Mower Conditioners or Discbines?

[sw]

I have ben running a discbine for 8 years and you could not get me to go back to a conventional, When I bought this one we had heavy hay, pocket gophers everywhere and you were plugged evry ten yards it seemed, no matter how slow you went. discbine solved that problem. We don't have rocks to speak of and if they hay is so lite it doesn't cut well, I should not be wasting fuel trying to cut it, let the cows harvest for me

[johndeerefarmer]

We got our first disc mower in 1987, a Case-IH made by new idea.

it was 100 times better than a sickle bar mower in sand, rocks, anywhere. Rocks kept breaking the guards on the sickle. You might nick a knife on a disc mower, other than that, no problems.

Just replaced the CaseIH with a John Deere (which if you don't know, is made by Kuhn). Works good..............

[alabama]

I like a disk cutter. Run 6 MPH and cut right through a fire aint hill as big as a 5 gal. bucket and never look back. However the disk cutter tends to wind row the crop up a little so you may want to tedd it in order to speed up drying.
I hit a baseball size rock yesterday and when it slung it out it looked like a Tiger Woods 3 wood shot. Raise it up or keep it out of the rocks..

[blackjack]

...discbine is the only way to go ...if you don't have a land roller... rent one for 3 bucks an acre or less ... agree totally with sw...if the crop is to light let the cows eat it ...

[alabama]

What is a land roller and what does it do?

[Shelly]

It's a big round heavy drum you pull behind a tractor, and it pushes down all the molehills and rocks.

[alabama]

Thanks Shelly. that would just bounce on top of my hard ground. I need to run a ripper through mine and let the water in.

[Silver]

The neighbour cut in the same field as me today, me with a 12' macdon haybine and him with a JD 13' disc bine. He could more than double my speed and do the same job of cutting. He was cutting at 12mph and sometimes as high as 15. Unbelievable. Then he found the rocks I had warned him about and broke a couple of knives. But it was set low so to be expected.

[alabama]

About as fast as I can go with a disk mower is 5.5 to 6 MPH.

[jrmckee]

Here in the south where fire ant hills, rock, limbs, mud, clay and you name it might prevail in a hay field, the disc mower is the only way to go. Sicklebars are basically a thing of the past, but in other regions sicklebars are an excellent choice. It basically depends on the individual's situation. Disc mower blades are a whole lot easier to replace then knives. Here in the south we usually spend more time putting on new knives or bars than cutting hay with a sicklebar mower.

[Manitoba_Rancher]

Well I ve tried both the discbine and the sicklebar mower conditioner and I think the sicklebar is the way to go for me. We ran the discbine for two days and it damn near self destructed. One planetary in the cutter blades went. everything was going good with it til we got into the stoney fields... Went through a whole box of flails and didnt get 30 acres of hay cut. Told the dealer to come and pick it up this afternoon and bring me sickle bar mower conditioner. Used it tonight and it works great even in the tangled and down hay. I think Ill keep this one, can cover a lot of acres with it as its 18FT.

[jrmckee]

The one good thing about sicklebar mowers is the variety of gaurds and knives available for different situations. Such as rock guards, which is stronger and will go under and scoop up rocks to keep them away from knifes. Hope and pray that fire ants never move up to the northern areas because they are pure hell on sicklebar mowers. The dirt will dull the disc knives but at least we don't have to stop and replace a whole bar or replace knives on the bar. The disc mower lets us at least cut until we get through cutting.

I am like most of you, a sickle bar mower is really hard to beat if you can use it.