499 New Holland Haybine

I use to own one that I bought new.As long as you are cutting thin dry stuff you should be fine. Cutting heavy, wet legume crops like clover or alfalfa can befrustrating. The sickle bar on that machine is split in two halves,and they are driven from each end.I always had trouble where the sickles overlap in the middle;wet crops would bunch up between the guards and the knife sections. We normally cut about 200 acres 3x and every year we would replace both knife assemblies ;nothing like a sharp knife. After that machine we reluctantly went to 12ft discmower and I would NEVER GO BACK. Cutting hay used to take all day to get anything done, now I can cut  the same amount in a couple hours.The 499 was our first hydroswing machine and I will always buy that option .

Never had a 499 but just wanted to add after I bought a Hesston discbine last year, I would never use a sickle mower again. The disbine takes less than half the time to mow the same fields.

Thanks for the info I am in rock country not sure that a discbine is the answer or do they hold up fine only ran deere mocos and in thin grass it won't cut it off cuts most but leaves some behind.  Does the hesston do this? Not a large amount but looks bad for a custom operator.

I don't have many rocks but what few I hit don't do much damage, however I'm not talking about boulders either.  If you have a lot of sharp rocks that will break a cycel bar mower, it's going to do damage to the diskbine, mainly because you are going faster.  The blades on a diskbine are fairly easy to replace (a whole lot easier then a mower bar).  Either type of mower has a spring float system so if you have more rocks you adjust with more spring tension so it will float over the rock, problem is you miss more hay that way. 

Thanks for the info any one want to come and cut hay in what is called dry land in MT grew up in central WI  a couple of extremes. But yes a disbine won't work and it will be a hesston or a macdon machine.

The discbine doesn't plug up every time I hit a gopher hole like the JD Moco did and the XT uses the same amount of fuel per hour with the  discbine or JD moco, but it only takes half the time with the discbine thus half the fuel. I'd think my discbine would go over any rock that my JD moco would go over. The cutting height can be set higher, basically the front is tilted up.

Edited by DaveCinIN - 06 Apr 2012 at 11:41pm