Buying Advice New Tractor?? Kubota, Deere, or NH?

scouter16 · Jun 9, 2012

Hello everyone, I am new to this site, and would like some advise on a new tractor purchase. We have 366 acres here in NH, and hay about 100+ we have been running mostly an Oliver 1555 and 1950, IH 574, and John Deere 5320. We bought the Deere in 04 and a few years ago we had to put a very expensive parking brake in it after 1500 hours. We mostly do everything with the Deere, as it starts every time, has MFWD, good hydraulics and a PTO that shuts off. our oliver hydraulics don't like single line connections, and there pto's dont shut off unless under load. A tedder or rake doesn't even have enough load to shut them off. anyways here is the question....
We are looking for a new tractor with a cab, and being a little disappointed with the Deere we are not quite sure if we want to go that route again. in our area we have a John Deere, New Holland, and Kubota dealers all with in 30 min. So we are looking for a basic cab tractor with loader, at least 1 hydraulic in the back, MFWD, and min of 80 PTO horse power for a mower conditioner if we decide to get one.
We have been looking in to a John Deere 5101E, kubota M9540, or the kubota M108S, or the NH TD5050. We have a set of jd 212 12-14' disks, and the oliver 1950 is the only thing around here that will really pull them at full angle... Hopefully not for long... haha As i stated earlier we had an issue with the parking brake on the deere. Its built into the tranny and was a cheap part, that your asking it to park the tractor. It snapped in half... Not cool. I know deere changed the position of the parking break from the dash to the shift lever. So has this stopped the problem? Anyone have any issue with this on there deere? Looking at the kubota's and New Holland's they all have an auto motive type emergency parking brake that ratchets up to tighten the brakes. Is this a better design? Can someone please give me some insight? Thank you very much.

bigbull338 · Jun 9, 2012

personally with what your wanting todo id look at the 9540 an 108 as your thinking.but id prolly step up to the 108 between the 2.

Grateful11 · Jun 12, 2012

You sound a lot like my wife's operation as she has 50 some head of cattle and maintains about 150 acres. She has a IH 574(pretty bullet proof but getting some age on it and not real user friendly IMO), then there's the IH 686 with a turbo and canopy(it isn't going anywhere ;-), the CaseIH 5140(it gave quite bit trouble when new, mostly electrical but it seems most everything is worked out now and then the Kubota L3940(no cab just ROPS mainly used as a utility tractor) nothing bad to say about it except it's not a tractor for field work.

She is looking at replacing the IH 574 with something around 65-80HP. She's looked at JD 5083E, Kubota M7040. The JD is definitely heavier, the Kubota can obviously be weighted if needed. She doesn't want to step up to something as large as the M100 series as she has the CaseIH 5140 for tillage and such. I think she going to look at a JD5085M or something today. She not been real impressed with the JD's far and a friend of ours got a new JD5115M about 2 months ago and from what he's told me so far he's got more cons than pros to say about it. He cut his baby teeth on farm equipment, bleeds green, he knows his stuff.

art · Jun 20, 2012

To replace the Oliver 1950 will take a good tractor and I from where you live believe you have hills so I'd look at the powershift tractors although I think you would be fine with the 40 series Kubota.
I don't consider the e-series of deere a comparable to a full featured kubota. Neither do to many people who own them as they make quite a bit of noise when running! Buy ear muffs as they are as loud if nt louder then the tractors out of the sixties.

jdbnh · Jun 20, 2012

the TD5050 is the heaviest of the 3 you are looking at so when it comes to plowing, that would be the way to go for sure. they haying part would be no issue for it either. good luck