Skid steer loaders in agriculture

Skid steer loaders are the machines we see working on construction sites or building sites. Not many realize that they were originally made for clearing... barns.

Old MacDonald had a farm, and on his farm, he had... a skid steer loader

Except for the fact that the name of the farmer was not MacDonald but Eddie Velo. But let's start from the very beginning. The earliest skid steer machine model was invented in the 50' by brothers Cyril and Louis Keller, who held a repair shop in Minnesota. The Kellers helped local farmers resolve their machinery and farm equipment issues. One day in 1956, Eddie Velo, a troubled turkey farmer, needed a machine to speed up the process of cleaning his barn out of... turkey manure. The farm tractor Eddie used on the farm until that time was too large and not agile enough to fit his barn and clean its second floor. Let's see what jobs skid steers can do that make them such good alternatives to a regular or compact tractor.

Farm jobs for which you can use a skid steer loader 

Being a farmer is a hard job. It involves not only dealing with livestock but also such activities as hauling heavy dirt, soil, hay, feed, and many other heavy equipment works. Bobcat skid steer loader is specifically designed to help with lifting and loading. Therefore, it makes for a perfect piece of agricultural equipment.

Of course, skid steer loaders would not be of any help if it was not for their attachments. Therefore, the advantages of the skid loaders must be based on the attachments used. The efficiency at which the attachments can perform the below tasks on the farms is - at least to say - impressive:

1. Earthmoving

Do you need any sand, rocks, or dirt to be moved around? The main purpose of a skid steer loader, the reason it was designed for, is to help you with such tasks. They have a low center of gravity which allows them to stay stable while picking up a heavy load and moving at the same time.

The bucket attachments are explicitly designed to allow the transportation of a high volume of material without spilling. Buckets come in two types - ones with or without teeth.

The smooth sharp surface of the standard bucket leading edge allows for scraping the ground and removing the top layer of soil. You can also use a standard bucket for picking up larger objects.

The tooth bucket has eight or ten teeth on the leading edge of the bucket. They help with the most stubborn, hard material, for example, the soil with roots, clay, or mulch. Thanks to the teeth, the bucket can easily chew into the materials that the standard bucket cannot deal with.

Another type of attachment helpful with earthmoving is a backhoe attachment. It has the versatility of having multiple pieces of machinery available at the cost of one skid steer. Backhoe attachments are essential for jobs like digging trenches, tree-planting, or digging holes for building foundations.

2. Livestock management

Looking after livestock is not only patting and stroking the animals. In fact, it rarely involves such activities. Feeding, manure clearing, and many other strenuous tasks can easily be done with the use of a skid steer loader.

The bucket or auger attachment will be of great use here, especially if the feed needs to be distributed to larger livestock. This is one of the daily tasks on the farm because the feed cannot simply be stored near the livestock. It is initially kept in a large space away from mice, raccoons, or other pests. If it were not for a skid steer loader, the feed would have to be distributed manually, which would take a long time (if not the whole day).

3. Hay Baling

Only the farmers know that every square foot of the farm must be used in order to achieve success. If there is a piece of land they do not know what to do with, they grow hay.

Hay management is another area in which a skid loader will be of great help. Hay cultivation requires such activities as cutting the hay and transporting bales. With an adequate attachment, everything is doable for the skid steer loader.

Purchased orders usually arrive in big bulks of tote bags spread out on the pallets. Instead of manually carrying those heavy and bulky bags, farmers use their best friend, a skid loader.

Sometimes hay orders constitute bails weighing between hundred pounds to several thousand pounds. It would be impossible to manually move such a load during daily feeding times.

4. Mowing, brush clearing

To keep the property in a good state, farmers often need to clean up brush or grass. It is not only because of the aesthetics reasons but mostly because the overgrown areas attract various animals and pests, destroying building structures, feed, or supplies.

Mowing is Summer's prime maintenance activity. If done frequently, it assures grass grows steadily. This task is best taken care of by skid steer mower attachments.

