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  1. #26
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    Koetjeka's Avatar
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    New Holland for sure.

  2. #27
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    Steady on old boy! Massy Ferguson the Fergy was the revolutionary mother and father of all modern tractors developing the hydraulic lift and link system, it was pretty bomb proof to boot. (Respect please)

  3. #28
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    Here in Thailand has to be Kubota, dealers and spares everywhere.

  4. #29
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    I am a fan of Kubota.

  5. #30
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    Buy the biggest you can afford. Both new Holland (ford) and kubota are good tractors on our farm in west Yorks we run John deere. But my friends have fords and very little problems. A. Always remember a big tractor can do less. A little tractor can't do more o

  6. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by jamescollister View Post
    Think the type of tractor best suited, will depend on your needs. All the above brands are good and you may not need a top of the range job if it is hobby or small scale farming.
    Guy out here [dead now ] had 2 ford Hollands, doubt they saw more than a few weeks a year of operating time. A big waste of money. Jim
    Spot on Jim , quite a few farang erstwhile farmers in my area have bought tractors (on the advice of their wives) only for it to be being parked up for at least 10 months of the year ,and woe betide the farang who refuses to lend his expensive purchase to one of his wife's extended family , yeah in IMHO a complete waste of money which could well cause internal friction within the family were the wife almost always sides with them and not the farang husband

  7. #32
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    Bumping an old thread to ask the same question yet again.

    I am after a tractor that can do the family fields and provide some work during the season. A two-wheeled 'donkey' has served it's purpose for the last 24 years but is on its last legs. It had a smaller engine than the modern day ones (I think it's a 90cc vs the 110cc diesel) with better fuel economy.

    Should we go for a 4x4 tractor? ... thinking of having a baler, many around here like the bales but not many balers around and possibly a thresher for the harvest season as well.

    We have a New Holland and a Kubota dealer close by but not a JD. The NH looked better built when I looked around earlier this year.

    Would also use for wood chipping, water pump and ditch digging if attachments available.

    Any thoughts?

  8. #33
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    New Holland if you are in Europe..Deer if you are in N
    America. Kabota if you're in Asia

  9. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by Troy View Post
    Should we go for a 4x4 tractor? ... thinking of having a baler, many around here like the bales but not many balers around and possibly a thresher for the harvest season as well.

    We have a New Holland and a Kubota dealer close by but not a JD. The NH looked better built when I looked around earlier this year.

    Would also use for wood chipping, water pump and ditch digging if attachments available.
    I would definitely go with a 4x4 tractor. Assuming you are buying new, start with both local dealers and ask about cost or repayments, warranty period and service schedule and costing. Kubota has a full service plan which is the way to go, NH may have the same. Anyway find out what models they stock and the availability of parts. You should have a feel for which one you want to deal with. I prefer Yanmar to Kubota personally but Kubota has the best local manufacture and support operation in Thailand. They also sell their own branded models of implements rather than ending up with "unsupported unknowns."
    Now for the choice of tractor, there are some things you need to know like the lifting capacity of the three point linkage which can, for instance, limit the weight of a plough that can be attached for transport. I have a five disc plough that was too heavy to bounce around on the dirt roads and saw the demise of the hydraulic pump. Can you fit additional hydraulic linkages such as you may need for a backhoe attachment. The list goes on.....
    More generally is the tractor comfortable and easy to understand and operate. Test them all. Some I found built for Japanese farmers or Australian children not for me.
    Implements are next and if possible buy with the tractor to get the best deal and ensure that they do not effect warranty. Happy to comment on choice of implements but need to know a bit more about what you want to do. A thresher for instance really makes little sense if a harvester is used. A trailer will be handy to move things around and a forage harvester if you are cut and carrying cattle forage crops. A seed drill for planting, rotary hoe for seed bed Tractor size is dependant on implement need, the bigger the better is not necessarily the way to go. More HP than you need is my thought, so how much do you need?

