Everybody loves new "toys", especially our grounds crew! We have recently
upgraded our four field mowers! We periodically (typically every 5-6 years) upgrade our mowers for a few different reasons, including increasing the quality of cut (producing a better finish on the fields) and also increasing the size of the mowers.
We have two different types of mowers, the first type are rotary mowers. Rotary mowers are like traditional lawn mowers in the sense that there is one blade that spins around to cut the grass. These rotary mowers are what we use to mow our 11 cool-season fields, we use the rotary mowers on the cool-season fields because of the slightly higher height-of-cut (between 1" and 1-1/2") and their ability to "stand the grass up", due to the vacuum created under the decks.
We now have 2 new John Deere 9009A Rotary Mowers with a cutting width of 108 inches, compared to our previous rotary mowers had a width of 88 inches, we are anticipating a time-savings of an average of 3 hours every day that we mow our cool-season fields. This is key because it then allows our two staff members an additional 3 hours each day to spend working directly on fields, instead of being tied-up on a mower. The new mowers are also equipped with a "final tier 4" diesel engine, which gives off extremely low levels of emissions making the mower not as harmful to the environment! The John Deere 9009A also has a unique ability in which it has a hydraulic pressure down on the mowing deck so the surface being mowed is as evenly cut as possible.