Cutters & Shredders in Jasper, TX

When most of your cutting is open ground. The Modern Ag 15' Predator Batwing Shredder cuts three times the width of a 5-foot cutter in one pass. On a big pasture, that's a lot fewer trips back and forth. Its wings flex to follow the ground, so the cut stays even over humps and dips. It also takes more room to turn and a bigger tractor to run it. On a place that's mostly fence lines, trees and gates, the Mahindra 5' Rotary Cutter SD gets into spots a batwing can't. If you've got both kinds of ground, think about which one eats more of your time.

It can keep cutover ground from going back to brush, but it isn't a clearing machine. After a timber harvest, sprouts, briars and small saplings come back hard. A heavy rotary cutter knocks them down while they're still small. Stumps and big slash are another matter. Those have to come out or rot down before a cutter can run there safely. Pressing a tractor sized to keep a place up into clearing one can be done, but it's slow and hard on the machine. Start on the cleanest part of the ground and work outward as it opens up.

Walk it first, especially if it's grown up tall. Look for stumps, rocks, old wire, pipe, limbs and anything else the blades could throw or catch. Mark what you can't move. Watch for soft ground near Sandy Creek and in low spots after a rain. Keep well back from ditch banks and drop-offs, since an edge can give way under a tractor. Your tractor's operator's manual gives its own limits, and those are the ones to follow. Then set the cutting height so the blades clear what's left. A few minutes on foot can spare you a bent blade or a broken gearbox.

Yes. Cattle graze what they like and leave the rest, and those leftover clumps go to seed and turn coarse. A pass with a rotary cutter tops the clumps so the pasture comes back more even. It also knocks weeds down before they spread. Set the cutter high enough to leave some grass standing, so you don't scalp the stand. Cattle and hogs are among Jasper County's chief farm products, after timber. On a big pasture, the batwing covers the ground in fewer passes. For smaller lots and traps, the 5-foot cutter does the job.

High enough to clear stumps, rocks and roots, and low enough to get the cut you're after. Pasture work usually goes better a few inches up. Scalping grass to the dirt slows regrowth, and it beats up the blades on every high spot. You can go lower on brush once you know the ground is clean. The tail wheel or the skid shoes set the height on most cutters. Level the deck front to back so it doesn't drag. On gently undulating ground like the land along Sandy Creek, a little extra height keeps the blades off the humps.