Equipment - Horsekeeping on a Small Acreage - page 283

This 6′ wide rotary mower can be adjusted to cut at various heights.
MOWER
Mowers come in various styles and are designed to cut hay, weeds, or brush. Rotary
mowers are built as either pull-type or three-point hitch and usually come in widths from
5 to 20 feet. You can raise and lower rotary mowers to adjust mowing height. Sickle-bar
mowers use a bar of cutting blades pulled back and forth with a pitman arm that slides
across a fixed-position bar to cut grass crops on relatively smooth surfaces. The sickle bars
range in width from 6 to 8 feet and can be used for trimming banks as well as mowing
fields. Although they cut cleaner than a rotary mower, they are more costly and don't have
as wide a mowing height range as rotary mowers and tend to plug. Disc mowers are a cross
between a sickle-bar and a rotary mower and result in less plugging than the former and
higher ground speed than the latter, but with height adjustment similar to a sickle mower.
If your pasture is uneven, a rotary mower would probably be most appropriate. For cutting