What to buy....tractor, utv, other....?

[j-bird]

I don't own and never have owned an ATV/UTV. My 790 Deere and truck work just fine for my needs at the moment. I don't need another mortgage!

 

[JFK52]

I have a L345 4WD diesel Kubota tractor. It has turf tires. The front end loader and live PTO are able to do just about every job on my farm. It is the best helper I have on my farm. When the time comes, my Kubota will have a decent resale value as will all the Land Pride implements I have bought for it. So get as big a HP tractor as you can afford and build a garage or other inside storage for it and you will never look back.

 

[Camp 2 Dukes]

Thanks for the reply! Which one do you have? I’m still looking at the 1100c. Also speed isnt an issue to me. The ground here (heavy rock) means I’ll be putting along in anything I end up with at 5mph.

I just have the 900 an 07 I think. Where its used most is N WI pretty rocky and a lot of low areas. Speed is not a factor for me either, before this we used a Pug. it was even slower but a great machine.

 

[Adittmer]

Not even a question in my mind, buy a tractor and get one a size or two bigger than u think u need. Remember the old saying “buy once cry once” words to live by.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[yoderjac]

So I want to start doing some research. It seems like one machine is never enough. And neither is the bank account.

On my recently purchased property the tasks and terrain vary. I have a good trail system.

Tasks....
1. TSI aka cutting trees marked by the forestor (I have two chainsaws so cuttings is a non issue) and more importantly getting them out of the woods.

2. The ability to turn the ground over for food plots. The food plots are going to be small in size 1/4 to 1/2 acre. Some of the logging roads I’m in the process of planting and will plant in the future are NOT on level flat land by any means. They go uphill/downhill. Also turning anything around 180 degrees on these is a big factor.

3. Mowing the plots. Plots and logging roads will need to be mowed obviously for clovers or for prepping the plot (mow and turn it over etc). The trail system itself that I travel to access will need no mowing.

4. It would be nice to have the option of a bucket to haul wood or gravel for the road should it need it.

5. Ability to have a snowblade. Yeah I can use the walk behind snowblower if I have to but a blade is easier and faster for the the storms we tend to get here.

6. Storage. I will be storing any machine and implements in the garage (standard height doors). I can always put a shed in the yard but driving across the leech field doesn’t sit well with me.

Now I know a tractor bc of power and PTO is damn fantastic. And powerful. I’m just not sure how well it will do on the steep upgrades where it’ll need to go. I also know I won’t get the speed needed (safely) to pull a disc etc up and down these plot trails. I guess I could do a PTO tiller but again not sure.

A UTV (been looking at the 1100c by Kubota) also has its quirks. It’ll handle everything I need to do. Snow no problem. It’ll turn and handle better. Wood I can toss in the back. Comfort and other use like checking cams and using to haul stands etc obviously pluses. But where I’m unsure of is it’s ability via attachments etc to work the ground, mow etc.

So while I know the answer is like to give myself is get the utv, AND a tractor.....it’s not a reality. Again the terrain is NOT flat. The plots will be kept small (forestor request), and the plot trails are long and fairly narrow.

So I’m all ears. Are there enough available attachments to mow and till the ground making the utv my best choice, or should I look elsewhere. Let’s hear it!

Here are my thoughts, for what they are worth... If you are only talking about a couple small plots for attraction, first watch some of the "Ray the soil guy" videos. Start with this one: https://vimeo.com/channels/raythesoilguy/23850878 While they are focused at farmers with large no-till equipment, the underlying principles concerning the soil productivity are what you need to get a handle on. Because food plotters do not harvest and most of the food we plant for deer requires little if any tillage, we can reap the rewards of this even more than can farmers who harvest.

Second, read some of the Crimson n Camo threads on "throw and grow". He does a great job of taking Ray's principles and applying them to food plotter with small equipment. A tractor with a tiller can be a great tool if you set the tiller very high so that it barely touches the top inch or less of soil but you can accomplish the same thing in other ways. A tractor is best with a boom sprayer for accurate applications of herbicides because it has a constant speed, but for a couple tiny plots it is more than you need. A small ATV/UTV mounted sprayer is fine.

I would focus on these planting methods first. Many folks do this without a tractor/atv/utv but they do make it much nicer. Once you have the planting methods down, you will be able to make a much smarter decision about equipment. I have a new 2-bottom plow that was used once or twice before I learned I was doing more harm than good. It is now a rusty lawn decoration.

