How much horsepower

I am looking to pick up some hay ground nest year and have been looking at haybines and was curious on how much power it took to run them. I have heard a rule of thummb for tillage is 10 HP per foot, i know that it dont take that much to run a mower but i'm not sure i have no knowlage when it comes to haying
Thanks Nate

Haybine power consumption is dependent on the amount of and type of conditioning it does, as well as its cutting width. I think it safe to say they take 2X the power of an equally sharp sickle mower, and 1/2 the power of a disc moco. Jim

What do you have for power now?

A 9' haybine can be run by as little as 35hp if it's an older heavy tractor like a formal H, but 50-80 is much better. My 70hp case 830 handles my 9' case haybine real well.




They don't take so much hp, but they need to bo heavy enough not to be pushed around by the mower. A 12' swing tongue will need more like 70-100hp for the same reason, they are heavier so they take a heavier tractor. Disc type take more hp to run.

During the late 60's and early 70's Dad had two 9 foot New Holland rigs and we would cut together he would us his wide front WD and I would use my D-14. Heaven forbid we use the big tractors for such an easy job (according to Dad).

In addition to Jim's comment about type of conditioning and cutting width, terrain makes a big difference: A torquey old 30 HP tractor with a good engine would run many 9' haybines with standard rolls on flat ground fairly easily. On some of our steep hills 30 HP would just barely be enough to pull the weight alone, without even considering cutting or crimping. A smaller tractor would also be pushed around going downhill - Especially some of the old Deere haybines like the 1209: They were ugly, hefty chunks of pig iron - you could really feel them behind you on a hill. And if you have thick, stemmy crops and really tight rolls or rolls with lots of crimping action (Circle C or similar) they can certainly pull more HP.

Lots of variables, but probably safe to assume a 30-35 HP tractor in good condition would pull most 9' haybines OK on flat or slightly hilly ground. 40 HP+ would certainly feel more comfortable. On some steep hills you could want a fair bit more power going up them and a heavier tractor going down. Cutting widths larger than 9' and tight/intense conditioning might demand 55 HP or more. Our Allis 180, Ford 5000/6600, and Deere 2120 make good cutting tractors for us.

This post was edited by DanielW on 08/29/2023 at 10:05 am.

Thank you all for the responses, sounds like a farmall m will pull a 7' tool on our flat grouns pretty well
Nate

10 HP per foot would apply to disc mower conditioners, as Janicholson and Jon posted sickle bar mowers take a lot less. As Dan posted hills will bring you down a lot. I used to pull a 10 footer with rolls with 96 HP. That was just fine but on one hill I would be down into 1st on the power shift at the top.

You're being very generous to say an H can make 35 hp.

Before health issues we use to cover over 450 acres of hay mowing each year . Now over here in the hills of eastern ohio cutting with a garbage John Deere 1219 in good hay with a 706 gas withe the C 291 engine in first cutting it worked the bag off of it in 3rd low running around 3.5 to 4 MPH and when on some of the hills ya may have to pull the T/A into low . According to spec.'s she was about 75 Hp according to the dyno it was making a wee bit more . Now back when i first started making hay we had a new Holland 9 foot haybine and for the life of me today i forget what model number it was but we pulled that 9 footer over some of the same ground with a Farmall 450 Diesel and it mowed far better then the John Deere piece of junk and mowed at a far faster ground speed and in first cuttings running third gear on it you could count the rounds around the field by looking in the air as on a calm day the smoke was still hanging as it took just about all the old 450 could dish out with the wick turned up. . For us on the hills one thing you really need is the weight of a heavier tractor . That Deere 1219 will shove my 806 D sideways on the side hill turns and the 806 weighs in at over 13500lbs. , the 706 was not loaded and on that one she weighted in at around 97-9800 lbs and the haybine ruled the tractor as the tail wagged the dog. bad on the side hills , if the ground was wet ya really had to stay on your toes .

The hydraulics may be limiting factor on old tractors and mow co or haybine.

My granddad and I broad cast timothy heavy onto an 8 acre field. The rains were perfect and the germination was near 100%. The stand was as tall as the radiator cap on
the Super H I was cutting it with. With a new set of sections and good ledgers in a 7 foot bar semi-mounted IH mower, I was wide open in first gear and it was all it
could take. The swaths were 8 inches thick laying flat off of the bar. We had to make 2 windrows out of each swath to feed the New Holland baler. We broke a bunch of
shear pins putting it up. An H on a Haybine would be OK for very poor crops on flat land. Jim

It should pull it just dandy on flat land. Seven footers are hard to come by and fetch higher prices because lots of small farmers want them. If you're on flat land and the M is in good shape, you can likely pull a 9' no problem and you'll have more used options available and get your cutting done that much faster. Lots of hay has been (and still is) cut with M's. Just watch for hydraulic requirements: Some haybines have a single acting cylinder for the lift, some double. Does your M have hydraulics? If so, single or double acting? Probably double, which would be fine. I've seen some folks get by without hydraulics by using ratcheting jacks/links in place of the cylinder, but it makes for much higher chances of plugging if you can't lift the head, especially as you likely don't have the M&W live PTO kit on the M and will thus run a greater chance of plugging when you clutch.

