Mowing days

The farms in those areas where there are cattle (goats, sheep, cows,...) have been in full activity for a few weeks to mow the fodder that they will later be used to feed the animals. On this occasion, our friends César Rivera (from Calera y Chozas - Toledo) and José Vicente (Cuenca) have sent us some photos of their mowing and baling work... the common factor that joins them is the Pöttinger Novacat mower. The mower used by José Vicente is the Novacat 351 Alpha-Motion and César's equipment is more complete because he has a front mower and a rear mower suspended. José Vicente has the farm only a few kilometres from the city of Cuenca, so going there and seeing the mower working with the beautiful city of Cuenca on the horizon is a luxury that not many people can enjoy these days.

The work with this type of machine is quite fast. Regarding to José Vicente overview, the working speed is 18 km/h (in alfalfa, vetch or pulse vegetables in general) and 15 km/h in oats or triticale ... therefore, you can mow about 30 ha in a working day with the mower of 3.5 meters working width. The mower is adjusted in a floating position and it is also adapted perfectly to the ground. If the field is well prepared so that there are no stones, you can enjoy mowing at high speed. The mower works at 1,000 r.p.m. PTO and has a speed multiplier that allows the discs to work in perfect conditions with a very large crop flow. At the high working speed we have mentioned and working the blades at ground level, the cut is perfect.

The roller conditioner can also be incorporated, which in the case of alfalfa allows us to make a much faster dehydration. If the roller conditioner is used it can be baled in about 2 days (when the forage has less than 15º of humidity). If the roller conditioner is not used, the wait can be up to a week. This is the case with oats, which the mowing is already done with some grain, in order not to crush the grain, the roller conditioner is not activated.

In future articles we will show you how these forages are used to feed the animals... We're sure it will be very interesting.

Versión en español.

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