Health & Safety
Evolving from Manual Mowing
Today , petroleum-based products are essential to farm operations . But for thousands of years , fodder – speci cally , hay – was the most critical form of fuel on the farm .
For centuries , grass was cut by workers who walked through pastures or elds wielding small , sharp scythes . In addition to being tiring and slow , manual cutting was ineffective — the scythes worked well only when the grass was wet . �e rst mechanical grass-cutting device appeared in 1830 , when an English textile worker named Edwin Budding developed a mower allegedly based on a textile machine used to shear the nap off of cloth .
Today ' s grass mowers are lighter , sleeker , better behaved , more easily controlled , more durable and a whole lot bigger than they used to be . Improved suspension and weight distribution allow machines to be worked at faster forward speeds with greater con dence , while bed designs have been developed to be strong yet cut close to the ground , with shear-bolt and discshear technology minimising collateral damage when things go wrong .
Look also for blade mountings that allow knives to be changed quickly without grazed knuckles yet hold them securely when discs are spinning at colossal speed . In terms of size and sophistication , the choice has never been greater – from a simple 1.2m ( 4� ) tractor-mounted disc-bed mower for modest paddocks to a multi-armed 480hp selfpropelled giant that can fell 14m ( 46� ) of forage with each pass . Nor is there any shortage of con gurations , with rear-mounted , front-mounted , combination and “ reverse drive ” options to extract maximum productivity from any size of tractor .
Mowing without conditioning If the grass is to be spread out to dry , why bother conditioning it on the mower ? �ese machines cost less , weigh less and do not need as much power as their conditioning counterparts , so they can be run on smaller , lighter and more economical tractors , especially when operated in front / rear and triple combinations .
Improving the ride Suspending a mounted mower ' s disc cutting bed from a support arm via a central pivot rather than from a pivot at the inner end of the machine is reckoned to improve the machine ' s ability to respond accurately to irregular surfaces .
It is certainly becoming a more common design feature of mounted mowers , along with more sophisticated spring and / or hydraulic suspension systems that try to cater for demand for faster mowing speeds . Operators sitting comfortably in their suspended cabs are more inclined to drive faster in the eld , a�er all .
�e mounting arrangement also improves weight distribution and reduces the height of the machines when folded for transport . Effective suspension is even more important on front-mounted mowers because of the different forces involved .
Most designs involve a linkage and spring arrangement that “ pulls ” rather than “ pushes ” the deck to improve contour-following responses while keeping the weight on the disc bed to a minimum without detracting from cutting height accuracy .
Mowing back and forth It ' s not a new concept but there more trailed mower-conditioners capable of cutting to the le� and right of the tractor .
Apart from the advantages of cutting up-anddown rather than in lands or round-and-round , which means double swaths picked up by the forager will always be parallel , there is a positive conservation bene t .
Cutting in this way gives animals and game birds a better chance of escaping unscathed than when they are corralled in “ lands ” or at the centre of a eld in the path of a fast-moving mower .
Make mine a triple Triple mower combinations are increasingly popular among contractors and farmers with large acreages of grass to cut ahead of a selfpropelled forage harvester thanks to their combination of high output with good eld manoeuvrability and easy road mobility . Making most of the output potential with accurate steering is a challenge that can be made a lot easier with a GPS auto guidance system .
�e one-front-two-rear con guration is most popular as it spreads the out t ' s weight , but having everything on the back is an alternative . Working widths are typically from just over 7m ( 23� ) but can go to almost 9m ( 29� 6in ).
November - December 2016
FARMERS
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