Drum mower thoughts

[Tylerpresser14]

I have been looking at drum mowers and was wondering what the people who have them think of them I have run sickle mowers or 400 versatile swathers my whole life and am thinking about updating i like the tar river drum mowers but only have a te20 ferguson to run it

 

[showcrop]

I used one for a few years. I liked it but I had to go to mower conditioner to speed drying up. TO-20 will not have enough power to start it or weight to lift it.

 

[Seth_ia]

Drum mowers are better than a sickle bar mower, but that is not saying much.

The big issue is they take a lot of power. I had a 4 drum Reese and it would work the crap out of a JD4240. You can drive a little faster in alfalfa, but a good late model mower condition with a sickle/stub guards and reel will perform very well as well if factors besides ground speed matter. MOCOs got a lot better by the 90s when they were dying out in popularity. Drum mowers excel in short grass.

In tall matted grass, clearance is an issue with drum mowers because they are top drive by design. My drum mower hated reed canary grass as bad as my MOCO did. True disc mowers type cutters excel in these conditions and basically all others. I run one disc mower and one late model sickle type MOCO. Both have there place. I can't find a place for a drum mower unless it was free....

 

[Bill VA]

Drum mowers are HEAVY!!!!!

My brother has a TO20 and I don't think it would handle one at all. Also, no position control, so you'd have to use chains to limit the position setting.

If you could move up to an MF35 or newer, you'd have the power to run a haybine, very live power too.

Good luck,
Bill

 

[RayP(MI)]

I have one, equivalent to the CCM 190 that was advertised around this site a couple years back. That's about as big as they come. I am very happy with it's performance in comparison to a sickle bar mower. That said, I am running it with a MF 180. A fairly heavy tractor, with about 60 HP. Runs it well. However, I have reservations about running it with a much smaller tractor. They are heavy. Carrying either in field or transport mode might be a problem. In operation. they slide on the disks under the hood, on the ground. They say you can run them as fast as you want, I don't think that is true. There is a limit to practical speed, especially in rough fields. (With the ground moles I have, all my fields are rough!) Do move faster than with a sickle, no problems with clogging, and have to keep RPMs up.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

I have a Reese 8' cut mower and its very heavy. It will knock down just about any hay at any speed you want as long as you can stay in the seat (for grins I mowed some hay at 18mph when i first bought it). They say 65hp will run it but there are times it makes 100hp earn its keep.

Reese makes a 5'3" cut model but it would be too much for a TO20, especially without live power.

 

[Hay hay hay]

I have 2 Reese drum mowers and love them. One is a 6.5 ft and the other an 8ft. I run them with an 80 hp tractor.
I have been thinking about trying the 6.5 ft on a MF65 (50HP) but not sure it can handle the weight or the power needs.

Remember, a sickle mower takes very little power. Both drum and disc mowers are power hogs.

 

[JerryMT]

I have a 1.9 M Galfre shaft drive drum mower. I bought the extra parts to make it cut higher with about 3 inch stubble left. It has a hydraulic cylinder to extend from the cut position to the transport position. I will cut as fast as you can go and stay in the seat and never plugs. It has conditioning plates on the spool to scatter the cut material rather than windrow it. use it with my Ford 4610 to mow our hayfield. Blade changes are easy. The 1.9 Galfre is a pretty heavy unit that requires a larger tractor but they make smaller units for compact tractors. They are rugged and reliable. Go to tractortools.com to see this brand. there are lighter cheaper Turkish made models that are pretty cheap and they fundamentally all work the dame way (counter-rotating drums) the difference is in the drive system, shaft versus belt.
I bought a drum mower because I have rocky fields and a disk mower is not as rugged as a drum mower. They will both cut at fast speeds. The disks can be made longer than a drum without getting as heavy. I don't think the weight issue is really bad because the drum bottoms sit on the ground and are separate from the cutting part of the drum. They pivot on bearings and carry the mower weight.
Drum mowers have a great reputation for simplicity, reliability and ruggedness. Many of the original ones developed in the 1960's are still operating.

 

[Texasmark1]

I have a 6' 2 drum I bought about 7 years ago from Small Farm Innovations in Caldwell, TX. Unit is made in Turkey. Had my belly full of sickles over the years. Thought about getting into discs but everyone that was used and for sale had lots of braze welds on the bottom and lots of parts and new ones were pricy.

Drum is zero maint. Blades are 3 per drum or for me 6 per drum...holes were there so one day with nothing to do I doubled the number, SFI sells them in a box of 100 for $25. You can sharpen them on the unit, they are sharp on 2 sides so they will swap from left to right drum, After cutt.ng if you let the clippings and mud that accumulates around the blade dry, it will blow out first time you use it. If not it only takes a few minutes to clear it out.

Mine weighs about 900# and like most side side cutters in the lift position puts a lots of lift on the front left tire so you need some weight up there. I use a 65 hp 4wd Branson 6530c and it's a no brainer. It rides on the ground when cutting and has +/- tilt so it automatically follows the terrain, ditch or what have you to the limits of it's capabilities. You can move it behind the tractor for transport, or I put a hyd. cyliinder on the last brace and lift it vertical.

I post a picture on here and another forum periodically of some 8' sudan-sorghum I cut in 2014 and never missed a stalk. It's around here somewhere.