If you told me you had a few hundred acres and these were the first food plots of many to come, I would offer very different advice.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[TreeDaddy]

Jack,

2 bottom plows make great artificial reefs .......

bill

 

[Nova]

Only advise I can give you is we blew up a couple ATV doing food plot work before we bought a tractor. Get a 4x4 tractor with a diesel engine, you won't be sorry.

 

[Peplin Creek]

Right now i have an atv with a groundhog max disk and a harrow drag. To me this is the most practical equipment for atvs and small food plots. With that said, if I had the option to do it again, find a good deal on a tractor and use that. You can get a lot more accomplished in a short amount of time.

 

[Mortenson]

I'm in the camp of start by looking for a late model, low hour Kubota tractor. People usually seem pretty happy with their Kubota utility tractors. It'll be the most versatile option.

 

[yoderjac]

Jack,

2 bottom plows make great artificial reefs .......

bill

I'd sell it but have a hard time doing so with a clear conscience.

 

[yoderjac]

So much of this decision depends on the individual, limitations, and resources. Just for some context, this has been my path.

• Started with a 3813 honda lawn tractor. Got a 2-pt hitch cultivator (less than 3' wide) and rigged it to the tab hitch. My buddy stood on it for weight and put his hands on my shoulders to stabilize himself. It was just enough to scratch the soil. Used the mower and a back pack sprayer to remove vegetative debris. Used BOB mixes and did a couple plots 1/4 ac or less with great success. This was not on my property bud done with landowner permission. This was essentially throw-and-grow without understanding it.
• Went in with others to buy around 400 acres where quality food was scarce. Bought a used Kubota B2400 4x4 with FEL. Bought a JD 4' tiller, bushhog, 3pt broadcast spreader, 55 gal 3pt sprayer. This was sufficient for 3 to 4 acres of plots but very slow, time consuming, and demanding on the operator. I was trying to do traditional deep tillage with the tiller were it was operating at full tiller depth. It was murder on tiller tines. Short-term results were OK.
• Stepped up to a Kioti DK45 4x4 with loader and cab (The cab is a huge improvement for me). Bought a 2-bottom plow and a 6' tiller. Would plow first than use a tiller to get a fluffy seed bed. This took lots of time but was less wear and tear on the operator (me). This was doing traditional tillage as well. It gave me OK results but required high inputs and hurt my soil health even more significantly reducing OM.
• Finally "got it" with respect to soil health and long-term sustainability and maximizing benefit for deer while minimizing cost. Bought a used 4' kasco no-till versa drill and made the plow a lawn ornament. I now drill about 7 acres of beans with a light corn mix in the spring and then surface broadcast a cover crop of WR/PTT/CC into the standing beans when they yellow for fall. I maintain a bunch of smaller plots in perennial clover where I often drill GHR in suppressed clover in the fall. I still use a tiller, but I lift it so high it barely hits the top inch. I do this because with my low OM, my clay tends to crust. When I've built better OM from the top down over time, the crusting issue should diminish. My fertilizer costs have dropped and my fields improved from a deer perspective. I have become much more weed tolerant in clover as deer eat many of the broadleaf weeds and many are higher quality food than the clover. My clover plots look ugly in the summer, full of weeds, but when I mow them before the season and the cool weather favors the clover, they bounce right back. Deer don't need "farm looking" monocultures and I was spending lot of time an money on things that looked great but did not benefit deer any more. I now have more time and resources to put into permaculture like soft mast trees.

This has been my journey and where I ended up. In hindsight, much of the equipment is the same but not all and much of the equipment is used differently. Had I started understanding soils and techniques to support both them and deer, I would have saved a lot of money on equipment choices.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Livesintrees]

E

Here are my thoughts, for what they are worth... If you are only talking about a couple small plots for attraction, first watch some of the "Ray the soil guy" videos. Start with this one: https://vimeo.com/channels/raythesoilguy/23850878 While they are focused at farmers with large no-till equipment, the underlying principles concerning the soil productivity are what you need to get a handle on. Because food plotters do not harvest and most of the food we plant for deer requires little if any tillage, we can reap the rewards of this even more than can farmers who harvest.

Second, read some of the Crimson n Camo threads on "throw and grow". He does a great job of taking Ray's principles and applying them to food plotter with small equipment. A tractor with a tiller can be a great tool if you set the tiller very high so that it barely touches the top inch or less of soil but you can accomplish the same thing in other ways. A tractor is best with a boom sprayer for accurate applications of herbicides because it has a constant speed, but for a couple tiny plots it is more than you need. A small ATV/UTV mounted sprayer is fine.

