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Wayne: This has been a bit of a hornets nest. No question, too bad your 574 isn't diesel. Fuel economy much bigger issue than when the 574 was built. Those 574 and 584 tractors were the mower conditioner and baler tractors of choice of a lot of North American farmers. They were short wheelbase, very manuverable, lots of clearence, a perfect haying tractor. Remember haying has never been a big hp job, big man power is order of the day. On the Cutditioner, I would tend too get rid of this before the tractor. Years ago I looked at these as well as the rotary sythe. What I saw was just too many valuable leaves on the ground that no rake or baler would ever recover. Yes that hay from the Cutditioner probably does dry faster with a percentage of the leaves gone. Haying should be a gentle process on the product, and every effort should be made to recover all the leaves. Those leaves are where the profit lies in feeding livestock. I used 9 foot New Holland haybine for years. And although the NH is a good machine the writing of their manuals from the 60s 70s and 80s was excellent. Every NH machine in those manuals had an excellent trouble shooting section A NH haybine with a properly adjusted reel will cut hay just as close to ground as any flail, and do it a whole lot faster. Believe me also, I've seen a lot of improperly adjusted haybines operating. Very few people take the time to really understand the manual. The other factor I see in the past 20 years is very poor tillage practices have caused land to become rough. These guys are buying flail mowers and dicsbines, because that is what they need to level the land. If they are using these machines to level land it's no wonder they need big horse power. My dad always said," If you could drive a Ford or Chevy sedan from the 60s across your hayfield at 40 to 60 mph then your field is smooth." Once upon a time you could do that on almost every hayfield in country side, not anymore.
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