Mechanical Ranch Hands
New Equipment Tool Carriers Are Invading the Rural Farmlands of Americana
By Jason Morgan

It is the most ancient of human traditions — farming. Born from the need of nourishment, driven by survival and compelled by the satisfaction of growing good eats, man has turned to the land to feed, clothe and shelter him from the harsh realities of life.

Of course, the methods of producing the fruits of the land have come a long way since the dawn of man. Crude hand tools of the Egyptians and Native Americans gave way to animal labor, which were put into the barn in favor of mechanical workhorses known as the tractor in the late 1800s.

While tractors still reign supreme in the hierarchy of agricultural equipment, the times are changing. Evolving applications around the farm — specifically smaller hobby farms and large properties — are attracting new styles of machines to the rural life. Large estate owners are folks with plenty of land (usually well over 10 acres) and a passion for maintaining the natural beauty of the ranch and enjoying the pastoral life (whether that means farming or hunting). In order to cultivate that land, many have retired their tractors in favor of a combination of new tools — skid steers, compact track loaders, mini excavators and UTVs.

“I tell people to imagine the most beautiful 1,000-acre golf course at the highest point in Connecticut, and then tell them that I couldn’t afford the golf course, so I got cows,” says Dwight Harris, owner and operator of Johnnycake Mountain Farms, describing his land with a chuckle. “The S300 [Bobcat skid steer] I use for barn work, like cleaning manure. I run it on hard pavement. The track machine [Bobcat’s T300 compact track loader] is for off-road work. It does less damage to the land and it floats on the terrain. I put in a half mile of curtain drains in with the T300 and then I rented another to move the dirt and it did the job. It just gets into places large equipment can’t.”

Like those in the construction and landscaping industries who have embraced compact loaders and excavators for their supreme versatility, Ag users are breaking free from the compact tractor shackles. With operating capacities ranging from 600 to 3,700 lbs, auxiliary hydraulics, minimal operational learning curve and more attachments than you could ever need, skid steers and compact track loaders can cut post holes faster, clean out barns easier and mow circles around tractors.

The Ag Triad: Loader, Excavator and Utility Vehicle When you think of amber waves of grain, grazing pastures and rolling hills, the tractor quickly comes to mind. Yet, cutting-edge Ag fleets of equipment aren’t as uniform as an obligatory line of tractors.
Mr. Harris, for example, runs the aforementioned Bobcat skid steer and track loader, as well as a 314 compact excavator and a Bobcat utility vehicle. Hobby farmer Rob Stoltz, who works a 7,000-acre farm and holds a day job with Chief Construction, has an imposing Ag artillery, including five John Deere compact track loaders, a mini excavator and a compact tractor.

Just because the type of equipment on the farmstead is changing, doesn’t mean the names are. While names such as Bobcat, ASV, Komatsu, Gehl and Volvo might be new to a farmer’s ears, farmland regulars such as John Deere, Caterpillar, Case, New Holland and Kubota offer skid steers, compact track loaders, mini excavators and utility vehicles (UTVs).

Skid steers are the oldest of the new school Ag equipment; sprung from the ingenuity of two brothers, Louis and Cyril Keller, the first self-propelled loader (now known as the skid steer) was actually designed for the farm 50 years ago. Around the farm, the mighty mini is once again replacing the back-breaking cleanup labor and light residential construction duties such as building roads and drainage.

The compact track loader, however, is the skid steer’s kid brother, becoming popular with both manufacturers and owner/operators in the past decade. Outfitted with a pair of tank-like tracks for crawling, as opposed to skidding tires, compact track loaders offer improved traction, flotation and usability on varied terrains. It seems that the trend may be moving toward track machines over the wheeled on the farm.

“We ended up trading all our wheeled skid steers for tracked machines. We found they were more versatile vs. a wheeled machine,” says Stoltz. “With the wheeled machines, we were getting stuck a lot. With the track machines, it seems like there’s nothing you can’t do. We’ve been running the track machines for about a year now.”
Despite the undercarriage differences, when standing on the dealer lot, the first-time buyer might only notice the difference in cost when comparing a skid steer to its tracked-out brethren. On the surface, a track loader with comparable specs will cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 more than a wheeled unit. Typically, the 1,700-lb size is the most popular loader domain. For skid steers, this equates to about $25,000 to $27,000, while a compact track loader will be in the neighborhood of $35,000 to $40,000. That is a steep price difference, but the cost of ownership and machine productivity could pay the difference. Tracks tend to last longer than skid steer wheels, making track replacement less frequent, albeit more expensive than a set of wheels (usually around $1,500 to $3,000). But because the machines are used on varying terrains on the ranch, as opposed to a rough and tumble construction site, undercarriage replacement is negligible.

“With the track machines, we’ve saved money. On our municipality jobs, we run five skid steers, and I get a call almost once a week that I have a guy working a job who has a flat tire. I have to get him and the machine to the shop, send over the credit card number and get it fixed. There’s no flat tire with the track machine,” Stoltz explains. “And working on pavement, our municipal guys were going through a set of tires in a month, due to the reverse skid. Although tracks cost more over time, I replace five to six sets of skid steer tires in the time of one set of tracks. It saves me more money in production over downtime.”

