Post hole digger useful?

[BoboMonkeyBoy]

Long-time lurker...First-time poster

Hi All,

I'm currently trying to decide on a tractor to do lawn mower duty (about 1-1.5 acres of english lawn and 3.5 acres of pasture), move manure (2horses and a Donkey, but about to grow) and very importantly, dig fence post holes. I'm not planning on any exotics, so 4x4s or 4x6s sunk 30 inches should be okay. I've just started looking, but I'm thinking real hard about the DX24E from Case. My wife likes to drive it, its not so heavy that it will crush the grass, the FEL seems nice enough, but will the PHD fit the bill? Does anyone have experience with driving a lot of fence posts with this tractor? What other options should I be looking at? (I'm going to look at Massey Ferguson and New Holland today, for price and product comparision.)

Thanks!!!!

 

[Dargo]

I know nothing about that tractor, but I've dug lots of post holes. For around areas where I can't reasonably use my tractor, I have a 2 man Tanaka post hole digger with a 12" auger. It surprises me how fast it can dig a 30" hole in undisturbed hard clay soil. However, it takes two people and is a bit of work.

Away from the house, I use a PHD on my tractor. I've put up about 2500 feet of fence, and it's the only way to go. This spring I need to put up nearly 3 miles more fencing. The 12" auger digs a hole large enough that allows for adjustment of the post to line up without having to get out the shovel to crumb the edges to get it in line. If you're going a long way with the fence, don't paint marks for all of your posts and dig all of them before you plant your first post. For some reason, it seems to work best to do a dozen or two holes and plant those posts. Then, measure off of those and do the next dozen or two. Even though I measured the marks, one time I dug about 900 feet of holes to find that somewhere in the middle I missed a mark and the last half of the holes were all off. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif I don't want to do that again. Good luck!

 

[Bob_Skurka]

Bobo, without repeating Dargo, let me just point out that the DX"e" is a sub-CUT machine and as such will have a bit lower ground clearance and probalby a bit less lift height on the 3pt than larger tractors. That presents some problems for using PHD with that size machine. I would ask the dealer to hook up a PHD to the tractor (he probably has one somewhere on his lot) and see if it will work with a standard size PHD. If it does not, there are a couple companies that make slightly scaled down implements, (Woods Estate series comes to mind, but I think King Kutter may have also added to their product line). You can do a search on this website for using a PHD with a Kubota BX series tractor and read about what actually works. The BX series tractors are very similar in size to the Case and Massey.

 

[slowrev]

Bobo,
I don't know how your area is, but you might want to consider having someone come in and drive your posts for you no bigger than your area sounds. I personally like the driven posts better, I do know they are a lot harder to pull up than the dug in posts. They are all one step too and about 15-20 min per post is what my friends and I spend on the average per post. This counts moving time from post to post and driving them. The cost might work out to not much more than the cost of your auger and a bit of your labor.

Just another possible route to consider.

Ben
ps welcome to the board /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[sellredall2u]

It's a great tractor. Maybe even consider smaller HP depending on your duties. Personnaly, I would look into renting a PHD. Possibley more economical.