What Tractor Do You Need as a Horse Owner?
For horse lovers, nothing beats owning your own stables, land and horses. The excitement will never die, although the reality may begin to set in once the manual labour tasks start adding up. Mucking out, maintaining pastures, fixing fences and gates and lifting heavy goods around your land will eventually take their toll, and before long you’ll realise that your own hands, a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow just isn’t enough.
The solution comes in the form of a compact tractor. These hardy, versatile vehicles are the perfect tool for horse owners and are essential for cutting down your labour time, saving you money and resources and reducing the amount of backbreaking work you do. Whether you just need something to help with mucking out or something to undertake larger, more specialist land work, compact tractors are here to help.
What Do You Need Your Tractor To Do?
One of the key benefits of a compact tractor is versatility. All horse owners will have different requirements, so a tractor that is comfortable undertaking different tasks is needed. Your compact tractor can be used for a variety of tasks, depending on what attachments you buy for it, giving you the freedom to use it wherever you need it most.
Owning horses often requires a great deal of carrying and transporting items around your land. Whether this is by hand or using a wheelbarrow, it’s generally backbreaking work, especially if your destination is far away or uphill. Helping to move equipment such as jump poles or hay bales will save you time and cut down on the physical stress of manual work.
Compact tractors are also important tools for maintaining your land and help to save valuable time and energy. They are perfect for cutting the grass in paddocks or small fields, or for rolling out ground that has been churned up by horses hooves. Fences and gates should always be up to scratch for safety and security reasons and any fallen branches should be removed as soon as possible. Transport chainsaws, fence knockers, wire rolls, fallen branches and much more with ease using a compact tractor.
Mucking out is another task that takes up a great deal of time for horse owners. Your horse should be mucked out at least once a day although ideally twice if they are kept inside for large periods of time. The scale of this job is amplified even more the more horses you own. Speed the process up entirely by using a compact tractor to scoop up the muck and transport it to your muck pile. Some models are even small enough to enter your stables and scoop directly from there.
What Size of Tractor Will Work Best on Your Property?
A compact tractor is generally more than enough for the average horse owner. They offer most of the benefits of a larger tractor but in a smaller, easier to manoeuvre form. As we’ve covered above, compacts are more than capable of maintaining your land, helping to transport tools and other items around your land and helping with everyday manual labour tasks.
Smaller compact models are perfect for transporting items and helping to clear out stables. A larger model with more power and weight may be required if you plan on doing heavy duty land maintenance such as clearing land or ploughing.
If you plan on doing any more than this it might be a better idea to invest in a larger utility tractor. These are often the vehicle of choice for larger farms with livestock, commercial stables or when collecting hay is required.
What is Your Budget?
Prices vary greatly for compact tractors spending on model, make and required attachments. A small, second hand tractor may cost as little as £5000, but a newer, more powerful model with a wider variety of features could cost up to £30,000.
Whatever your budget, it’s important to think of buying a compact tractor as an investment. They help to save valuable resources, drastically cut down your manual labour costs and ultimately allow you to spend more quality time with your horses.
What Attachments Will You Need?
What attachments you need depends on what your tractor is used for. For land maintenance purposes, mowers, rollers and harrows are all available. Ploughs and spreaders can also be purchased for more advanced land maintenance applications such as crop growing
Buckets, tipping boxes and trailers are available when items and materials need to be transported around your land. These are perfect when mucking out your horses or transporting feeds or tools. Hydraulic grab forks and bale spikes are useful for transporting bales of hay and straw, and pallet forks are great when you receive heavy pallets of goods such as feed.
How to Maintain Your Compact Tractor?
Maintaining your compact tractor is the key to it living a long, healthy life. Working in stables and lifting heavy goods is hard work so it’s important to dedicate time to giving your tractor some much needed TLC every so often.
Cleaning is one of the biggest things to keep on top of. The reality of owning horses is that it is dirty work and straw, hay, mud and muck will all eventually bog your machine down. Regularly clean your wheels, cab and attachments using a hose to avoid this.
You should also perform regular checks to make sure everything is in order. It can be a good idea to perform this after cleaning when you can get a clear view of any issues around your vehicle. You should also be keeping on top of engine oils and other fluids avoid damaging the internals of your machine.
Contact us!
We provide a range of new and quality used compact tractors from top manufacturers such as Kubota, John Deere, Massey Ferguson, JCB, and Iseki. We also stock a wide selection of attachments to help with mucking out, transporting items and maintaining your land.
If you’re a horse owner and want to find out more about how our range of compact tractors can help, contact Blacktrac today.