  10. #35
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    ^ Thanks, there's a lot of things to learn and find out before making a decision on the tractor. We only have 25 rai of rice farm and the work in the area is single season so I was thinking of something up to 50HP. We want a trailer large enough to carry the girls to the farm and bring back the rice and straw. I'm not sure how good bale making is in humid regions. Ploughing would be small 1 rai fields.

    This year we put in a deep well pump and converted the top two fields for vegetables, chickens and ducks. These fields need a furrow plough to make ridges for easy planting and irrigating.

    I would also like to be able to plough in the rice stalks, left after harvest, into the ground soon after harvest so that some of the fields can be used again before the next rice season. This is too much work for the 2 wheeler...

    Ideas on equipment and how the tractor can be usefully employed throughout the year would be good. I have two nieces with husbands that can handle kubotas and a BIL who is slow but reliable.

  11. #36
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    What sort of total budget are you looking at, if you don't mind me asking?

    Here are a few random thoughts ...

    No problem with baling your straw here just need the moisture content right first. With 20 something rai you will end up with a lot of bales, at a guess 5 to 600. I have 12 rai of rice and the guy who baled ours last year produced 300 bales in less than 3 hours at 15 baht a bale. Bottom line is a long pay back period on a baler. He was using a 34HP Kubota with his baler without problem which surprised me as I thought it would need more power.

    Year round use will depend on what you plan to grow during the dry obviously. Given you have water available, you could grow a fodder or cereal crop after the rice.

    A friend has a PTO driven chipper/shredder on a very small Kubota. Handles up to 4inch logs and will handle wet stuff like banana stems without problem. Very solid construction and cost about 70K.

    A rotary hoe (rotovator) is a must for the veggies and good for rice land. Look at the choice of plough or disc harrow. My land is the normal degraded clay and I choose a plough so I could get down into ground and turn it over. Many people now use a deep ripper to just open it up, fine if you have the HP.

    I have a two row maker to form beds. This is used after ploughing and rotary hoeing first.

    Do you really need a grader blade on the front? I have a front end loader bucket which is very useful moving compost and soil around. If I needed a grader blade I would probably use the row maker frame and change from the four discs to steel plates on the sides and back to form a box scrapper. You can get PTO mounted blades as well, these have the advantage that you can change the angle of the blade like a road grader does.

  12. #37
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    [COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.84)][COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.84)]Troy
    Here's a link to a thread over on TV regarding tractors. I have posted a link below and hopefully it doesn't get deleted as it would if I posted in reverse. I couldn't be bothered writing it asll again so i copied my reply and pasted it here.

    TRACTORS and tractors advise - Farming in Thailand Forum - Thailand Visa Forum by Thai Visa | The Nation


    douglasspade
    In your original post you said:
    I've been in TH for more than a year permanently (lost my job then covid hit...) Farmed rice for the past 3 years with my wife on leased land and also on our own. I pay 600 Baht to plow and rake a Rai, and another 300฿ to mulch it after I mist it. I can not choose when to do this and have to rely on others. Kindof feeling slightly helpless knowing I can do it better and in my own/right time and enjoy it. I drop over 30K฿ on machine rental just to get the rice planted. Another 20K฿ flies just to get cover crop on, and another 20K฿ flies to re-establish the soil to support pasture for the rest of the year.

    Before I talk about tractors I am wondering if you can explain exactly what you mean by the following:
    "plow and rake" plow I understand but rake?
    "mulch it after I mist it" I don't know what you are doing here.
    'machine rental to get rice planted" I am not sure how you are doing this planting as around here the seed is just casted out using a "blower"
    "just to get a cover crop on" I don't understand this?
    "re-establish the soil to support pasture" not sure what you are describing here.

