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What price for grubbing mesquite?

d9gdon

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2010
Messages
1,517
Location
central texas
tmc 31,

It wasn't what I was picturing, I thought it was more grown up before you started. Kinda like the mesquites in the background of the first picture only with smaller growth.

You did a good job with it.
 

wrwtexan

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 5, 2011
Messages
558
Location
Cooper, Texas
Occupation
Indy Farm Wrench, heavy land clearing, rancher
mitch504,

no typo. trees were very widely scattered as the land had been in CRP a few years ago and it is poor blackland so there weren't a great many. just a lot of miles over rough ground on a machine with no suspension!:eek: other half of land is another story. many acres of sappling pecan, elm, locust, and huasac(spelling?) bushes and some of it too thick to walk through. have a thread started under Ag Operations on it. not sure of what to do there. :confused:
 

tmc_31

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2008
Messages
290
Location
Merkel, Tx
Occupation
Sports Lighting Contractor
Thanks d9gdon. Still have 10 acres to grub and then 25 to rake. Tomorrow we start the root rake build. Hopefully we will have it done by Friday and can start raking again. I will post pictures if there is any interest. I think if the mesquites had been as big as the ones in the picture (next field over) I would certainly have rented an excavator.

LOL wrtexan, I feel your pain (many miles over rough ground with no suspension).

Tim
 

JDOFMEMI

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2007
Messages
3,074
Location
SoCal
That is a nice grubber. I need to build one like it. I was grubbing detention basins with my rake, and the saplings would just bend every which way, but not uproot, as I could not get a good grip. That would have done the trick. I like the root-n-all, but the price tag is too steep for my budget. The homemade one is more my style, since it would not get used much.
On the other hand, a rake like mine would have done your field in short order after the trees were uprooted.

Sorry I don't have a good picture of the rake. It is a grapple type with tines that curve up at the end. Not a great one, but it does the trick.

After piling:

View attachment 103264

During clearing:

View attachment 103265
 

tmc_31

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2008
Messages
290
Location
Merkel, Tx
Occupation
Sports Lighting Contractor
Jerry, the grubber is called a sheepsfoot grubber (I just found that out). It was manufactured in the welding shop at our local New Holland Dealer. I think it was about $1,350.00. It is very effective on the smaller mesquites. The larger stuff you can use it to dig on four sides of the root then tip the root out (not always as easy as that sounds).

Your links to your attachments are not working. If you have time, I would like to see them.

Tim
 

JDOFMEMI

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2007
Messages
3,074
Location
SoCal
Here they are. I don't know what happened. They showed up in post preview, but did not make it all the way to the actual post. I hate when my attachments fall off:bash

IMG-20130326-00436.jpg


IMG-20130326-00437.jpg
 

tmc_31

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2008
Messages
290
Location
Merkel, Tx
Occupation
Sports Lighting Contractor
UPDATE: Finally finished grubbing the mesquite and thistle from the 33 acres last Friday afternoon:drinkup. It took 70 hours. That is an average of just over 2 hours per acre.

Started Raking today with the new rake I had built last week. I will get pictures tomorrow. It is much faster than dragging the rock bucket backwards:D

Tim
 

tmc_31

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2008
Messages
290
Location
Merkel, Tx
Occupation
Sports Lighting Contractor
DSC02787.jpgHere is a picture of the rake that we built. It seems to work pretty well.
 

tmc_31

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2008
Messages
290
Location
Merkel, Tx
Occupation
Sports Lighting Contractor
Hey all,

Thank you for all your advice and assistance. I promised to share the results of my land clearing project with you when I got finished with the project.

The project was to grub and rake 34 acres of Mesquite and Russian Thistle. It took 28 days for me to complete the project, 13 days grubbing and 15 days raking. I spent 70 hours of skid time grubbing out the mesquites and thistle. The raking took 64 hrs. The total cost to the customer was $8056.00 or $237.00/acre.

I started the project on the 6th of May and completed the pasture on the 1st of July. The customer interspersed other projects such as dirt moving, moving some large landscape rocks, dressing tank dams and grubbing other pastures while I was clearing the pasture. I was careful to keep records of the time spent on the various projects. I am still working in other areas of the farm and will probably be there for another couple of weeks.

Things that I will do different on the next project? I will likely charge more. Based on pricing discussed in this thread and through other sources, rates for this type of land clearing seem to range from about $700/acre to about $2500/acre and up. Also, I didn’t account for the money it would cost me to travel to and from the worksite for 28 days. That turned out to be a significant unanticipated cost. I will need to figure out some fair way to recover those travel costs. I would like to find a midi (4-5 ton) excavator with a grubber that I could rent for the next project. I think it would speed up the grubbing. Then I could use the skid for raking.

Again, thanks for your insights. I hope this thread will be helpful to others down the road

Tim
 
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