Buck Hollow Sporting Goods - click or touch to visit their website Midwest Habitat Company

Equipment questions

K

kfin

New Member
We have about 160 acres of timber / old farm land with awesome dirt, no rocks. Most of it is in the wetlands now. There would be a max of about 18 acres in food plots per year. Some clover on the levees, beans and milo mainly in the bigger plots, some ww plots in the fall and perhaps a few small brassica plots for the fall also. Open to others but have major equipment questions as a farmer I am not. :) The farm is about 5 miles down a gravel road from the house.

I have a 26 hp 4wd yanmar tractor with a 5' brush hog and a 5' yanmar tiller. This works fine but it sure does take a LONG time to till an acre with it. I also have an 8' chain drag harrow and a 10' brillon cultipacker (that needs a little work). I also have a 25 gallon boomless sprayer, a bag seed spreader, and a 4 wheeler.

Recently I have purchased a JD 4020 diesel 2wd and a 15' batwing bushhog 2615 shredder. Man did that speed things up a bit.

My question is what should I work the ground with? Should I buy a hydraulic disc for the 4020 and disk the ground several times? Disk it once and then go over it with the small tiller? Get a bigger tiller for the 4020? I would like to do it as efficiently as possible. Don't mind spending the time but sure don't like tilling an acre for 3 hours.

Should I get a planter of some type? Or a drill? Or just keep using the spreader?

Sorry for all of the questions but I want to get my info so I am ready for some good deals this winter when I find them.

Keith
 
If it were me I'd buy a used 12 or 14' disk to use on the bigger plots. You'll have to disk it more than once to break it up properly before you plant it, but I couldn't imagine having to till that much with a tiller. If money wasn't an issue, look for a 6 row JD planter......more than likely you can find one cheaper than a four row. I'd also upgrade the tiller to a 7 footer....you'll be fine with the 10' packer that you already have.
 
Sounds like you've got a great start! Tillage equipment seems to be what your maybe missing out a bit on (we are too). A bigger tiller or disc would be good I'd think. We've gotten by with beans and corn without a drill, got great results just lightly discing both in! Having an old planter would be nice but I'd go with bigger tillage equipment if I were you.
 
I would definately try to find a 12 or 14 foot disc, way faster than a tiller. Then I would try to find an old grain drill with small seed box. You can plant all of your grains with that.
 
my good friend farms 5000 acers i plant all my plots on his ground he bought a 4 row jd planter for 1200 bucks with 2 200 gal tanks on it i use that to plant all my plots it can plant spray ru and herp all at the same time never have to worry about disc anything up and they look great and i have 34 acers of food plots thats if you only wanted to plant beans or corn
 
Last edited:
Oh man did you open a can of worms! Or actually open your checkbook up! :) I know 1st hand it never ends!!! I'm to the point now where I even want 2 of EVERYTHING because I can't fart around with stuff breaking down!!! I have 4 sprayers even cause those things just are troublesome for me. I've got a sprayer with booms, a 200 gallon boomless sprayer & 65 gallon boomless for tough areas and I have a 4 wheeler sprayer (mainly for my trees using the wand). I skipped the rotary tiller cause I don't have the time and I have too many acres to go over, it would take me all year BUT that's me. Love my cheap hydraulic disk- $150 and I have it working great. Have a 4 row no till planter and I'm later getting an 8 with a bigger tractor. NO-TILL drills are hands down the best thing you could buy BUT... Are you ok with spending $3k-20k (depending on size and how nice it is) on one? And if I got one of those, I'd want a Native Grass box SO you're more into the $5k MINIMUM on that all the way up to 25k. BUT, man, that would be the ticket.
IF you don't go with no till drill, I'd stick with a few hundred dollar disc - have some nice new cylinders on your stuff & a cultipacker and your spreader. you can do it all with that, just takes longer and you can't no till of course. I have an 18' dual row cultipacker with wheels & hydraulics, I paid $500. Just be ready to have a welding shop lined up or mechanic to fix stuff up. older stuff breaks a lot more of course, like you already knew.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom