I’ve never owned a tractor before.
We are looking for something to help us with developing and maintaining 20 acre homestead
Am I being unrealistic in the expectations of a 25hp tractor on 20 acres? The land is flat.
What is your altitude? 25-horsepower at sea level is not 25-horsepower at 5,000 feet altitude.
I usually recommend more weight and more horsepower for twenty acres, but you have said you have plenty of time.
Selling a used tractor is easy. Selling multiple light implements in order to buy heavier, wider implements for a new, heavier tractor requires a lot of time. Depreciation on implements is worse than depreciation on a tractor.
Will all twenty acres be actively worked with your tractor?
primary uses would be post hole digging, light road cutting, garden prep, pallet lifting of up to roughly 36” high to load onto my trailer, ground cleanup, building dirt bike trails and jumps, etc.
so id likely mostly use a loader, forks, backhoe, rake, blade, post hole and maybe a tiller.
A <26-horsepower tractor can accomplish all your specified tasks, including roto-tilling.
I think a digging toothbar attached to your FEL bucket would eliminate the need for a $5,000 backhoe. A digging toothbar will also "spade" land for a kitchen garden, so a $3,000 roto-tiller may be struck from your list.
The Kubota LA525 FEL will lift 1,400 pound pallets to 36". Is 1,400 pounds enough loading capacity?
It seems I’ve cornered myself into two options.
1) the heaviest/largest 25hp tractor I can find.
25-horsepower can be limiting running power hungry PTO powered implements, with snow blowers and rotary cutters / Bush Hogs being two of the primary power hungry PTO implements.
2) A higher HP pre emission tractor. I have absolutely zero interest in owning a machine with modern diesel emissions.
Tier IV emission standards phased in from 2009 - 2013. Are you interested in a 9 to 15 year old tractor as a tractor neophyte? Do you buy 9 to 15 year old road vehicles?
we have both a Kubota and a kioti dealer within 40 miles of us. Not much else within that radius.
Consider its an 80 mile round trip to either dealer and you have to make a delivery trip and a retrieval trip totaling 160 miles......
The Kioti CK2610 might be a bit larger/heavier than the Kubota with a larger hydraulic and lift capacity. I’ve just struggled to determine if the L2501 and CK2610 are in fact the heaviest of the 25hp options.
YES. In the field they are equivalent in capability.
Within subcompact and compact tractor categories, a significant tractor capability increase requires a bare tractor weight increase of 50%. It takes a 100% increase in bare tractor weight to elicit MY-OH-MY!
The ergonomics of the operator's stations on the brands under consideration will be far more important to you during hundreds of hours in the seat than minor weight difference on <26-horsepower tractors.
