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The old cat 988b clearing land for new fencelines on the cattle station in Australia.

ajginger ยท 2020-09-06 09:49
Replies21
  1. #1John C.2020-09-06 10:44

    That's kind of a novel use for the old machine. Nice work with the video editing as well.

  2. #2Tags2020-09-06 11:47

    Nice video, love the angle with the camera mounted on the bucket!

  3. #3Tugger22020-09-06 16:09

    Nice work with that loader. Just a bit scary with those dead snags.It cost me a broken window in my loader doing that. A wheel loader is such a handy piece of equipment for much more than loading trucks.

  4. #4kshansen2020-09-06 17:27

    And when you put it in high gear it sure moves faster than the 988B's we had at the quarry! By the way do you ever get rain there? Sure looks dry and if this is a cattle ranch what do they eat, don't look like anything growing there, other than dead or soon to be dead trees and brush!

  5. #5ajginger2020-09-06 17:34

    Yes I imagine thats how the windscreen glass was broken by a previous owner. If you just let her roll into a tree, the sheer weight causes the tree to explode with limbs and bits of wood coming down over the cab. If I were to do a lot of this kind of work with it, I would try to get a 25 foot long stickrake for it and build a scrub screen for the cab.

  6. #6ajginger2020-09-06 17:43

    In this part of Australia we get rain on and off at the start of the year from Jan - end of march ( wet season ) then its common to go 5-8 months at a time with no rain so things get quite dry. All the woody vegitation that grow here is well adapted to dry climate and can go years without much rain. The cattle actually do quite well out here but you need plenty of land for them. This property is around 80,000 acres ( 125 square miles ) and can safely carry around 2000 - 2,500 head of cattle depending on the season. There is grass but the trees/scrub stops it growing unless it is thinned out.

  7. #7Tugger22020-09-06 22:17

    I load about 5yards of brush on the forks of my 910 and pack it to the burn pile. I had a small stump roll off and back down the boom onto my windshield , but still havent built some jailhouse bars yet just being more careful. Gotta break 2 or 3 windshields to smarten up.

  8. #8ajginger2020-09-07 07:26

    Yes an Endloader is a ' Jack of all trades ' type of machine once it gets purchased by someone on a cattle operation.

  9. #9kshansen2020-09-07 11:48

    Was not having any luck finding statistics of beef cattle per acreage here in NY best I could come up with was from Iowa, that said 2.5 acres per cow average a bit more than your 2,500 on 80,000 acres!

  10. #10ajginger2020-09-08 22:45

    Yes there are a couple of areas of Australia that enough rain falls to do 2-4 acres/cow, but most of Australia is very dry climate. A lot of the ' dry climate ' improved pasture beef production areas can average around 10-20 acres / cow, but on this property we are not allowed to make those improvements to the land so need a larger area of around 40 acres/cow. If we were to thin out the overgrown tree/shrub population to traditional levels here, ( the same as when euopeans settled ), we would immediatly increase production to 10-15 acres/cow thus be able to run around 5,000 - 6,000 head of cattle most years. The Government wont allow any thinning of tree/shrub populations for this area now so each decade sees less grass and more trees/shrubs and more bare & eroding soils. ( these trees kill off the grasses) The pic shows the kind of ' tree invasion ' that happens if these dryland species are not managed. In the first pic ... you can see the open savannah grasslands that existed when white settlement came to this part of the world. This was how the land looked over most of inland Australia before the trees were allowed to grow uncontrolled. The native populations of aboriginal people activly used fire to keep the woody plants from taking over

  11. #11kshansen2020-09-12 19:56

    With that little rain do the dairy cows just give powered milk! Always wondered where that comes from.

  12. #12Theweldor2020-09-12 21:25

    And.... Government is here to help you.

  13. #13Tones2020-09-12 23:58

    Got electons coming up so it all change again

  14. #14.RC.2020-09-13 03:34

    I do not like to swear or call names, but I do hope the ******* dumb bitch gets voted out of government.

  15. #15Tones2020-09-13 17:37

    A lot of properties had dozers chaining country like that when the moratorium was in place prior the landclearing laws being changed in the late 90's. Anything that grew after that wasn't remnant vegetation

  16. #16skyking12020-11-14 22:47

    is that a spade bucket or a straight one? Nice video, thank you for posting. I have a few hundred hours doing production work with a -b.

  17. #17ajginger2022-02-27 18:14

    The old girl is fitted with a spade bucket.

  18. #18Steve Frazier2022-02-27 20:54

    How many acres are you clearing?

  19. #19skyking12022-02-27 22:48

    Sweet. I bet she'd do Ok with the straight toothy edge in that duty, but the spade was a must for getting into the bank or shot rock.

  20. #20ajginger2022-03-04 06:36

    It was just a fenceline. Cleared it about 4 machines wide and about 3 miles long.

  21. #21ajginger2022-03-04 06:38

    Actually it would be a better fitted with a 30 foot stickrake blade for this job. Would be done in no time at all.