Although, it should be noted that undercarriage ownership will include the many moving parts of a dedicated track undercarriage. Owners and operators will need to assess extra components like idlers, sprockets and rollers when applying the usage formula.

Besides loaders, compact excavators and UTVs are newer heartland additions. Though these machines aren’t as versatile as loaders, compact excavators are typically used for light excavation work and pick-and-place applications (especially with a thumb or grapple bucket attachment) and UTVs are for hauling people and cargo. Pairing each of these with a loader makes an unstoppable tag team.

“The combo of a skid steer and excavator lets me do the jobs myself. I used to have to hire a hand. If I needed to build or modify a corral, I just didn’t have the time to do the labor [before the loader]. With the attachments, I can do what would take me and another guy days of work,” says Stoltz.

Stoltz is a man who knows how to put equipment through its paces. Working in water and sewer work for municipalities by day, Stoltz produces around 1,500 to 2,000 tons of hay a year on his 7,000-acre ranch. But free time is relative when ranchin’ is your passion. Not content with producing an insane amount of hay, Stoltz and his posse built an arena on his property for rodeo sports like team roping and barrel racing. It happens three nights a week, sometimes until 2 or 3 a.m.

“When we were building the arena on the ranch, we had steep slopes the wheeled machines would have never handled,” Stoltz says, in reference to the compact track loader’s ability to operate on steep grades. “We actually built the arena around the skid steer’s dimensions, so we can move part of the fence and get it in there to clean.”

When shopping around for your perfect piece of hybrid Ag equipment, you’ll want to make sure that you have a good idea of your working demands, like having a general idea of how much you need to lift and what attachments you might need to make sure you have the proper size and spec requirements such as hydraulic flow and lift capacity.

“What I recommend for any [farmer] buying equipment is to get heat for the winter. Above that, pay the extra money for the enclosed cab. It’s something the dealer talked me into because I thought, ‘I’m tough, I can handle heat’ or ‘I’m tough, I can handle the cold.’ But he mentioned dust; it’s true, working in the summer you kick up a lot of dust. The cab keeps your eyes dust free and the heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer lets me work much more comfortably,” Harris recommends. “Before buying, I didn’t realize I could spend eight hours a day in these machines and having air conditioning lets me work more efficiently.

“Also, you’d be surprised how easy it is to disturb a hornet or yellow jacket nest. Once, I was in an open cab and was stung 16 times in the head, and I had a headache for four days. That doesn’t happen with the enclosed cab.”

Law of the Land
On the construction site, you have a clear idea of the day-to-day tasks. You may run into a couple of surprises, but usually, you have a job and you find a machine to do it. On a ranch or large property, the day-to-day chore list tends to vary and the surprises tend to be a bit more drastic, like finding a section of broken fencing or a new born calf is on the way. So farmers need a versatile piece of machinery that will adapt to the job — and that’s where the attachments come in.

“I run a post hole auger that I put fencing in with the T300 [compact track loader], then I put it on the 341 [Bobcat] excavator when I’m building a new road and have to put monuments into the road to distinguish the property line. It can be as much as 100 monuments in a mile. With the excavator, I can reach 12 ft outside the curb to put them in,” Harris details. “One thing I use the S300 [skid steer] for that surprised me was moving snow with a snow bucket in the winter. We use plow trucks a lot for the major plowing, but when you have a 6-, 8-, 10-ft high snow drift, a [skid steer] with a snow bucket can move a large concentration of snow because it can move, scoop and dump in smaller areas.

“I used to use a Brush Hog three-point attachment on my tractor. Now, I just use a Brushcat attachment [mower] on the track machine to clip the pastures. I rarely use the brush hog anymore. The tracked machines just do less damage to the pastures.”
Mr. Harris isn’t alone in his abandonment of a brush hog attachment for mowing. Both Stotlz and Roy Green, who runs a sheep and goat operation on his land, as well as private quail and turkey hunting grounds for his family, have retired their tractor brush cutter attachment in favor of mowing with a track loader. Although it would seem that you could cover more ground faster with a large tractor mower attachment, there are a number of concerns the loaders address — the most important being visibility.

“With the loader, you can see in front of you. You can see the land and if there’s a stump there. In a tractor, you’d run over the stump and tear it up ‘cause you can’t see it. You can see it and avoid it in a loader,” says Green. “We use the [ASV] RC100 for clearing brush and cleaning up the goats’ area. We’ve probably already put 1,000 acres of work on it. We had a problem with sweet gums coming back and we have a mower [attachment] that cleared it. It cuts through 4- to 5-in. tall sweet gums.”

