# Roadside mowing , quality of cut and speed on disc mower vs sickle vs brush cutter



## Halvor (Mar 3, 2011)

Hi folks

new to this but I like the site, looking @ a contract to mow roadside for the county, for vegation control , but would like a unit to cut hay as well. want to do a good quick job but leave a nice clean cut. tractor has 75 pto hp, anyone doing similar work? unit has to cut down the ditch bank while tractor stays on road top..

thanks for the feedback


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## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

Welcome to this group. You'll find a lot of good info here.

Personally, I wouldn't use hay from roadside in these parts--there's just too much crap on the roadside. We get a lot of tourists, and a few locals, who think there car window is a trash disposer. Imagine you mow up one beer can or glass bottle and slice it up into smaller pieces (like with a disc mower). Some of those metal or glass shards get baled. Now your livestock eats a small piece, maybe a 1/2 inch square, swallows it and the sharp edges cuts the esophagus or stomach lining. You've got big problems!!! In my mind , it just ain't worth the potential trouble.

If I was mowing the roadside, I would only use a brush cutter with chain guards to keep the garbage from flying back at me.

Ralph


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## maknhay (Jan 6, 2010)

I don't beleive he is insinuating using the road edge vegitation for hay. He is looking for a machine that will go out and take care of his contract with the county as well as do the job properly in a hay meadow. For that I would think any of the 3 pt mount rotary disc cutters would work. They hang off the right side enough to get at least eight feet into the ditch and would lay the residue in a mat much like a sickle mower would. Regrowth usually comes up through with no problems. The rotary type bush hog mowers the county here uses seem to put the chopped up residue in a small windrow towards the bottom (farthest from the road) of the cut and turns into rotten crap.


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## Rodney R (Jun 11, 2008)

Sorta sounds like the 3pt rotary mower would work. I did not know that they would go down a bank. If you need to condition your hay, then you will need 2 machines as the 3pt mowers do not have conditioning rolls in them.

Rodney


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## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

maknhay said:


> I don't beleive he is insinuating using the road edge vegitation for hay. He is looking for a machine that will go out and take care of his contract with the county as well as do the job properly in a hay meadow..


You;re right. I misread the post. A few years ago, some places in Missouri were contracting mowing to farmers along state roads like 40-61. I saw round bales in the median. So, I was thinking that was what Havlor had in mind.

Ralph


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## kyfred (Dec 23, 2009)

Might want to check with the state or county and see what they require. Grass to be ground up like a bushhog would leave it which would disappear in a short time, or grass looking like hay that will lay there for a while before it disappears then you would have some tougher mowing the second and third time you cut. There is a lot of crap to tear up a hay mower laying along highways. Trash, bottles, tire scraps , culverts car parts ect. That would destroy a hay mower.


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## NDVA HAYMAN (Nov 24, 2009)

A disc mower would be the only way to go if you also want to mow hay with it. Be sure that the mower can breakaway when you end up hitting the occasional hidden culvert. Mike


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## MikeRF (Dec 21, 2009)

IMO you are going to struggle to find a tool that works well for both. 
Hay mowers are not designed strong enough to withstand the type of terrain and garbage that you will likely encounter in the centre medians/roadsides. They also leave too much material on top for the regrowth to look neat for any length of time.
In Europe they almost exclusively use flail type mowers for this job. They will withstand the punishment of hitting objects and they pulverise the cut material so that it is invisible after a couple of days. Using the right flails you can achieve almost a lawn type finish if you are cutting 2 or 3 times per year.
A lot of guys will use a combination of one unit mounted on the front and then a second on a boom mower on the back which also allows access to the awkward areas. Big investment but they will will be cutting 12 months of the year.


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## mulberrygrovefamilyfarm (Feb 11, 2009)

Here in NW IA where there are far more road ditches than people the county contractors only use 3pt disk mowers. Allows them to stay on top of the road to cut the top and sides of the ditches but the bottoms of ditches are never cut except in medians. When disk mowers encounter large objects it will "break away" and only needs to be pushed back in reverse to get going again. It will usually also knock off knives when hitting fence post type objects as well, but will cut through everything reasonable in ditches without too much of an issue. Disk mowers work very well on hay.


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

Around here they primarily use Alamo flail mowers on side booms to do the ditches. They also have enough articulation to shave the brush and tree branches growing in the ROW. The only time I see them using rotaries are in flat medians.


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## Halvor (Mar 3, 2011)

Thanks for the feedback, no there is no intention to use this as a feedstock, simply cash to pay for the machine, cause cows and hay dont supoort new machinery if you have 30 cows and a quarter section. the folks in Iowa are what I had in mind, need to cut 10' of ditch thinking about the disc mowers Vermeer? on the back and one mounted on the loader as I need to folow the profile of the ditch ie horizontal on the shoulder then 35 degrees or so down the ditch bank, how fast for a ground speed with a flail mower? and how much horse power?

thanks so far folks, unrelated but how is the new heston vs the jd net wrap baler?


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## Halvor (Mar 3, 2011)

What type of mowers are they useing in our area I see Kuhn or JD which I am told is the same? Who build the best mower without a conditioner that will stand up for 2 or 3 seasons? Thanks


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## kyfred (Dec 23, 2009)

They use batwing and offset bush hogs to mow roadways here in northern KY. But if you are going to use a disc mower we have a Krone Am 243S Easy Cut. Ours is 7ft 10in cut. You may want to go to something bigger. Our hayground if rough and it does a good job on it. Ours you can't raise up the cutterbar to the upright position with the mower still running. You might want to be able to do that to go around roadsigns or other obsticals. I see the ones using the batwing bush hogs raise on side all the way up to go between stuff or mow the other side of a embankment. I don't think you mentioned what size tractor you will be using. Flail mowers do a good job for that type of work but you can't use a flail mower on hay. Send a pm to a member I think he goes by krone. He is a member of Haytalk and works for Krone he might be able to recomend something they have that would work for the size tractor you have and what you are wanting to do.


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