I can easily believe that a German flail would be excellent. They know a thing or two about engineering and manufacturing. For some reason I've never heard of any German implement manufacturers exporting to the US though, at least for CUT sized implements. There are a number of excellent Italian flail manufacturers represented on this side of the pond either selling under their own brand or rebadged. Can you give us an idea of what a flail like yours costs in UK? The Italian imports in the 2 meter size go for between $2000 and 3500 here. I'm guessing that the German made mowers are at the top end or higher than that range. That would put the Germans in direct competition with the premium US made flail companies like Alamo and Vrisimo which have well established markets and are generally heavier duty (often used to maintain highway borders). The US heavy duty mowers are generally used on utility size tractors. The Italian mowers became popular here not so long ago as medium duty pasture and brush (and some finish) mowers especially after the CUT market took off.
Hi, we run a reasonably sized mixed arable, dairy and beef unit in the wet NW uplands of England.
Whatever land isn't used for permanent pasture, haylage or silage making is used for either chopped feedstuffs, a limited a mount of arable (mostly barley) or sheep and horse grazing.
The land is wet, clay based and is prone to the ingress of rush and bramble/thorn where not checked in the lower areas and gorse and bracken in the higher areas.
As such, we have a need for regular topping of rough unmanaged areas, the key uplands and even the horse pastures and field edges, forest walks/rides etc... We also need to control (by cutting) the invasive bramble/thorn and rush species that seem to double in quantity as soon as the sun shines..
We also manage some verges and open public grass areas for our local parish council.
On the two Farmyards we have a variety of equipment, including full size tractors, a forage harvester and loaders that we use in some part of our daily roles.
The list is long, but includes a Claas Forage Harvester, two JDs (6135 and 5125) a Steyr M9094 and an old grey Ferguson. We have both a JCB and a Merlo telehandler plus a few Yamaha ATV's for the hill/sheep work plus a few trailers of varying types.
At home I have another Yamaha ATV, another Steyr M9094 and a recent addition - a Kioti NX6010 HST.
I've been driving tractors since I was 10 years old - a sobering 44 years.. I'm getting to the point now where I'm only really maintaining a tiny 30Ha patch (75 acres) and the little Kioti is proving an easy machine to live with.
With low weight and low ground pressure tyres, I can get onto the wet ground around 10 months of the year without marking it. Any of the bigger tractors have only 7 months of the year where they'll not compact the ground or rut it.
As you can imagine over the years we have used an extensive array of equipment with which to manage the topping and brush cutting. Everything from a mean and solid 8' two swing bladed thrasher/cutter that I think would have mangled anything in it's path (but not tidily), a side mounted 12' pasture topper, down to a fully articulated 4' hedge/verge trimming flail.
In 1994, after an array of Italian flails for as long as I can remember, mostly Breviglieri (good) we bought our first Muething flail.
It was a fixed 7' wide mulching flail - and we've used it solidly behind all sorts of kit with very little real maintenance apart from the odd hammer flail replacement, a new set of belts and some oil/grease.
It got hammered - even hitting the odd rocky outcrop hidden by rushes - but really just kept going as smoothly as the day it was built.
We sold this together with a Ford New Holland tractor that it happened to be mounted on when someone came along and liked the tractor... They wanted the mower too - and agreed silly money for it.
So we decided to replace it last year with the equivalent model of Muething again - the MU-H 220 Vario (2.2 metres wide) - but also added a hydraulic side shift.
It weighs in at 615Kg or 1300lbs, so it's a hefty lump, but when it gets going, it's relatively quiet and vibration free.
Mowing edges is easy using the hydraulic side shift - as is levelling up with hydraulic top link.
Muething flails in my view are very, very solidly built and have a great secondary "comb knife" set in the cowl that aids really effective mulching.
We normally set it up to cut the pasture at just under 2" and it sits on the rear roller and happily trundles along - on smooth pasture and a lighter maintenance cut, you can go as fast as 12mph - and still giving a really good mulch.
We have even started doing a big lawned area with it now because the finish is so good, and so little grass left on the surface (all being mulched).
We have even set that down to 1" using a different roller pin height... Almost lawnmower quality.
Cost...
Well I had to go and look this up.. we bought some other kit at the same time so got a decent discount - but still paid c.｣4,500 or about $5,800 for it last year
To put this in perspective, a 2m Dragone flail is ｣4,000 and the cheapest here from a reasonable Italian maker is about ｣3,200.
I have always reckoned that equipment prices in the US are pretty cheap compared to us... I think Muething have agents in Canada - but not the US yet..
Hope that helps - some nice videos on their site too..
