I HAVE A 130HP NH TRACTOR WHAT WOULD BE THE BEST MOWER TO BUY,WHO CUTS GRASS THE BEST,

Reco they excellent. Strong well made

Krone, best on the market by miles. Exchanged a Taarup 338 for a Krone AMT 4M last year and major improvement although the Taarup was a good machine. Needs the ponies though, use it on a MF 4270 (115) and reckon we could do with another 25-30 HP to make it sing. 2000 acres through it last year with no bother at all apart from a few blades breaking

I would reccomend the John Deere 331 mower. We have used one for 2 seasons now and it is built much better than anything else on the market. It does a as good a job as most conditioning and it goes well behind 125hp so it should do fine with 130hp. However, for best conditioning I found our old Vicon HPC mower did the best job by miles and grass wilted much faster than the stuff cut by the JD. Unfortunatly, the build quality of the Vicon was crap and it had to be rebuilt after every acre it cut! Look back at farmers weekly from last september/october time and they did a comparison of 3m mounted mowers from 10 different builders and the JD and Kuhn came out much better than anyone else. Hope this helps. Pete

The JD is built by Kuhn

I'll second that. Our's is a nine foot Krone and we normally pull it with 100 h.p- does a good job except on steep fields where the horses come under pressure! We sometimes use a 130 h.p tractor for these jobs and it (the mower) is like a toy behind it. I won't mention which make of tractors we use for fear of starting something! I honestly believe that the krone has a much cleaner cut than the very popular john deere. Hope this helps.

Even though the JD is built by Kuhn and is very similar to their model there are differances such as the JD has a steel finger conditioner rather than nylon fingers on the Kuhn and there were a couple more differances pointed out in the FW tests such as the better paint job on the JD and also it weights a bit more which is probably down to the conditioner. Pete

Peter, I noticed that too. I was looking at an American forum a while ago and someone was asking for opinions about JD mowers. The consensus was that the Kuhn built ones were far superior than those built by JD themselves.

Steel finger conditioner can be fitted to Kuhn

JD trailed is probably best to use, but,,, very wide on road . and standard trailed has something wrong with geometry of pto,, it doesent like turning right, will turn left fine but dont understand why, apparently swivel gearbox sorts this out. it has brilliant bed suspencion Grumpy.

Have used a Lely 2.8 mower conditioner for last 7 years. currently using Slendimow and find hp requirement low used on 110 hp valtra. leaves a sensible stubble nylon fingers get high wilt, june sunny weather could make hay in 4 days. like the mounted transport position for road travelling. optimow 2.8 gearbox a bit iffy. can cut 60 acres + before turning blades. grass regrowth after cutting excellent.

we run a 10 year old jd 1360 and a 3yr old 1365 trailed wide swath kit fitted to both absoloutly fantastic machines pull one with ajd 6610 and other with mf 3075 easy to drive cheap to run blades approx 50p full swivell hitch model easier to use but takes more power as drive runs throgh 2 more gearboxes speak to stuart cornthwaite at cornthwaite farm machinery he usually has some in you wont regret buying one

Buy a John Deere or Kuhn. Have used cousin's 10 ft trailed Deere 1360 for the last 10 years in generally heavy crops. Superb bit of kit except it has the standard drawbar which doesn't like turning corners. Cut quality is excellent. Our ground is all upland LFA in need of a good rolling and there are no stripes left whatsoever. Has been driven by everything from a 2650 to a turned up 6910 and just keeps churning out higher output - though admittedly at the expense of conditioning quality. A bit wide for our narrow roads but that goes for any trailed. Happy New Year Dave (mid Wales)

I had a 2.8m krone mounted mower conditioner. Had to get rid after 3 1/2 seasons as it was costing a bloody fortune in gearbox repairs and replacement steel conditioner tines. It made a good job of mowing but the spreader hood was a bit flimsey and could have been more even spread. Now use a contractor with a new 3.2 m trailed taruup which does a great job and the spreader hood is excellent.

I bought a nearly new one (trailed) about eight years ago. A lot of material has gone through it since,not all of it was grass!! I replaced two seals in the gearbox,one yoke end in the driveshaft. Also two gears in the bed (with the associated bearings) after a confrontation with a large rock. Apart from this there was flail replacement. I sold it last year (privately) as I got a good deal on a new one. Are you sure it was a krone you had? Or was the percentage of grass going through your's lower than mine? [;)]

deffinatly a krone. have herd of other krone mounted mowers having the same problems although not the trailed ones.The dealer wont sell them any more but still sells the tedders and rakes(which i have and is very good.)

Have heared negative comments for Krone kit given a heavy work load. Local self-propelled silaging crew used to run a lot of Krone stuff, rake, big tedder etc, but found it wore out far too quickly. Moved to Claas and no complaints so far. By the way their mower is a JD 1360 which has kept ahead of a Jag 870 and its predecessors for surely 10 years with a bit of help from the one mentioned in my earlier post.

Have had a krone 9ft for 7years and have never had any bother just blades and to much stuff other than grass has went through it. help acontractor out and he is working with kuhn and tarrup and no differeance in mowing but krone leaves better sward for round baling but in grass that is lying flat the tarrup would be a wee bit better

Hi Thomas, Is your mower a mounted or a trailed model? If it is trailed does it have the swivel gearbox? The ones with this (I find) can cut flat grass almost as well as if it were standing although the operator needs to be fully awake. I rate the electronic linkage on the tractor very highly for this job. Strangely it does not seem to work (as well) on the mounted models.

May go for a Drum mower any good drum mowers makers i know pottinger make a good range of drum and disc may go for one

hi pinball computer down for a while it is a trailed mower with swivel gearbox how do you get it to cut so clean on flat grass thanks thomas

Hi Thomas. On our machine the normal working height of ball-ends is, (I think) around 29 inches.- It's marked on the side of the gearbox. I check the digital level on the dash which corresponds with this height and use this as a reference point. Then while mowing, the level can be lowered or raised to take account of which way the grass is lying. I can easily return to a previous setting by resetting the dial. Works for me! c. ya.

Don't bother, you won't get the output you can with a disc.

The best mower on the market I think is the JD1360/1365 having driven them for years very robust stevio

I'll second that!! John Deere mowers are the best on the market.