Rear Finish Mower Mowing Six Feet Side Options

turkeyvulture · Apr 3, 2015

Mowing 4 acres with the 42" rear rotary mower on the Kubota BX24 just doesn't do it for me. The hours roll by and by insides turn to jelly. A flail would be great but is too heavy. Anyone know of some kind of 6' wide wheeled tow-behind unit that doesn't hang off the 3-point?

bcp · Apr 3, 2015

There are lots of old one-wheel and two-wheel towed sickle bar mowers out there. Mostly rusted and in the weeds, though.

Bruce

George2615 · Apr 3, 2015

Swisher is one company that makes a 66" wide gas powered tow behind trail or finish mowers. I don't think your BX could handle a 6' PTO driven mower but it could certainly tow one with its own motor. Most people that own a Swisher use an ATV to tow it. The DR 44" field and brush tow behind mower claims to be able to do 2 acres in an hour. I don't think they make units wider wider than 44" though.

MossRoad · Apr 3, 2015

Yeah, Swisher and several other companies make self powered 60" finish mowers. They can be set to track off to the side so you can get your 42" cut plus the 60" cut at the same time. You have to overlap them a bit, but an 8' wide cutting path would be easy to do. Probably cut your mowing time by close to 66% if its mostly open terrain.

Here's a 60" and a 66" at Northern Tool for comparison.
Comparing 2 Items | Northern Tool + Equipment

powerscol · Apr 4, 2015

There are several new double acting sickle mowers out now to fit your tractor, both 3 pt and tow behind. Try SFI and others. Another possible choice is trailed mowers like used on the golf courses (real mowers sp?) that can be ganged together. Just my 02

Poopdeck Pappy · Apr 4, 2015

Have you considered buying a 3 point mounted finish mower? I'm not sure what you're cutting, but a BX24 should handle a 60" finish mower (I think) in grass that's not way overgrown. And you'd be surprised how much difference a 60" cutting swath makes compared to 42" in terms of total time.

TO_Bud · Apr 5, 2015

T.V. have you considered buying a used zero turn mower. Even one with a 44" deck (better yet 48") would vastly speed up your task. I have 2 acres I cut all the time with another 3 acres I cut periodically and I get done quickly with my zero turn. Bought it used and have done some repair to it but I couldn't be happier. It has a 72" deck though and I cut 2 acres in 45 minutes. even going around 20 trees.

Gary Fowler · Apr 5, 2015

For straight mowing jobs you cant beat a ZTR mower. I can mow my back pasture faster with my 52" ZTR mower than I can with my 8 foot bush hog and get around the trees closer to boot. It is also smoother on the mower than the tractor. With any amount of tree where you have to circle and circle to get even 50% of the grass around them, a ZTR will out perform a much wider tractor mounted machine AND a commercial or near commercial grade machine will mow at 10 MPH easily. You may have to get a good suspension seat on it in order to go that fast but it is worth the money to do that.
I mow about 6 acres with my ZTR mower in about 2-2.5 hours and that includes mowing around over 50 bushes and trees

EddieWalker · Apr 5, 2015

If you are mowing fairly regularly, you can run a much wider finish mower then you can a rotary mower. The finish mower has four wheels on it. One at each corner, so there is no weight on your tractor. It still attaches to your 3 point hitch, but you just leave the arms in the middle, level position of the mower, and the arms from the finish mower allow it to go up and down with the contour of the land. I easily pull a 7 foot finish mower with my 35 hp tractor.

Eddie