# Drum Mowers



## JLP (Aug 5, 2013)

I have a neighbor interested in a buying a drum mower rather than a disc mower to use on his small acreage and small tractor. Anybody have any experience? Good, bad, worse.....

Thanks in advance for your replies.


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## The saint (Oct 4, 2015)

I am interested too in any ideas


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## Fossil02818 (May 31, 2010)

I bought a drum mower about 7 years ago for use on fields that were too small or too rough for my 9' wide mower conditioner. The drum mower is a very simple and dependable machine that works well for certain conditions. It can mow at ( for me) higher ground speed than the moco and it mows just as well in wet or damp conditions as it does with dry forage. However, it produces a single narrow windrow of cut grass that must be tedded shortly after mowing if you want it to dry evenly. Because of its weight and transport design it requires a larger tractor than a similar sized sickle bar mower. The HP requirements aren't that high, but, the weight is the bigger issue. They are much less expensive than disc mowers and can tolerate rough ground and the occasional unseen object. I've had to remove the bottom disc ( it actually slides along the field surface) to hammer out dents from encounters with larger rocks. I would not recommend it for alfalfa or any forage that needs conditioning. Hope this helps answer your question.


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## JLP (Aug 5, 2013)

Yes, it did. Thank you.


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## VA Haymaker (Jul 1, 2014)

I looked really hard at drum mowers for a sickle bar mower replacement. Here are my thoughts - YMMV

Drum mowers are very heavy. Make sure you've got enough tractor for the weight. They cut very close to the ground. I like to leave a 5 inch stubble on my Timothy and mixed grass. Other than tilting the mower, not sure anything over 3ish inches or less can be done. Not a deal killer. But good to know. Parts - I'm leary of the long term parts situation for drum mowers, however, they are cheap to buy and if the acrages are not high, you may never need major parts/support and they seem to be a pretty rugged machine in the first place. IMHO - they will cut anything, anytime, but they do leave a windrow that will need to be tedded out. FWIW - I set my mower conditioner to windrow, just to keep from driving on the hay as I cut the next round and tedded it out afterwords. No conditioning with a drum mower, so tedding is necessary anyway. In the end I bought a mower conditioner because I couldn't get around not conditioning my hay such that I'd get a decent dry down time. The conditioner really makes a difference. Another option is to find a used New Holland 472 or Hesston 1110 mower conditioner. 7ft cut, great machines and for the price of a new drum mower, you should be able to find a really nice used machine. They are small and ideal for small fields.

Good luck,
Bill


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## atgreene (May 19, 2013)

I run a Zetor, have for 3 years now. When I bought it I had a 45 hp Kubota that handled it well and was a good match. Now I have a 70 hp Kubota so I'm looking to upgrade to a 10' disk. Other than the width of cut, it's great. If I could get a 10' I probably would.


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

Reese makes drum mowers from 8Ft to 11 and a half. The 8 Ft has a spreader attachment.

tigercoinc.com


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## atgreene (May 19, 2013)

Closest Reese dealer is 1500 miles from me, and they're $5k more than a disc last I checked.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Drum mowers are good, we've got a PZ Zweegers we bought new in about 1988... and used continuously since then. I used to bale a lot of road hay and do custom work in some very rough patches (and found rocks and junk with it more than once) and the only work I've ever had done on it was to replace an input bevel gearset. Other than that I've just had to replace the driveshaft (wore the yokes and overrun clutch hub out) and replace the skid saucers underneath once. The Zweegers has adjusters on top of the gearbox that allows you to raise the mowing height up to a maximum of around 3 inches. We usually run it a little lower than that. The newer, cheaper Turkish versions don't have any adjusters on top, that I've seen. About the only "cutting height adjustment" you get it from lengthening or shortening the top link of your tractor to tilt the mower forward for lower cutting or backwards for higher cutting. Tip it too far back and you'll get 'double-cutting' of the stubble as the blades catch it a second time...