    Anyway the one thing I did understand was when you said "I can not choose when to do this and have to rely on others." I also had this problem and used to get upset when the people who were going to do the work didn't turn up when the said they would. So initially we (my wife and I) bought an iron buffalo for her brother to use. Later after she purchased a bit more land I convinced her to buy a tractor. So about 15 years ago we bought a "Euro 55DI" and it did a good job for several years. When we started knocking down paddy banks to make larger paddies so the tractor had more room to manouvre etc. it took a bit of a pounding. In order to push the soil around and make the new bigger paddies more level the BIL used the tractor and he had the plough hanging off the back to use to loosen up the soil. Of course he had to show everyone what a great operator he was by going back forth as fast as he could and the plow bouncing up and down on the back actually split the cast iron housing. The served as the hydraulic tank so it was repaired but still leaks a little. Also the tractor had a double clutch system for the PTO and this was a pig of a thing never really worked properly as I suppose it was never really used properly.

    Anyway about 6 or 7 years ago we bought a new tractor, a New Holland TT4.55 and it has been absolutely great so far. As both our tractors have been 4WD and 55HP I can't say what is the best size to get for a small holding such as you have but I can tell you the following facts (as I see them). My wife has a cousin whom she works very closely with and they basically share farm his land together with hers. She puts up the capital and he puts in the labour. She keeps track of the hours he works and the capital she spends and when they sell any produce these are deducted and they share ant profit. I should point out the profit is never very much but it provides work for him and several members of the family at different time during the year.

    They also do contract tractor work plus rice and cassava harvesting which includes truck transport to the required location i.e. the owners storage place or the mill/s.
    Anyway he has a smaller Yanmar tractor which from memory is 28HP and there are times when it is used in preference to our New Holland. It seems to handle wet and boggy conditions a lot better and is easy to get out when it gets bogged. It is also more manourverable in small paddies.

    Just as a final word I thought I would say that the New Holland has the following improvements that I love.
    Flat floor rather foot wells which make it much more comfortable.
    Hydraulic "switch" that allows the implement on the back to be fully raised or lowered by the press of a button.
    Forward or reverse selection by one lever on the dash (requires the clutch to be used as well.
    Separate clutch for the PTO and 2 speeds either controlled by ground speed or motor revs.

    Anyway that's enough waffle from me. I also thought a few pictures would be good to help improve the post. I almost forgot to mention that you should have a look at JSSR Auctions on google as they always have lots of secondhand tractors for sale and prior to covid they held an auction every month.

    In the last picture the red lines show where the plough used to be connected and the welded cracks the green line shows where it gets connected now. The reason the plough is on the back is as a counterewieght for the when the bucket is full of cassava.



    [/COLOR]









    Edited September 2 by OOTAI[/COLOR]









  13. #38
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    ^ & ^^ Thanks for the information. I need to have a chat with the dealers and work out what is feasible. I personally preferred the build quality of the New Holland compared to the Kubota but there is a lot more to research.

  14. #39
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    Good luck, hope you find what you are looking for.

  15. #40
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    The wife and I bought a Kubota B2420 6 years ago for orchard work. I wanted a bigger power/weight tractor with the narrow axles but no one had narrow axle models in Thailand. The B2420 is made in Japan and imported which at the time I thought was a good thing...but in reality it is a toy much the same as the dinky crap you see in Australia and America. It can pull the airbus and the trailer but it struggles with a 3 disc plow. The bigger Kubota are OK from what I see.

    Around here with tractors 10 years old or less I think Kubota is slightly in front of Yanmar for sales. One guy has a New Holland and there are now 2 Ford 6600 in the village but I suspect they are way older than 10 years!

    Over at Noen Maprang parked outside the BAAC are 2 new Iseki tractors and once in several visits to the bank there were reps from Iseki on site to answer questions and take orders. None spoke English so I am still in the dark as to price. Well designed they are.

    John Deere now have an orchard model with narrow axles. 40 hp diesel.

    What would be a deal sealer for me would be a tractor with an independent PTO that doesn't disengage when you depress the clutch. The reason being when spraying with the wand the PTO stops when you stop at a tree so you have to throw it out of gear and release the clutch to get the PTO going again, then reengage the gear move to the next tree so on and so on. With the number of trees we have it gets really boring by lunchtime!

  16. #41
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    I posted a reply in this thread and now it is gone! Obviously my opinion on tractors is offensive to someone!

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