We changed to a 3 meter Claas rotary rake 3 years ago. We got it from the internet, the Dutch Ebay equivalent.
Most wheel rakes around here are used by hobby farmers who cant figure out how to attach a PTO shaft, and dont have the skills to work around corners with a Vicon 4 wheel rake. They rake the headlands and corners by hand, but this type of hobby farmers have more time on their hands than they can find use for on their hobby farms anyways
Bigger hobby farms (like ours) people that have a daytime job and run a farm big enough to break even, but too small to make a living off, all use PTO driven rotary rakes.
smaller rakes from 2.8 to 3.5 meter are cheap because full time farmers need bigger equipment, and the smaller hobby farms only want a 75 Euro (scrap price) wheel rake.
You can make turns and corners with wheel rakes but it requires some skills.
That was not the reason that we changed to rotary: It was because in dry hay, the hay gets blown away on the flat, and when the silage is green and heavy, the rake wobbles over it and makes humps.
When picking up a wheel rake swath of heavy grass with a self loading silage wagon or a baler, when you stop, the machine pulls about 5 meter of swath into its mouth, because the wheel rake winds it up like a rope.
The PTO machine is much more convenient and works also in too dry or too wet grass.
The model of rakes which is common in North America, was sold in Europe only as horse drawn models: When tractors came, these rakes were extinct and forgotten. Everybody used the wheel rake during the 50's and 60's, and when the rotary rakes came in the 70's, most farms used them, and in the 80's all professional farms used them.
