The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Equipment => Topic started by: capability campbell on August 13, 2012, 08:17:34 pm
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hello forum mates, Im looking for a flail mower which is towed by atv . Been to the dealer and all UK models seem to be about £4000.Does anyone have any experience or can give me some guidance on the reliability of cheaper imported models which seem to be half the price
Capability Campbell
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might be cheaper to buy a small tractor and a standard pto mower - but I may be wrong.
m
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It would I reckon, our flail mower was betweeen £500-700 and you could get an old (but not vintage) small tractor for about 3k, much more useful. I know thats not the question you asked :-))) but if you ever need any more attachments in future they are waaay cheaper for standard tractor PTO whereas with the quad you will have the 000s over and over. For a flail mower tractor prob needs 50hp+.
Also it (tractor) would do the job many times quicker, and will run on red diesel.
Hopefully someone will answer your original question too tho :-)
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Thank you for your kind responses re flail mower, You're correct that a wee tractor would be best, but have some woodland which tractor would have problems getting through, my intention is to clear brambles and willowherb and plant wildflowers, its been a too much of a struggle with the strimmer. Pigs would be ideal, but as I wont live on site till next year, I couldnt be there to look after them, so, it's back to the original query if anyone has any experience of foreign made flails, which seem to be half the price of UK ones. Thank you
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I have just bought a flail mower for behind my quad, its made by Rock machinery and it was £1600, I could have paid an extra £300 for a Honda engine but decided to stick with the standard engine. So far so good, it cuts well. I have flatish land but if you have steep fields just look at how big your quad is, my mower is 270kg which is a fair weight behind a quad, so only suitable for the bigger quads I think.
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I am interested to see the answers here; we are considering an ATV topper. The idea would be I could get out with the ATV and topper when I can't travel on the ground with the tractor and its topper. But if the ATV topper+engine comes in at 1/4T, maybe I would be no better off in terms of travelling with that than tractor + topper?
We have some reshes get so thick so fast we need a tractor topper too, but quite a bit of the topping we need to do is thistles and younger reshes, which I was hoping the ATV version would cope with. And if I can get out and top more frequently, then we'd have less of the reshes getting so big and thick... At least, that's the theory... ::)
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maybe teaching granny to suck eggs here but here goes is the topper a tow behind that cuts in line with the wheels or is it offset if it is in line the quad wheels will flatten the threashes and anything else that the wheels roll over a side cutting tow behind will not have this problem
the rolled material springs back up in about 2-3 weeks and just does not look right the same problem occurs with rear mounted toppers on tractors
our field had not been topped for about 3 years and the threashes were monstrous and in divots
the brief window of dry weather this year i cut them with a side mounted topper the regrowth in the threashes is unbelievable and i have noticed this in other farmers fields
now our field is reasonably flat and the present conditions i do not think a quad would manage to pull a topper others may differ :farmer:
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i have a wessex 120 af flail towed topper. has a briggs engine and is rather good.
it can be partially offset to avoid some driving over, but that has not been a major problem. i can tow it with a quad (honda 500) or our lttle Iseki compact. this year is a nightmare though, rushes as already said have grown back twice as heavy in this wet. heavy rushes burn through the belts on it.
paid 1100+vat at the local machinery auction, see loads of them go through at about that price.
light on the ground is the biggest advantage over a tractor model.
dominic
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I've got a logic flail with a kawasaki klf 500 quad. It works well bit you have to let it munch its way through thicker rushes and if the rushes are too high the front bar folds them over and the flail misses them. If you top regularly they are ideal.