When there are larger forms of plants that the landowner needs to remove, brush cutters and flail mowers will do a great job. These attachments are designed specifically to chop through the thick plant or small trees and chew them up. The brush cutter acts as a mulcher. It chews up vegetation and allows it to return to the earth to degrade. The mulch can become a fertilizer as it decomposes, helping nurture the remaining grass and plants.

5. Grading, road maintenance

The above-mentioned may sound like a wrong category, but in reality, adequate roads on the farm are of utmost importance for any transportation activities. All daily operations require good accessibility.

Also, in case of any emergencies, like a fire in the silos or a barn, there need to be well-maintained roads available for any vehicle that might need to reach those locations fast.

Skid steer loaders are great machines to keep the roads and walkways of the farm in an appropriate state. This can easily be done with a standard bucket attachment or a blade for grading to smooth out roads and remove potholes.

Vegetation can easily be removed by saws or brush cutters, which will help with widening the roads.

6. Seeding, fertilizing

The crops are synonymous with agriculture. It is essential to the farms' existence. Farmers rely on their crops to yield vegetation, such as hay, fruits, and vegetables, to feed their livestock and sell for a profit. All the above require a lot of movement within the farm's large area. Skid steers provide the ultimate help with the transportation of heavy loads of materials around the farm very quickly.

Another farmers' activity is scattering seeds throughout fields to begin the process of vegetation. This task on such a large scale can only be performed by a skid steer loader with a bucket or hopper attachment.

Fertilizer (granular or liquid) is another load that needs to reach every plant to ensure proper nutrition for growing. That is another job skid steer loaders are designed to perform with ease.

7. Warehouse management

Well-organized storage, where farmers keep everything ready and accessible for day-to-day operations, is not an uncommon element on the farm. Large farms even have racks where the goods are stored on wooden pallets or plastic bins.

Pallets and bins filled with products can become very heavy and moving them around can only happen with the use of special machinery. Forklifts are the most popular machines used for this task. However, it is a specialized piece of machinery with limited functionality.

Luckily, skid loaders with pallet forks can perform this task as efficiently as forklifts. Every farmer will appreciate a bit of money saved on not having to invest in a new piece of large machinery.

8. Seasonal works

Different seasons require different work to be done on a farm. Summer and spring are destined for the majority of farming operations. The rotary broom attachment will help you sweep straw from the lanes in your barn. Use an earth auger attachment to make holes for pole barn foundations or for planting trees. There are also precision grading attachments that will help you to level all your work.

Fall and winter weather limits the possibilities of performing certain jobs. Thanks to skid loaders and their snowplows and pushes, blowing, pushing, or sweeping snow to free up ground for other activities is easy as pie.

The benefits of using skid steer loaders on a farm

Apart from the extensive application uses of skid steer loader attachments, there are other significant advantages of using skid steers (or their smaller versions, compact track loaders) on any farm:

1. The ease of use for various tasks

Regular tractors are not able to perform all the various functions skid loaders can. With the multitude of attachments available on the market and the variety of different jobs farmers need to perform, it is especially important that compact track loader attachments are easy to swap. Moreover, it does not require additional assistance, and one person alone can change any attachments.

2. No overheating

Skid steers do not require a long regeneration process. In fact, they do not need it at all. It is a significant advantage compared to a farm tractor. The farmers can work long hours thanks to skid steers cooling packs which prevent the machines from overheating. This efficiency is beneficial for many farms, no matter their size.

3. Maneuverability

As it happens, farmland can be in various regions. Sometimes they are mountainous, which causes the terrain to be rugged. Skid steer has tracks, so its navigation is much better than that of a tractor. A small turning radius also helps with fitting into tight spaces making a compact skid loader a great alternative to a standard wheeled compact tractor.

The drawbacks of using skid steers in agriculture

There are not many disadvantages to replacing tractors with compact track loaders. The only significant drawback is that the skid steers require the firm ground to operate effectively and not bog down.

Skid steers are versatile and relatively cheap pieces of heavy machinery that have become irreplaceable on many farms. Their simplicity and suitability for many jobs, thanks to various attachments, make them useful for nearly every farmer's day-to-day tasks. If there is a job to be done, just simply get on board of your skid loader, and you can be sure it will be done in no time.