Easiest pulling conditioner

[JW IN VA]

Which, in your opinion, pulls easier? Flails or rollers in a mower conditioner.

 

[cfpinz]

In my experience, the flails pull easier.

I've got 2 Vermeers with steel rollers and my folks have a NH with the flails, in grass hay I'd just as soon use the flail machine.

 

[Nesikep]

I have only run rollers, but I never saw pulling it as a problem, I hayed our place with a 28hp tractor and a 7 ft haybine for decades, now I have a 9 ft and 55 hp and it'll pull it fine in 7 ft high oats

 

[M.Magis]

I always though flails took more hp. Not accurate?

 

[Silver]

I had a 956 JD with flails (15’) and in heavy alfalfa I would have to slow down to 7 or 8 mph with my 7700 JD tractor. Same tractor will pull my 313 NH (13’) with rubber rolls as fast as I want to go in the same crop. I realize it’s 2’ narrower but you can tell it just pulls easy in comparison. There may be more at play than just the conditioner type though.

 

[SBMF 2015]

IF all you want is ease of hp close your eyes, grit your teeth and go back to a hay conditioner with a sickle bar. I could run a 12-13’ JD 1600 as fast as it would cut with a 75 hp tractor on hills.
I used to run a JD 946 moco with a 7410. It would get warmer than normal if you tried to run too fast.

 

[amschind]

Take my uneducated opinion with the grain of salt that it deserves, but rollers vs flails is more a question of what you're conditioning vs how much HP you have. Specifically, stemmy stuff like SorghumxSudan or Johnsongrass won't get the crushing action needed to dry efficiently with flails. My solution to the specific problem of horsepower limited drying of a stemmy crop was an old NH 488 with new steel rollers from M&R in Sasketchewan. Sickle bar cutters do a bit better with stemmy crops vs a clumped or wet grass, so if you need a conditioner for that purpose, you have the option to reduce your power requirements a bit by going with a sickle vs discs. The downsides are 1) You're gonna have to go slow in thin grass and 2) there are ONLY used and steel rollers for the haybines left. BD Rollers just sold their last 488 rollers and hasn't had 489 rollers for a while....they found that nobody wanted to put $9k of rollers into a $1k machine. The M&R steel rollers will set you back $3600US shipped to Texas (YMMW...literally), so that means either you find a unicorn with some life left in the rollers or you find one that needs the rollers replaced and your only option is steel. I don't have any experience with steel in Coastal/Bermuda/Bahia et c, but I'm learning to make hay on some friends' unused pasture, so I'm gonna get experience with thin stuff.

 

[JW IN VA]

Take my uneducated opinion with the grain of salt that it deserves, but rollers vs flails is more a question of what you're conditioning vs how much HP you have. Specifically, stemmy stuff like SorghumxSudan or Johnsongrass won't get the crushing action needed to dry efficiently with flails. My solution to the specific problem of horsepower limited drying of a stemmy crop was an old NH 488 with new steel rollers from M&R in Sasketchewan. Sickle bar cutters do a bit better with stemmy crops vs a clumped or wet grass, so if you need a conditioner for that purpose, you have the option to reduce your power requirements a bit by going with a sickle vs discs. The downsides are 1) You're gonna have to go slow in thin grass and 2) there are ONLY used and steel rollers for the haybines left. BD Rollers just sold their last 488 rollers and hasn't had 489 rollers for a while....they found that nobody wanted to put $9k of rollers into a $1k machine. The M&R steel rollers will set you back $3600US shipped to Texas (YMMW...literally), so that means either you find a unicorn with some life left in the rollers or you find one that needs the rollers replaced and your only option is steel. I don't have any experience with steel in Coastal/Bermuda/Bahia et c, but I'm learning to make hay on some friends' unused pasture, so I'm gonna get experience with thin stuff.

Most of my hay is fine stemmed like orchardgrass with some clover and vetch mixed in.

 

[worldsgreatestlover]

I'm running a new Holland 210 with rubber rollers . 100 horsepower handles it well but I do run it from time to time with 75. 75 will run it once you get it turning but it pulls it down hard when engaging the pto . I wouldn't want any less. I wouldn't own a conditioner if we didn't do so much Sudan.