Ford 8N Mowers

My brush hog is shot. I"m thinking of replacing it with a three-point sickle-bar type mower for our horse pastures. I had to run my 5ft. brush hog set up at full throttle in first gear and could not mow as close as I"d like. (Horses like short grass). I haven"t used a three-point sickle bar mower.

What are the pros and cons of a three point PTO sickle bar vs. a brush hog? (I had a 3 blade Woods finish mower I didn"t like)

Have fun when the guards get clogged with "converted grass"!

I have a 7' 3 pt sickle on one tractor and a 6' Woods rm600 rear mower on another. Both tractors are IH 140's. The rear mower cuts grass much closer and even. The sickle bar will bounce in uneven terrain and leave high spots. I use the sickle for cutting banks and the rear mower for grass. Have to be extra careful when manuvering around trees with a sickle.

Ideally it's best to have both a sickle mower and a bush hog type. Here in Iowa on wet years like this the heavy, fallen down tangled brome grass gives a sickle mower a challenge. The IH wobble box mower I use will cut the stuff but I have to take it slow. The knife and ledger plates have to be sharp and tight together for this to work. My old Deere #5 would be plugging up right away no matter how well the cutter bar is set up. But the sickle mower does make a nice even cut. A bush hog will cut this tangled stuff without plugging but the stubble will be raggy and it'll take a lot more power per foot of cut.

If you live in more arid areas with thinner grass the sickle mower will cut it just fine and it won't blow up dust or send missles like a bush hog. I use the sickle mower instead of the bush hog in areas where I'm unsure about what kind of obstacles are lurking in the tall grass and weeds. Last year I decided to be generous to my neighbor so I mowed one of his field approaches with the bush hog, not knowing he had dumped a bunch of rocks on the lane that spring and they were hidden in the tall grass. I found out a bush hog isn't designed to be a rock crusher. This year I used the sickle mower and let it bounce over the rocks. Jim

If you end up with a sickle mower and have any dogs around make sure they stay at the house. A sickle mower can make Fido a 3-legged mutt in a hurry.

You are right about having both, instead of one or the other. When I was a kid my Dad had a ground-driven sickle mower with a seat on the back. My job was to jump off and clear it when it plugged up (frquently). I thought maybe a PTO driven sickle mower might be more powerful and not plug up much?