New Tractor Comparison

zekeman · Dec 13, 2004

( There is no way a tractor can fit inside a normal stall 

Really? Are you sure? Because that will come as a great surprise to some folks who are doing it. I guess they better stop it then? Now, I will say that you need to have wider stall doors, or better yet exterior access. )

Bob
Really, Bob, Please describe a normal size stall ????
12 x 12 with a 4ft sliding door appears to be normal with the horse industry in my area. Bob, Its tough getting a 5 or 6 ft FEL through a 4 ft opening. But, I could always make my stalls ABNORMAL by knocking down the exterior walls and putting 8 ft doors on the outside, then I could do the same inside. Is that a little MORE normal? Bob , I'm sure there are different size stalls and doors in this world and if people are fortunate enough to have these larger stalls more power to them, Sometimes you make do with what you have. Also the logic of stripping the stalls everyday with a FEL instead of "PICKING" them, do the people who do stalls with a tractor replace the bedding everyday?- we use wood shavings for bedding the stall, with a FEL you not only remove the manure but also the bedding- the cost of boarding a Horse would triple.

Ron

Bob_Skurka · Dec 13, 2004

One of my customers has 6' doors on his stalls. He uses several different size JD tractors on his farm. Another of my customers has exterior 5' doors on his stalls. He uses JD and Kubota equipment. The stalls at the stable that my daughter takes riding lessons in uses 6' sliding doors. They have JD equipment working inside their barns. I guess I would say, at least in my area, 4' doors would not be normal. The stalls generally seem to be 10x12 or 12x12. I'm looking at building a barn, it was suggest to me to use 2 6' sliding doors on each stall, 1 on the outside wall, and 1 inside.

Varmintmist · Dec 13, 2004

Who said there was such a thing as a "normal" stall????? /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Maybe at the Taj-ma-horse, but at regular farms there are as many styles as there are nail benders.

Most box stalls do have the 4 ft door, you can make your own with 6 foot, 8 foot doors, 12 foot gates, if your heart so desires. You can also make them without doors if you are running the pasture potatos in the open 24/7.

We always ran open stalls created with the Case uni-loader in mind. If there was a need to pen, we could hang a regular gate (10 foot) and swing it shut. Poop is scooped into the common area daily and then the whole shooting match is cleaned with the loader depending on how much time the ponies stayed indoors. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

TBrown · Dec 13, 2004

My tractor is similar in size to a CK20, and although I'm very happy with it, I don't think I'd look forward to brush hogging a 10 acre field with it. You'd definitely get your fill of seat time. If you plan on mounting a snowblower on that tractor, you really need to jump up a size. I'm running a 54" blower on my tractor, and I find that to get my driveway as wide as I want it, I have to make 3 passes. Obviously, after the third pass I end up at the wrong end of the drive, so by default I make four passes. This is no big deal when clearing a 300 foot driveway, but it would be a real big deal if I was clearing 5 miles. A wider blower would allow you to make only two passes and save a lot of time.

When you went to look at the CK20, did you by chance look at the CK25 and CK30? They might be better suited to your needs, especially the CK30. Any of the models Casimir mentioned would also be a good choice, as well as the Mahindra 3015.

Just my $.02

zekeman · Dec 13, 2004

Bob
One of your customers, why not all of your customers if thats the norm in your area?- I use a Mahindra in a barn, but I don't drive INTO the stall. Ask these people the next time you see them if they use bedding and how does the FEL remove the manure and not the bedding, if there is a better way it would save me alot work. Bob, if a stall is 12 x 12 and the SIX foot door slides from left to right, you slide the door open and ease a six foot bucket through the door, drop the blade, drive forward 12 feet (my Mahindra is just under 14 FT long) and scoop up manure, bedding, and probably dirt, you have stripped left side of the stall, How do they clean the right side of the stall with a six foot wall still in the way? Can't Make a Right turn? Now, if you can afford to drop 14,000 on a lawn tractor with a baby FEL on it you might be able to make a turn in a 12 x 12 area with a lot of back and forth turning of the steering- But what other things can you do with such a small tractor. By the time you do all of that maneuvering I have manually " picked" (cleaned) two stalls. One thing your right about, if and when I build a new barn I will put larger stall
doors- not for manure, but for safety, walking with a 1200 lb
animal through a 4 foot opening can get risky.
Ron

indebt · Dec 13, 2004

Sorry for the trouble but my drive way is .5 miles not 5 miles my mistake. I have not looked at the ck30 but it sounds like I need to go larger than ck20. I will also look at the 3054 and the b7800.

JDFANATIC · Dec 13, 2004

Wow,

Do I detect a sense of hostility here? The original post seems to me to be an simple and innocuous question. Oh well, just my .02

jfdlaw · Dec 13, 2004

Until the clarificatioin on the driveway length I was ready to suggest a mid 20's horsepower machine, maybe as large at a B2910 and buy a truck for the driveway. Five Miles of drive is too long for a tractor unless you have a cab. If you have stalls I assume you would have need for a pickup and I would through a plow on the front of it.

I think you need to size the tractor for the stalls and work from there. Anything small enough for the stalls should be fine for cutting grass. All of the makes you named make good machines for this work. Find a tractor that is comfortable and you are comfortable manuvering in the stalls and a dealer you trust. Dealer support is second only to comfort with the machine and its work environment.

Bob_Skurka · Dec 13, 2004

One of your customers, why not all of your customers if thats the norm in your area? 

Ron, of the 500 or so customers my company services, I only know of 2 with barns and horse facilities. My company sells candy, tobacco, auto products, groceries, and sundries . . . we don't sell tractors. But 2 of my customers that I know personally have horse facilities, one for pleasure, the other raises race horses. So when I said "one of my customers" I was referring to a customer I know personally who has a horse farm, not some term to imply that I have a lot of customers with horse farms. I actually spoke to him today, he confirmed he simply pulls the bedding out with blade (it is raked from one side of the barn to the other side and then pulled out through the door) As for a 6' bucket on the FEL, that would certainly be tough to fit through the door, I certainly would never recommend a tractor with that size bucket. In fact, I didn't. Please recall I recommended a small frame 30hp tractor, the machine I recommended was a B7800/B2910 series machine, the large bucket available for that machine is the 60" bucket, a full 12" narrower than the stall door that was recommened to me for my future barn, but even at that, I'd probably go for the 54" bucket for use inside a barn. Again, I'm not suggesting what you have, I suggested something smaller.

LKGuy · Dec 14, 2004

I generally agree with the two tractor approach, 5 miles of snow clearing is a lot of snow for a 30 Hp tractor or less. As far as stall cleaning, I suppose some larger horse operations actually drive their tractors into the stalls. But I visit a lot of horse barns on smaller farms (mostly 20 or fewer horses) and I don't have a single customer that actually drives their tractor into a stall to clean it. So as I read your post, making sure your tractor is able to fit down the isle of a barn, to pull up to the outside of the stall, is most likely what you are wanting to make sure you are able to do. So going for something in the 30 Hp tractor range should do nicely.