Hi,
I am new to the forum. Likewise new to heavy duty equipment operation. I have contacted members of the forum about their thoughts/input about my project and appreciate their input.
I am a land owner with 230 acres in South Mississippi area. Most of it is pine plantation, some bottomland with wetland areas (all soil, no rocks) . I have at least 20 acres of land that sustained damage from Katrina that was harvested by timber company. I would like to convert this to pasture for grazing.
I have thought about this (as well as input from others) means to this end including: using goats/pigs to help decompose the vegetation, using bulldozing to knock it all down with burning, versus mulching the trees (mostly dead pine 4-6 inches) back into the soil. I have decided to mulch in order to place the nutrients back into the soil.
I rented a Bobcat T320 with forestry mulcher for a week and was able to clear ~2 acres over 30 hours (again I'm not professional however learned quickly).
I felt this was a good machine however not powerful enough for my needs (especially if I have other land clearing needs). I like to do projects and would thus like to do the work myself.
I am thus considering buying a dedicated machine.
My questions are:
1)which tree mulcher would be best to accomplish this project (I am looking into Fecon 140/Gyrotrac G25)?
2)Does particle size of mulcher matter as far as ultimate goal (grass growth in pasture). ie: will finer mulch lead to quicker grass
3)How low would stumps have to be cut (there are some 12inch Longleaf stumps from previous harvest) in order to allow discing the subsequent pasture land and avoiding disc damage on stumps.
4) How would you seed the grass after mulching? (?drill seeding/broadcast/)
5) Would a PTO driven mulching head like loftness attached to a bidirectional tractor (like new holland) be a possible option (avoiding to have to get 2nd tractor for farm chores)
Thanks for your interest/input
Chris
