Pro's of a sickle: Cheap to buy, relatively cheap to maintain, operate fine on a minimum of tractor horsepower and even tiny tractor size.
Con's of a sickle: Obviously no conditioning rollers (but you do not get conditioning with a modern drum mower or plain disc mower either). Sickles can be very tempermental if conditions are not perfect (i.e forget wet and damp conditions must usually wait till dew burn off). Generally they must be kept in tip top shape or they plug.
If you want conditioning you might find and older stand alone crimper but they are getting rare and it means another trip over the field and they can be tempermental with wrapping the rollers too. Or you could simply opt to use a tedder as needed. Really depends on your crop type for best answer.
A haybine (or mower conditioner) will generally cut better even when its sickle system is worn compared to a stand alone sickle in tip top shape. (the reel really helps) - plus you get conditioning too all in one shot. Downside is they can be heavy and have lots of tongue weight so you need a tractor weighing at least 4000 lbs or more at minumum and at least 30 PTO hp at a bare minimum. More chains, belts, and bearings to maintain though on a haybine but the benefits are more than worth it. Haybines can be bought reasonable as all the BTO pretty much use discbines so lots of good values to be found for small time operators.
FWIW: I have run my 9' Hesston 1120 moco (same as haybine) with my 1950 John Deere model A on many occasions. Have also used my ole Farmall h once too to run it. I do not even use a hydraulic cylinder and simply use a manual ratchet cylinder. I never plug and simply mow round and round the field to the center.
This post was edited by rankrank1 at 19:28:41 12/09/12 2 times.
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