With the added visibility, the additional cost of a rotary brush mower attachment for a skid steer or compact track loader could pay for itself compared to the maintenance and downtime caused by running over unseen boulders or stumps in your tractor. When shopping for a brush mower attachment, you’re looking at about $5,000 to $7,000, depending on size. Rotary brush mowers typically range from 60 to 90 in. in width and require around 11 to 25 gpm of hydraulic flow from the auxiliary hydraulics (a range that most skid steers and compact track loaders can handle). Speaking of stumps, rotary brush mowers usually offer a stump jumper that will have the mower gliding over stumps if you don’t see it ahead of time.

The augers that Harris mentioned, well, those can be a bit more complicated when purchasing. Starting from scratch, augers are sold in three differ sections — the auger drive (for spinning the auger), the auger bit (for attaching to the drive) and the auger mount (which connects the entire auger package to the skid steer). The simplest piece of the auger puzzle is the auger mount, which matches your skid steer’s quick-attach system. Most auger mounts universally accept all manufacturer auger drives, though you can buy mounts specific to the drive manufacturer. For the mount, you’re looking at about $250.

The auger drives and bits have more depth to the selection. First and foremost, the drive is going to be the apex of the purchase. The selection ranges from drives that run 18- to 36-in. augers, requiring 7 to 40 gpm of hydraulic flow and putting out 900 to 2,800 ft-lbs of torque. Around the farm, odds are you won’t need a bit larger than 24 in. From there, just match the desired torque power to the available hydraulic flow from your machine. You’ll want to put aside about $1,500 to $2,000 for the drive unit.

Bits are less intimidating. You have, basically, three major types of auger bits — a standard bit, a tree and shrub bit and a rock bit. The names say it all. The standard bit will take care of most jobs with diameters ranging from 4 to 36 in. Tree and shrub bits have smaller diameter flighting on the bottom of the bit to leave room for the plant’s root ball. And a rock auger is reinforced to drill through the toughest ground conditions. For the standard auger bits, you can expect a $200 to $550 price tag depending on size. The specialty augers tend to get a bit more expensive, starting around $400 and moving upward to $800. The benefit of the auger system is that once you have your drive and mount, you can basically swap the auger bits like you would swap standard loader attachments. If you have a compact excavator sitting around, you can slap the auger onto it with a different mount system.

Natural obstacles and long, demanding chores are a part of the farming game. With a change up in your equipment roster, you can adapt to terrain and tackle jobs in hours that would have taken you days to conquer. While it might be frightening to let go of preconceived farm machinery notions, expanding your equipment horizons can have you reaping the benefits during and after the growing season.

Down on the Farm
Odds are, the machinery isn’t going to take as bad a beating on a farm or large property as it would on a construction site full of concrete rubble and scattered nails, but that doesn’t mean that daily and long term maintenance goes out the window. It is still important to go over your daily service checks and grease all the lube points. Be sure to check your owner’s manual for the proper maintenance schedule per number of hours of operation.

“Once a year, I have a factory-authorized inspector come out to check the equipment. He always finds something that I overlooked or didn’t know,” says Harris. “A lot of people would say, ‘that’s so expensive.’ But if I can afford thousands of dollars in equipment and I can’t afford a factory-authorized guy to come out and spend a day checking three of my machines, then I shouldn’t have bought the equipment.”

From checking all the fittings to showing Harris how to correctly blow out the radiator on the compact excavator and triple checking the fluids, the factory-authorized inspector may seem like a step above and beyond the normal maintenance practices, but it’s essential for Harris that his machines are up and running to meet the demands of his hay production and cattle husbandry.

Another common aspect of machine ownership and operation that a new user wouldn’t be familiar with is safety. These are burly machines with a lot of power behind them and, if you’re not careful, you, your crew or your machine can get hurt. The first step of safety is to read your owner’s manual, which outlines safe machine operation practices. And read up on new attachments as you acquire them.

“It’s good to know that a large bucket for snow [removal] is only meant for snow, not manure. The different weights of the material can cause you to flip the machine. I flipped a loader into 6 ft of manure,” admits Harris. “I was fine and no one was hurt, but that was not fun to get out of.”

Although it can be embarrassing, these types of oversights happen to all novice operators. As long as you know the proper operating procedures, you can hope to avoid many of the faux pas that come from inexperience.

Around the varied terrain of the farm, it’s also imperative to know the land you are working on. If you’re chugging along in your compact excavator, use the boom to scout out the land in front of you. In the tall farmland grass, it’s easier than you think to drive right into a gully or ditch and flip your equipment.

“The nicest thing about having and maintaining the equipment all on hand is that you don’t put off jobs. So, you do the jobs when they need to be done and the farm looks nicer,” says Harris. “I’d probably wait until I had a laundry list of chores before I’d rent a piece of equipment or hire hands.”

Natural obstacles and long, demanding chores are a part of the farming game. With a change up in your equipment roster, you can adapt to terrain and tackle jobs in hours that would have taken you days to conquer. While it might be frightening to let go of preconceived farm machinery notions, expanding your equipment horizons can have you reaping the benefits during and after the growing season.

Jason Morgan is assistant editor of Compact Equipment.