I have some mild hilly stuff with hay on it. I don't currently have a mower/conditioner or anything to cut the hay with. I do have a farmall model M and a Ford 8n. It seems that the M would be powerful enough to pull a mower conditioner around on the hills, but the mower conditioners I looked at required three hydraulic connections and I have only one.

The 8N is, I'm guessing, too small to pull anything of any size.

We have a bush hog that requires a three point hitch. The 8N has a three point hitch but the M doesn't. The bush hog doesn't seem to fit well on the 8N.

We also need a tractor with a bucket to turn big compost piles and to load the manure spreader.

The guy at the tractor dealership says we need 40hp - but of course the more horse power we buy, the more money he stands a chance of earning.

Here are some pictures of the farm: www.javaranch.com/farm - what do you guys think? How much horse power do we need? I'm thinking of going with John Deere, what would be some good years and models?

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), July 28, 2001

Answers

Oh yeah,

What are the three hoses for the mower conditioner for anyway?

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), July 28, 2001.

Paul, I can't help you with your tractor question but the pictures look great. The horses are beautiful. Good luck with the tractor.

-- Murray in ME (lkdmfarm@megalink.net), July 28, 2001.

Paul, you sound like you want to do quite a lot with your tractor. Once you start using equipment that runs off the power take off shaft, you really start to eat power. I wouldn't mess around with anything too small or you'll just be disappointed with performance all the time, and jobs will be a frustration. My tractors are rated at 50 and 60 horse, and they do fine with most equipment that you would be using, I think. 40 would be a minimum. My New Holland haybine (conditioner)has four hydraulic hoses. The two main lines control they cylinder that lifts and lowers the header, and the other two control the cylinder that moves the tongue back and forth to reduce the width of the machine from field cutting position to going down the road position. You don't need the tongue cylinder if you don't mind messing around moving the tongue manually: it just makes it faster and more convenient if you have to take it on the roads to far fields. Everything else on the haybine, the knife action, the rollers and the reel, is run off the PTO shaft. I would think that's fairly standard.

You might want to put a loader on your 8N, if you get a chance at a good price on another tractor that doesn't have one. A loader is a low horsepower tool, and would match nicely with something like an N. A loader is also a pain in the behind to take on and off, and you'll probably end up leaving it on the tractor all the time. You may not want to bog down your main tractor with a loader on it all the time.

You live in lovely country! :)

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), July 28, 2001.

a sickle bar cutter on the 8N would probably do fine for what you have and be alot cheaper too, to start with and in maintenance. If you want to pull a decent size mower/conditioner, use a bucket, etc then yes I'd be looking at 40hp+, better to have more than you need than not enough. For a year I did about 45 acres of alfalfa hay 4 times a season with a sickle bar on a 584 IH tractor and it wasn't too bad. The next few years after that I used a 930 or 936(can't recall) JD mower/conditioner and things went a bit quicker but not much. A sickle bar is a handy piece of equipment especially for hills, etc. It'll go places a bush hog or moco won't. There's little to break down on them except for the occasional cutter replacement which is a simple task. The International 584 had a nice 84" bucket you could take off in a minute or 2 real easy. It was a 50hp and ran a 3 bottom plow set deep like cutting through butter. If you're only doing 20 acres I'd seriously consider a sickle bar cutter.

-- somebody (something@somewhere.com), July 28, 2001.

not all loaders are a pain to take off/put on. Quite a few like the IH loader I had with the 584 to put it on you just drove right up to it, locked a few pins, connected the hoses and you were done. 2 minutes tops. To remove it was just reverse procedure. As long as you had it on level ground, it was simple and fast.

-- somebody (something@somewhere.com), July 28, 2001.

My husband is a farm equipment mechanic and his advise is: if you want to go with a haybine (mower conditioner) get one that only requires one hydraulic hook up. The extra expense for the extra hydraulic cylinders on the haybine as well as the hook ups on the newer tractors aren't worth the money. My husband is not always popular with his coworkers at the dealership because he thinks of those that are writing the check, not taking the check to the bank. Another option, as was already mentioned, is to get a sickle mower for your 8N. One of these should be able to be had for a few hundred dollars and definitely will get places a haybine will not. We have done as many as 150 acres with a sickle bar and rake. This year because I am doing the haying all alone we bought a Ford 535 (mower conditioner) at an auction for $285. This machine only requires 1 hydraulic hookup. Either of the tractors you currently own could run this unit. We have a Ferguson TO-30 which is comparable to a Ford 8N and a Case DC which may be just a bit more powerful than an M, these are the tractors that I'm using to put up about 200 acres of hay this summer. As to your wish for a tractor that has a bucket, our TO-30 has a bucket that we use with it, not a big deal to take off and put on the bucket.

-- Polly (NNY) (oakridge@northnet.org), July 29, 2001.

A Ford 501 mower will do the job nicely on your 8N, I have 3 of them and rebuild a couple each year, depending on their shape they can be had for $150- 350. I bought 2 at an auction several weeks ago for $25 each, on had a second knife and I also got five boxes of cutters, 150 rivets and 15 new rock gaurds all for $15.

-- hendo (redgate@echoweb.net), July 29, 2001.

Hi Paul, we farm (hay mostly, 50 acres of it) very steep hillsides with a Ford 4000 SU, a very low to the ground, wide-front end tractor of about 45 horsepower, with two hydraulic attachments. This does a great job on our hills here, and we have used a sickle bar mower with good results too, it is much, much cheaper than a mower-conditioner, which takes more HP and a bigger machine to KEEP it on those hillsides! Sickle bar mower cost 2000 dollars used, mower- conditioner about 4500 dollars used, we like New Holland best in both.

Our tractor we bought used for 10,000 dollars, it's a 1972 model, and yes, that seems alot for such an old tractor, but the older ones are made better than the new ones, we will get more hours of use out of this old one than a newer one! Around here, John Deeres are terribly over-priced, by about double what they are really worth, compared to Fords of the same year and model type.

Don't be afraid to buy an older model, just look it over good, and pay attention to the amount of "blow-by" the exhaust is putting out, this will tell you alot about the condition of the engine. An engine in decent shape yet will not put out discernable smoke at all except for pulling under a load or climbing a steep hill at power. Rev that motor up and see what you get coming out of the exhaust, shouldn't be much at all, and you ought to have to really look to see it. Look at sevral different dealers before you decide on one to get an idea what prices are for the different models, just like car/truck shopping!!!

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), July 29, 2001.

Ten thousand, eh? Did they dealership do financing? I would doubt that regular car financing would work for a tractor.

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), July 29, 2001.

Yes, they do several types of financing, we got the best deal from our local bank in our very small town, 8%, and yes, it's done just like a car loan, the tractor is the collateral!

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), July 29, 2001.