How much can a 4' RC cut in an hour?

[RobJ]

Well I found out. My neighbor wanted his field mowed and I wanted some seat time...desparate I guess in the 101 temp. I mowed about half this field last year if yall remember, some stuff was about as tall as the rops.

To gauge solid mowing..no turns corners, etc, I started the inner circle and just kept getting bigger, I was never not cutting something.

In the end, I had a 300' circle. I think my math wizzard...son...came up with about 1.5 acres in that circle. It looks bigger but its on a hill. In the other pic I was making a circle around the tree, that circle..give or take for the tree in the middle, was about 180' across and came up to about 1/2 acres. That was about 20 minutes. IF I recall a few passes from the outside line, I was making one circle every minute. Of course every circle got a little longer to make. On the 300' circle if I recall the last circle was a 2 minute loop. You number guys can play with that one.

I figure the average cut was 3.5' with some overlap. I was also running at a little less that PTO rpm. According to my manual 3rd high at pto speed is 6+/- mph. Now with a 6 mph speed and my math says I should cut about 3 acres. But I was running a little lower speed and not getting a full 4' cut.

Moral of the story...get a bigger mower for this field. NOT...never get rid of the tough little TSC 4' mower. Right after this play I opened up an old road for deer hunting access. Any tractor bigger than mine would have had trouble. Took out a few 2" trees, about my limit.

And some fun pics. LAst pic you can see some of the grow in 10-11 months. That's 2 4' passes in that tall stuff. That stuff also hasn't seen any water in about 3 months now. Major drought in east Texas..

Rob

 

[have_blue]

Sounds about right.

I used to mow a 300' round field. Due to no corners, it mowed extremely fast, but made me a little dizzy.

All kidding aside, it's the quickest way to mow, if you can. You can mow a square with large radius corners just about as quickly, and leave less unmown area. Maybe plant shrubs or flowers in the unmown corners.

 

[art]

48" at full cut at 5 MPH will cut just over 2.5 acres an hour, at 80% width figure two acres an hour of clean cutting. Going around tree's other and obstacles will take longer of coarse.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

With a mowing business that's logged over 12,000 acres so far this summer, I keep close tabs on average acres per hour. That's the secret to successful bidding on large jobs.

I don't have any 4' mowers, but using a formula I've found to be extremely accurate, 48" @ 5mph cuts 2.40 acres per hour. That's ALL of the 48" and cutting continuously.

A 72" mower @ 5MPH used to 100% efficiency would cut 3.6 acres per hour. In "real world conditions", it's difficult to average 2-1/2 acres per hour with a 72" mower. On one 10 acre field I mow (w/ GPS it measures 10.0021 acres) , which is a long, straight, flat field, I've averaged 2.85 acres per hour cutting right at 5mph (w/ 72" mower). That's the exception rather than the rule.

A good rule of thumb for calculating hourly mowing capacity is, width of actual cut in inches, X MPH divide by 100. Then you need to deduct percentage of time lost (ie turning, ect) and always deduct overlap from width of mower to get actual cutting width.

(If you estimate 10% inefficiency, Inches X MPH divide by 110, 20% inefficient, divide by 120, ect)

48" @ 6MPH would (in theory) cut 2.88 acres.

6MPH on a tractor, mowing anything less than a perfectly smooth field is FLYING.... 5MPH is relatively fast at that.