I would focus on these planting methods first. Many folks do this without a tractor/atv/utv but they do make it much nicer. Once you have the planting methods down, you will be able to make a much smarter decision about equipment. I have a new 2-bottom plow that was used once or twice before I learned I was doing more harm than good. It is now a rusty lawn decoration.

If you told me you had a few hundred acres and these were the first food plots of many to come, I would offer very different advice.

Thanks,

Jack

Excellent video

 

[Livesintrees]

Yoder. Are you still mowing? I would take it as though you still mow. Lightly disturb the surface. Then drill or broadcast?

And after watching a couple of his videos I haven’t heard to NOT use roundup.

So what I gather is that a simple version of this process as it relates to planting for deer would go something like this.....

Use your roundup/other to get a kill on the crop/weeds. Then mow. Then lightly till/disturb the top inch or so. Possibly cultipack before seeding. Then either broadcast or drill at the appropriate rate. And perhaps at that point cultipack again to ensure the seed makes it through the thatch to the soil.

This should allow the killed plants roots to build the soil. Maintain a thatch layer for aiding in moisture as well as help shade out weeds.

And as this process is repeated spring and fall and so on you are basically eliminating the need for for lime and fertilizer.

 

[Tree Spud]

Only advise I can give you is we blew up a couple ATV doing food plot work before we bought a tractor. Get a 4x4 tractor with a diesel engine, you won't be sorry.

Tractors and utv/atv/rtv have very different mechanical drive train designs. These new utv/rtvs may have horsepower; however, they they are designed for high rpm operation and acceleration. Tractors are designed to produce high torque at low rpm operation which is critical when pulling a disc and PTO driven pieces

After replacing the 4x4 belt in my Mule rear differential twice, that's when I added the tractor.

 

[ruskbucks]

Jack,

2 bottom plows make great artificial reefs .......

bill

HA HA I lost my 4 bottom last year in the weeds. It has been out of use since I stopped planting corn.

 

[Catscratch]

So what I gather is that a simple version of this process as it relates to planting for deer would go something like this.....

Use your roundup/other to get a kill on the crop/weeds. Then mow. Then lightly till/disturb the top inch or so. Possibly cultipack before seeding. Then either broadcast or drill at the appropriate rate. And perhaps at that point cultipack again to ensure the seed makes it through the thatch to the soil.

I do a slightly different order:
1-Spray to kill.
2-Spread seed.
3-Mow.

Spreading seed into standing (but dead) vegetation allows seed to fall to the soil easily. Then mowing shakes the rest of the seed to the soil and leaves the thatch layer on top for thermal and moisture retention.

 

[yoderjac]

Yoder. Are you still mowing? I would take it as though you still mow. Lightly disturb the surface. Then drill or broadcast?

And after watching a couple of his videos I haven’t heard to NOT use roundup.

So what I gather is that a simple version of this process as it relates to planting for deer would go something like this.....

Use your roundup/other to get a kill on the crop/weeds. Then mow. Then lightly till/disturb the top inch or so. Possibly cultipack before seeding. Then either broadcast or drill at the appropriate rate. And perhaps at that point cultipack again to ensure the seed makes it through the thatch to the soil.

This should allow the killed plants roots to build the soil. Maintain a thatch layer for aiding in moisture as well as help shade out weeds.

And as this process is repeated spring and fall and so on you are basically eliminating the need for for lime and fertilizer.

Every place and situation is unique. In my particular case, I have heavy clay soils with low OM that tends to crust if I don't disturb the surface. Keep in mind, I'm not just planting a few small fields for attraction, but while the amount of property we own plus have influence on is on the small side (~400 owned and ~ 400 with influence) for QDM, that is what we are trying to do. I'm in zone 7a so summer is probably a slightly greater stress period than winter. I have 7 acres whose primary purpose is to provide summer nutrition.
For those 7 acres my general practice (changing this year because of a specific gly resistant weed called Marestail) has been to plant 7 acres of RR soybeans (with a light mix of RR corn for vertical cover) using my kasco no-till drill in the spring. When soybeans begin to yellow, I use a broadcast spreader to surface broadcast my cover crop of WR/CC/PTT. I do no mowing. Timing is key. When the beans begin to yellow, they will soon drop their leaves which form a mulch over the broadcast seed which then dries out. Soybeans with no leaves remain standing with any pods attached. They allow enough light through for the cover crop to germinate. Deer don't generally use the pods in my area unless we have a mast crop failure but turkey do.

