigger machine and take out the big stuff.

If you think one day rental will get that place taken care of I would just rent the bigger machine for a day an knock it out and be done.

 

[ruffdog]

I had 5 acres of dying evergrees removed and they used a Hydro-ax to clean up the buckthorn/mulberry and limbs afterwords.

 

[MossRoad]

Add your LOCATION to your T-B-N PROFILE. Your will receive responses better tailored to your questions and conditions.

You forgot to say please, again.

 

[nybirdman]

After ten years of clearing;by hand,rented 100 H.P.tractor/bush hog,my own tractors with 5'+6' bush hogs ;I finally hired a contractor with a 95 hp tracked skid-steer with a Fecon head.He did more in four days than we had done in 10 years.Biggest plus is no roots or stumps;best money I ever spent.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I've done a lot of clearing of land that looks like that with a tractor and rotary mower. If I can I like to do it in the winter when the ground is frozen, the vegetation is thin and brittle and the frozen ground gives excellent traction. Most bushes will just snap off at ground level when they're frozen, I drive in with the bucket about six inches off of the ground, pretty much anything the bucket can run over the mower has no trouble with. If I hit something I can't run over I get off and deal with it. Just take it slow.

My biggest concern is rocks, they will break the mower and the tractor if I hit them and they're everywhere here.

I find that usually when a patch of ground has become overgrown there's a reason, there's something in there that makes it difficult to mow, whether rocks or old fences or muddy ground. According to old aerial photos the parts of my farm that are overgrown now were overgrown 80 years ago too. So keep your eyes open and go slow.