Someone posted a similar question on another forum I follow. For what it counts, here was my response:
We use sickle mowers for all the hay at our Northern farm
because it's so rocky the nimbleness of a sickle mower is handy. And because
it's mainly grass we don't need conditioning like you do for legumes. We own
six, and have owned many more over the years - both pitman and wobble types.
For what you're describing, you probably can't go too wrong with either type.
Condition would be more important. If a pitman type, make sure the jaws and
knife ball aren't too worn and you set the register. If a wobble mechanism,
make sure there's minimal backlash.
Although our main mower is a JD 350 wobble-type with a 9' bar, I actually think
JD had the worst of all the wobble types. You really have to be on the ball
with making sure you're hitting up every grease fitting on the wobble head (two
of which can't be found unless you rotate the head to the exact right position
and look in the right spot). They were known to wear out and break, and the
parts from JD to fix are worth more than the mower.
The IH 100/1100's and the MF Dyna-Balance were the cream of the crop for
smooth, balanced, durable wobble heads. The company Rowse still makes their
double and single bar sickle mowers with IH heads, because they were the best
for simplicity, durability, and stokes per minute. IH would be my preference,
with MF and NH following shortly thereafter. But for only 25 acres you really
can't go wrong with any type or any make, as long as condition is ok.
It sounds like you've used sickle mowers before so you probably already know
this. But sickle mowers around here are bought and sold stupidly frequently
because folks don't appreciate their nuances. It's always some horse folks who
think they'll be perfect for clipping their pasture. But as soon as they
realize there's a lot of skill to use and maintain a sickle mower effectively
without constant headache/plugging, they give up and sell it to the next horse
person (and the process repeats).
I'm a big fan of sickle mowers: they're much faster over the ground, quieter,
and take less power than a bush hog. But by the time you factor in the
maintenance/alignment to keep a sickle mower in-tune and needing conditions to
be right (no wet crops, no previously cut crop in the path, and preferably no
lodged crops), it's rare that a 7' sickle mower will actually save much time
for land maintenance over a 5' bush hog. A bush hog may be slower, louder, and
need more power. But you can hook it up, drop it, and go through anything. And
bush hogs require almost no maintenance. Not so much with a sickle mower (at
least, not if you want to be using it effectively).
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