You can get by without live PTO on a haybine without too much trouble. You can get by without hydraulics, but there will definitely be times you wish you had them. It would definitely be a real struggle to get by without both.

If you're looking at older used haybine, I highly recommend the IH 990 if you can get one in good condition. It would make a good pairing for your M. They can cut at a decent clip, are very reliable, and (most importantly) the rolls are a cross-laminated rubber on steel setup which will last pretty much forever. The old New Hollands etc. are excellent machines, but unless you find one that's been shedded every night, many of them are getting to the age where the rubber's starting to delaminate where it's vulcanized to the steel. My personal opinion (like tractorvet) is to stay away from the Deere 1209 and 1219 even though they're everywhere. They weren't terrible, just a little slower, a little heavier (they hit the rocks a little harder and float a little worse over rough ground), a little more unnecessarily complex, and a little more irksome to work on compared to the NH's or IH 990.

Here's a video of a 990 cutting hay with a ratchet link used in place of hydraulics:
990 Haybine with No Hydraulics


This post was edited by DanielW on 08/29/2023 at 12:15 pm.

Mine cranks out 38 on the dyno. It was rebuilt with Fire Crater Super H pistons & thin sleeves.

Mike

Yea glad ya brought that up. as i did not . Like on that Junk 1219 Deere haybine that belongs to a friend when he bought it he calls me telling me there was something wrong with his 730 John Deere with the hyd.'s as it would not LIFT the haybine . So i go out and put the gauges on it and it's making around 1150 , Now not being a Deere expert i was thinking that well for the age and time frame it was made 1250 psi new should be about right so yep down a bit . He wanted to do the mowing with the 730 , Not going to happen . So we put the 706 Farmall on it , well it will lift it SLOWLY and i check pressure and flow and i have 1750 and 11 gpm , yep it's down a gallon a min but pressure is dead on . So we changed out the pressure relief and upped it to 2150 and the gpm's stayed somewhat the same but now it lifts if faster , fine we will go with that . He then finds a super deal on a 7000 four row planter that is notill and once again he wants to plant corn with it now instead of my old 1240 . BUT oh wait once fully loaded with fert and corn the 730 won't even think about lifting it off the ground and now my 806 is put into corn planting tractor and once again we had to change out the stock pressure relief to a 2150 . Now the OLD stuff that used a 3x8or a 4x8 cylinder the OLD systems other then the 7000 planter the old systems would LIFT . ya take the old M& h's org. they only had 950 psi on the belly pumps but most were changed to the 1250 spring . back when they were new Hyd. was just starting to come into play and they back then only had to lift mounted cultivators , maybe a manure loader a two or three bottom drag plow , a flimsy 4 row corn planter and a small transport disc. or a sickle bar seven foot mower . Deere did not have better Hyd. till the 3010 4010 and they had higher pressures then the rest . On the 1219 it has only one 2 inch lift cylinder thus it take more pressure to make it lift. , For a lower pressure tractor one might get away with installing a second cylinder if ya could afford it from Deere. BUT the lifting would be painfully SLOW.

We ran a tired gas Ford 3000 with loaded tires on a New Holland 477. We probably made 5000 bales with it a year. When need be, we run our Ford 2910 with turf tires on our New Holland 489. I would rather not have the turf tires, but it works

For something like a 9 foot sickle type mower conditioner in heavy first cutting (3 plus tons per acre) I would want 50 PTO HP or more.

Back in the 80's when we had a lot less tractors and less HP I used to mow with a New Idea 290 Mower conditioner with our MD on mostly flat ground in some fields and not so flat in others in 3rd with alfalfa hay in first cutting it was not working that had with not necessarily sharp sections or guards. I usually like to mow with the 830 case or my 806 for the luxury of live power and power steering. The MD handled it fine as far as I was concerned back then. We now use a 1219 Deere mower conditioner and lift it just fine with my 806or 856 and it is not slow .IT doesn't jump off the ground because it is so fast but not slow to be a problem with lifting it. I have not tried the MD or other old small tractors like that for power on it or lifting it. I had a live hydraulic ste up on the MD by running a belt over top of the fan belt to run the pump. Worked fine but would wear the top of the fan belt some . Dad used to complain but that belt is still on that tractor today 40 years later. When you came to the end of the cylinder it would slip the belt on the other belt I would guess since driving I could not see in there with the hood on. So I would say 35-40hP minimum for a mower conditioner and more for a disc mower. Like has been said the hydraulic pressure is going to be the killer on most of the older lower pressure systems for lifting them.

WELP how much do you want out of and H , and how big is your Piggy bank .

That i would like to see on my dyno . and NOT the john Deeres dealers old dyno since his read 20-25 Hp higher . It makes people feel good . .