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A POTTINGER front-and-rear mower combination has halved mower tractor time for a Northland dairy farmer.
Ruawai, Northland, dairy farmers Garth and Lyall Preston farm 800 cows on their 380ha property. Using capital and labour units effectively is a big priority, including the tractor.
Preston has had a front PTO installed on successive tractors used in pasture management and supplement harvesting. “On a farm like this you’d probably need two tractors and
two rear mowers to handle the same area if you didn’t have the front mounted mowers. I can mow 4ha in 25 minutes.”
Halving the tractor running time maintains its resale value, and saves time and running costs says Preston. “When I resell a tractor I’ve owned for 10 years it’s only done 4000 hours; if it hadn’t had the front mower then it would have done 7000 hours.”
While several front-and-rear mower combinations have been used on the farm, Preston has run Pottinger mowers front and rear for five years – on both the Ruawai property and South Island farms – and says he hasn’t regretted it. “The mowers have done especially well down there. We’ve done a phenomenal amount of work with them in the three years we have had them and we haven’t had to touch a bar on them.”
On the Ruawai property Preston’s current 7.34m mowing set-up is made up of a 3.04m Novacat 301 Alpha Motion in the front and 4.3m Novacat 442 offset mower on the rear of a 140hp John Deer 6140R.
While Preston says he has tried out several front-mounted disc mowers, the Pottinger model has been the one he settled on due to the way it is mounted and the amount of room it gives the operator to move. “If the paddock dips it won’t scalp the ground. From what I’ve seen it is the best front mower you can buy because of how it follows the contour.”
The 4.3m rear mower also follows contours well and Preston attributes this to the mower’s centre mounting. The mower is suspended from the middle of the mowing bar instead of near the 3PL connection.
The maker saying this makes for a more even cut which isn’t affected
as much by uneven or undulating ground.
Manufacturers say this and the mower’s innovative hydraulic suspension mean the Novacat 442 acts lighter than other mowers giving a ‘floating cut’.
Preston agrees, saying while the 4.3m mower has given him an extra 0.8m cutting distance on the previous Pottinger rear mower.
It has only added an extra 150kg of weight.
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