We recently bought 60 acres and operating w/ a case 1840 and when the 8n decides to start, we use that for the blade and boxblade. Looking in the next year to at least upgrade the tractor. I keep seeing folks asking how many acres someone has when they are offering opinions on tractor hp. Could someone please explain how my acreage size should dictate my tractor size? According to multiple forums, my 60 acres should need a 99+hp tractor. Im not against talking my wife into letting me get a big 4 or 5 series, but w/ my needs so far (which equipment work wise), I’ve not needed anything bigger than the skid steer and the tractor. What am I missing that others say we need something huge?
It depends on what you need to do with the tractor, and what you do with the land you have. If you want to leave 55 acres as an untouched wildlife preserve, you only need enough tractor to plough the snow off your driveway in winter, and mow a small pasture in summer. If the 60 acres is going to grow crops of hay or vegetables, you need something big and powerful enough to run the machinery you need to do these things. The bigger tractors have the back hydraulics needed to run a lot of the more modern machinery, and the power to run them. Smaller tractors can’t do that.
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Its not the size of the tractor vs the farm its the tasks that you want to perform.
For most of my life the Ford 8N (since the 1980’s) has done everything a farm tractor needs to do:
- Mow/brush hogging
- Box scraper/Gannon box - road grading and ditching/grading to drain
- Bucket - digging, burying
- Fork attachment to bucket - loading and unloading round and square bales (may need to put some railroad ties on the box scraper to balance the load)
- Concrete mixer/wood chipper etc. off of PTO
Having a Case skid steer does all the lifting and loading the 8N does plus works in smaller spaces in barns and paddocks. And has lots of quick disconnect attachments for
- Bucket
- Forks
- Hole auger (8" up)
- Ditch digging attachment
Unless you are going to be producing - plowing, harrowing, packing, drilling/seeding, swathing and baling you have all the horse and hydraulic power that you need for a hobby farm. Maintain what you have and buy/rent attachments as needed.
If you are not using your 60 acres to produce your living, someone is trying to sell you something.
It depends on terrain, use and where it needs to fit. 60 acres of flat ground is a lot different than 60 acres of good hills. Our driveway is a half mile that averages 4-5 degree slope. Those hills demanded a lot more power than we had for the previous farm which was relatively flt. 4wd was a requirement. 4wd needs a little more HP.
We don’t do any crops or hay, etc. so no demands that way. We also needed a smaller footprint to fit into some of the places we needed to get. Also I use a SCAG Cheetah to mow pastures, so I am not using a mower or brush hog with the tractor. I had no need for a mid mount PTO. I do have a back hoe attachment that runs off the rear PTO.
All that to say acreage is only one part. You don’t want to undersize but just going big for big sake will just burn a lot more fuel to get the same job done.
sounds similar to our son’s place who ended up buying an older F250 4by4 that was set up as a real snowplow truck (truck cost $5000 and he put another $10k into it so it was less expensive than a larger tractor) ,
he had been using a JD1025R (bought specifically just to plow the drive but found it was not fully up to the task)
The 1025 is useful but he sort of collects things and its still kept
His place is heavily wooded on what I would call a small mountain but I am used to flat land
As all others have said size of the ranch/farm really is not the full reason to determine size of the tractor.
A very small place that uses heavy round bales or large squares may need a Large tractor to safely handle those items
Accidently deleted my reply, trying again…
I am no expert but here’s a few things I have learned on this farm that weren’t already mentioned:
This may be obvious but here goes: my largest farm door is about garage door sized, so I bought the largest tractor that the dealer had that would still fit in my opening (ROPS folded down). He was low on inventory at the time, so I ended up with a 38H and I have 40 acres, I maintain about half that, the rest is farmed with series 5 tractors. Mostly flat land but a couple hilly areas.
I have clay soil and a couple stream crossings/one crossing with a culvert. Those big tractors with whatever they are towing (hay equipment/large manure spreaders etc) leave BIG ruts at the stream crossing and at any spot that’s wet or soft, and my culvert has caved in since they started driving over it. It’s an old culvert so it might not be entirely the large tractor’s fault, but I think the heavy weights contributed. I know my smaller tractor barely leaves an imprint over the wet ground or stream crossing in the same wet conditions. My point is there seems to be a lot more evidence of tractor traffic with the larger tractors and their larger implements, this may or may not be an issue for you. It’s extra work/time to try to fix the ruts; I use those areas for walking and riding, so I don’t want ruts. I have had to get permits to fix the stream crossing and replace the culvert; it’s a many-years process as the paperwork office is seriously backed up. Hoping to get the approval and start work next year, which would be year 4 since I first contacted them. So, consider wear and tear on the land, and what other things could come from that too.
I’ve been quite happy with my smaller tractor for what I need to do. My tractor could handle a larger bush hog but they told me it isn’t wise to top out with the largest implements it could handle. So, I sized down to a smaller bushhog. This takes me longer to mow than if I had the larger one. I mow a lot. Sometimes I wish I had a bigger tractor and mower so it wouldn’t take so long but the tractor size fits for other tasks. It also takes a lot less fuel to run my tractor for a few hours than it does to run the series 5. And while no tractor is cheap to fix, I think my repair and maintenance bills are more reasonable. If I was farming the whole acreage full time, then yes, getting a bigger tractor would be ideal.
I’ve heard the saying buy a bigger tractor than you think you will need. I don’t think that means WAY bigger than what you need. As others have said, I think you need to really figure out what you want to do, then figure out the how much time and power is needed to do what you need to do and compare that to how much money you want to spend on equipment/attachments/fuel/maintenance costs. You definitely want to have it be at least a little bigger than the implements require, so the tractor is not over faced. Don’t over face your tractor, it doesn’t end well.
I found most tractor dealerships I’ve been to over the years to be a good place to get some answers and advice.
Hope that helps.
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