Practical test: Vicon CM 295/CM 908 drum mower combination Quick trim – but no conditioner The boast is an impressive one: An 8.5m wide drum mower combi that requires just 150hp – perhaps even as little as 100hp. Not surprisingly, however, along with this Vicon claim there are significant operating conditions attached. We tuck Vicon’s CM 295/CM 908 front/rear mower combi into grass.
Sounds far too good to be true: The area output capability of an 8.5m mower, delivered by a 100hp tractor. Now for the inevitable catch. To achieve such a performance, grass yields must be light and the mower operator prepared to accept an unconditioned product. These stipulations met, Vicon says that its CM 295/CM 908 combination is capable of just that – mounting on to a 100hp+ mediumcategory tractor.
Of course, the in-field reality – a reality acknowledged by Vicon – is that most operators will hitch the combination on to around the 150hp mark, and at this level of horsepower availability the CM cuts closer to its output potential in even the highest yielding fields.
As well as the fact that this combi utilises drums rather than discs to down a grass crop, the other important design point is that there are no horsepower-guzzling conditioners fitted. It would be possible to spec a conditioning unit on the rear mowers, but this would rather defeat the key ‘light on weight/light on power’ objective behind the design.
Besides, part of the drum mower benefit is that this type of cutting design does gather the crop together into a type of row, whereas the disc configuration needs a conditioner to do this swath-forming task, too. The absolute bottom line is that if the grower is prepared to have his crop untreated and unbruised in the cutting process, then the drum gives him that noconditioner option – more so than a disctype machine. Don’t write off the drum; that’s the underlying message here.
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