The biggest downside (other than the weight, which is considerable-- we run ours on a Ford 5610S and ran it behind a 6600 Ford for a decade before that, and it was a handful for those 66-70 horse, 8500 lb tractors... they have more than enough horsepower, but the sheer weight of the mower makes them VERY light on the front end when you fold up for transport!), as I was saying, the biggest downside is the narrow cutting width. We got the biggest one we could, and it's only cutting a 2.12 meter swath, which is about 7 foot 2 inches. The biggest advantage is the maintenance and longevity. We bought ours when the local dealers first started offering disk and drum mowers for sale in these parts... For awhile our local dealer was carrying both the Kuhn/New Holland (which was a rebranded Kuhn first generation mower with the non-top service hubs) disk mowers AND the Zweegers (and even Reese for awhile) drum mowers. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that 23 spur gears daisy-chained together in a pressed-steel gearbox cutterbar running down in the dirt was going to have a LOT more problems and be worn out a LOT faster than three bevel gear sets running in a gearbox 2 feet off the ground above the cutting disks (an input bevel gear from the pulley, another driving the cross-shaft, two more drum drive bevel gears on the cross-shaft, and one bevel gear on each drum). Six gears versus 23-- no contest. In addition, the gearbed-type cutterbars running down in the dirt get a lot of crud buildup under the turtles on top of the bar and between the skid shoes and the bottom of the gearbox, which inevitably gets damp and starts rusting away the gearbox-- sooner or later, they start developing pinhole leaks that are soon too thin to weld up, and you either junk the mower or spend half the price of a new one for a new bar gearcase.

The belt-driven Reese's looked good-- saw some of their pull-type wide-models at the Lubbock farm show probably 12 years ago... nice looking mowers, and very simple drive... I didn't like the three-point mounted Reese as much-- the drums are offset slightly because, unlike the gear driven models, the knives cannot overlap. Gear-driven models are "timed" like a disk mower so the knives overlap. The belt driven Reese cannot be timed because it cannot STAY in time, so the drums have to be offset slightly to overlap, one slightly in front of the other. They don't have a full floating skid saucer underneath them either-- just a half-saucer skid-plate, and they use a little crazy wheel out on the end running slightly behind the outer drum. I DID like their "tedder/spreader" attachment that was belt-driven off the back of the mower, to spread the hay out for even drying.

I haven't seen a new Zweegers in years... I know they were bought out by PZ Greenland company and then IIRC Kverneland. I don't know if they're being made anymore or imported anymore. I've looked at the "cheapy" versions by various manufacturers both online and occasionally at shows or on dealer lots, and I'm just NOT impressed with these 'off brand' Italian or Turkish or whatever else machines, either disk or drum.

I'm looking to replace my well-worn Zweegers drum with a new(er) disk mower, and after researching it, I'm leaning heavily to the modular cutterbars by either New Holland or Vermeer (Lely). In fact I talked with a Vermeer dealer yesterday, and I was VERY impressed by their parts-- he dug out a module gearbox for me, gear sets, bearings, housings, spacers, the works-- all cast iron or machined steel and all of very heavy duty construction-- no thin pressed steel gearbox bars and stuff like the Kuhns and most other spur-gear idler gear driven gearbed type cutterbars that most of the manufacturers use. I like that if one module has a bearing go out or a gear eat it, the parts are contained within that ONE module, rather than broken bits of steel getting passed up and down the entire daisy-chain of gears from one end of the bar to the other on the gearbed cutters.

IMHO, I'd buy a good USED modular cutterbar disk mower before I bought an off-brand no-name drum mower NEW... Parts are one reason-- New Holland and Vermeer/Lely are well established manufacturers that aren't going anywhere-- who knows where (or if) you'll be able to get the parts you need for the off-brand when it INEVITABLY needs parts, sooner or later. The other issue is, the biggest drum mower you can get is about 7.5 foot cut, with some as narrow as 4-5 feet. The smallest disk mower you will typically see starts at about a 7.5 foot cut, and goes up from there (though I've seen some "special order" disk mowers down in the 5 foot wide range). It doesn't take many acres before you start wishing you had an extra foot or so of cut, lemme tell ya!

Later and good luck! OL J R


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