John Deere 730 or 830 moco

Hello all

I'm looking at buying a JD 730 or 830 moco with flail conditioner.  I have 60 ac mostly fescue and Garrsion meadow foxtail hay.  Heavy first cutting and much lighter 2nd. Around 2 ton to ac with some pushing 3 if I let it go too long on first cutting. About 120+ ton for the year.

 

My tractor is a low hour JD 5525, 75 pto hp.  I have been using a 3 point 9 ft mower and it does allright unless its pretty heavy.  Can mow about 3 mph. 

 

I want to go to swing tounge and would like a conditioner.  I live in SW where it is very dry.  I have a hard time getting stems dry before leaves are too dry. This makes it difficult to round bale, except for a couple hr in the eve and an hour in the morning.

 

I feel like if I'm short of power I can change impeller speed and/or back off on amount of conditioning - and be no worse off than I am now.  However I will have a swing tounge.

 

I realize with disc mower you can't have too much hp but my fields are small and I would like to get into doing some custom work on parcels that are to small for the big guys to want to fool with.

 

What does everyone think of this?  Those of you who have these, am I to light on hp?  Good machine?

This seems like a pretty easy mower to keep running, based on the manuals that I've paged through.

 The $10,000 that they cost is about all I can justify, even with some outside work.

The only other machine I've considered is the New Idea 5209/MF 1359 mowers but they are side pull with rubber condidtioners, and are about same price.

Kuhn and Kubotas are around that too or more.

JD is my closest and best service dept.  NH not very good service dept.  All others 3+ hours away.

 

Any thoughts or ideas would be welcome!!!!

John Deere 730 or 830 moco