When are kids old enough to start operating tractor?

[Mark Page]

I was doing skilled work in my fathers business at age 12. At age 11 I was running my grandfathers 8n pulling a cart and picking rocks out of his new garden. Somehow I figured picking up rocks gave me permission to run the tractor. Man I picked up a lot of rocks that summer.

 

[Stewie1]

My wife is the eldest kid in a farming family and so she started driving tractors when she was 7. She had to get off the seat to use the clutch!

Now our eldest daughter is 10 and just big enough to satisfy the safety devices so we gave it a try.




She loved spreading woodchips recently. ROPS up, seatbelt on, hard hat as we are in the trees low range and operate at idle for now. Oh and close supervision from behind the camera. She paid close attention to what she was doing and hit nothing, which is more than I can say for myself!

Ultimately every kid is different

Craig

 

[KubotaEd]

I was driving our John Deere "D" by myself using a field cultivator when I was 7 or 8. I would have to sit on the seat and use my foot to push in the clutch (a hand clutch on the JD) and then to disengage the clutch I would have to stand up put both hands on the clutch handle and pull with all my weight to stop the tractor. When I was 10 I was operating the John Deere #55 combine cutting wheat by myself. I'm sure something really bad could have happened, but something bad can happen to my at 72 on one of my Kubota untility tractors.
I would not want to change the experience I had as a "Farm Kid" for anything.

 

[RaydaKub]

I was driving our John Deere "D" by myself using a field cultivator when I was 7 or 8. I would have to sit on the seat and use my foot to push in the clutch (a hand clutch on the JD) and then to disengage the clutch I would have to stand up put both hands on the clutch handle and pull with all my weight to stop the tractor. When I was 10 I was operating the John Deere #55 combine cutting wheat by myself. I'm sure something really bad could have happened, but something bad can happen to my at 72 on one of my Kubota untility tractors.
I would not want to change the experience I had as a "Farm Kid" for anything.

Amen! I remember having to do the foot on the Model A clutch myself.

 

[1986]

My Dad taught me how to rake hay on the level fields when i was 8 with a gray ferguson and also drive a standard one ton ford.

Our own kids have been driving for a few years now they are 9 and 12

 

[MTCWBY]

My youngest is 7 and I came out in the garage to find him sitting in the tractor seat. He said " I think I have everything figured out except how to turn it on." I started laughing and told him ". . . and I'm not going to teach you that right now." He'll get there soon enough but we don't live on the farm, it's hilly, and his mother would kill me. That said, he's ridden around with me a bit and is a ready helper.

I drove a MF with a pull behind bailer when I was 12 years old. We bailed from 12 am to 8 am at a big corporate farm. That said, there really wasn't a lot you could do wrong on a big flat field and it was fun for about 45 minutes. Then it just turned into work.

 

[BX25HD]

I let my son drive my BX25 when he was 8. I was cutting trees into fire wood and the putting the logs in the FEL. My son would then drive the tractor over to the log pile and then we would stack the logs and then back again. We traded the BX25 in for an L3800 last year. My wife is afraid of using it, but she has my son use it for some loader work. Today I had to trench with the BH going uphill. So he would drive use forward when I was ready. He loves to help. Sometimes I have to remind myself to take the extra time and let the kids help, that is how I learned when I was a kid.

 

[Gobblebot]

I started driving our new holland lawn tractor at age 3 and then when i was 4 I had to drive the truck while hay was being loaded because I couldnt lift the bales but dad just put the truck in low gear and I idled it around the field. When my grampa was running the tractor I would sit beside him and operate the hydraulics and pto while he did the actual driving then at about 5 he put the mower on and let me drive it on my on and just said that if it was getting to close to something to shut the tractor down. ive been riding a quad since I was 4 and the thing is now that Im older all these things help with every part of my life in my area anyway you see 10 year old farm kids and they can operate equipment better than teens and adults from town. If kids get to operate equipment like this they learn and they take it more seriously because they know what it can do if used wrong

 

[Jlillie2]

While I agree with the general tone of of maturity lets not forget the tragic news of some young child who is seriously injured or killed while operating machinery. Accidents do happen often. Proper supervision and maturity are the keys in this disscusion.

Most of the time when I read abut stuff like that, its not the well trained mature for their age child that gets in trouble, its the kid that steals the keys, and decides to give it a go on his/her own. My daughter in law cited one of those 'events' when we brought up the subject my grandson riding a honda 70 Quad runner. Two eight year olds decided to 'borrow' the neighbors yamaha rhino. predictably, they flipped, and one of them died. No permission, no training, no seatbelts = bad result. My grandson operates the equipment at our farm now, and as time goes on his skill set improves daily. We are always there, and he is very aware of the consequences of his actions. And as one other member on this board mentioned, he knows that if the sh&t hits the fan, shut the machine down.

 

[NICKB304]

i was driving my grandfathers IH cub with a blade and small lawn cart style trailer around the age of 10. i used it to make all kinds of trails and small jumps for our dirt bikes. picked up some good skills backing up that little dump cart too.