Come fall the cover crop provides attraction at the turnips provide some winter food. Come spring the PTT bulbs need to be terminated. Gly won't do it. Here is where I use the tiller. I set it so it is only an inch or less deep and move pretty fast with the tractor. It mechanically terminates any PTT tubers and breaks any crust. It is temporarily disrupts the crimson and WR but does not terminate it. When it is time to plant beans, I drill the bean/corn for the next year and spray with gly.

This is a bit different variant of the throw and mow method. My small kill plots all have a clover base. Eventually, the percentage of clover reduces to a small enough fraction even in the fall after mowing when it is favored that the field needs refurbished. I typically rotate these into buckwheat for a summer to use up some of the N the clover banked and then put them back in to clover in the fall. I typically run my tiller first, only about an inch deep in the spring. I then spray with gly. I don't care if I kill the clover so I only use 2 quarts/ac (more is required to kill clover). I let the field alone for a week and then broadcast my buckwheat. I'll spray again if necessary when I seed but it usually isn't needed.

Come fall, I surface broadcast Durana clover and winter rye into the standing buckwheat. I then either mow the buckwheat or cultipack it (prefer cultipacking). If there are weeds to deal with I will then spray gly. I don't use the tiller for this because WR and Durana germinate well for me without breaking any crust and there is usually less crusting in these fields for some reason. This is a typical throw and mow approach. Buckwheat is an annual that does not need to be terminated. Knocking it down (mowing or cultipacking) lets it act as a mulch of sorts for the seeds and when it is in contact with dirt, the soil microbes break it down faster releasing the scavenged nutrients for the next crop. I prefer cultipacking because it presses the Durana and WR into the soil thus improving germination rates a bit but mowing also works well.

In general, less tillage is better for me but still needed in some circumstance. I try to do it as shallow as possible and as infrequently as possible.

As I say, each place is different. If I had sandy soil I would not till at all.

I mentioned I won't be doing the beans this year because a recent pine thinning introduced marestail into our feeding plots. Instead, I'll be taking the summer to get marestail under control. I'll use appropriate herbicides to control it, spring and fall, and use buckwheat to smother in the summer. Buckwheat's wide planting window and use of banked N makes it a good fit for this purpose.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

I forgot to address the use of roundup (glyphosate). Keep in mind ray's videos are aimed at farmers. They generally are experiencing gly resistance issues. Also, specific kinds of cover crops like Winter Rye can be terminated by crimping. Farmers generally have big no-till drills that can handle trash well. I would look at Crimson N Camo's throw and mow threads. I minimize tillage in certain ways based on my soils, specific crops, and tools. He has more experience with generalizing these principles.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[JFK52]

yoderjac or anyone else. I planted some winter rye this last season. I have no plans on what to do with it come this spring. You mentioned "crimping" to terminate winter rye. Could you please explain this process to me and the advantages of it. Thanks for your time.

 

[yoderjac]

yoderjac or anyone else. I planted some winter rye this last season. I have no plans on what to do with it come this spring. You mentioned "crimping" to terminate winter rye. Could you please explain this process to me and the advantages of it. Thanks for your time.

Winter Rye is an annual and will die during the summer. Some folks let it head out. Turkey and deer will use the grain to some degree. However, when used as part of a cover crop, it needs to be terminated so it does not complete with the spring planted crop like soybeans. Winter rye provides an early spring food source for deer but eventually becomes tough and deer stop using it. By this point it is mature enough to kill with a crimper. If you try to crimp before the shafts harden, it doesn't work.

In my case, I don't have enough acreage in soybeans so that browse pressure is not an issue. So, I need to time my soybean planting in a narrow window. If I plant too early, the cool soil will impede germination and early growth. If I wait too late, does have dropped fawns and they are bring them to the beans. This browse pressure before the beans are established will kill ag beans. Given that, I terminate with glyphosate. Also, my little Kasco no-till drill does not like trash and when I spray the field with glyphosate to control other weeds, the WR is terminated as well.

Commercial farmers with large heavy no-till drills don't have an issue with browse pressure or trash. They can wait until the soil is plenty warm and by then, the winter rye is plenty mature enough to kill with a crimper.

A crimper simply breaks the shaft of the WR. Most crimpers are made for large tractors. This thread shows pictures of one of the smallest crimpers I've seen: http://habitat-talk.com/index.php?threads/cover-crop-roller.6694/ Crimpers are on the expensive side for me, but they can be an effective way to terminate WR if used properly.

Thanks,

Jack