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

Tugger2

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Mar 22, 2018
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British Columbia
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.
 

kshansen

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Mar 11, 2012
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Central New York, USA
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Retired Mechanic in Stone Quarry
And when you put it in high gear it sure moves faster than the 988B's we had at the quarry!:eek:

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!
 

ajginger

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Feb 23, 2020
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132
Location
Australia
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.

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.
 

ajginger

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Feb 23, 2020
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132
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Australia
And when you put it in high gear it sure moves faster than the 988B's we had at the quarry!:eek:

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!

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.
 

Tugger2

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Mar 22, 2018
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British Columbia
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.
 

kshansen

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Mar 11, 2012
Messages
11,129
Location
Central New York, USA
Occupation
Retired Mechanic in Stone Quarry
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.

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!
 

ajginger

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Feb 23, 2020
Messages
132
Location
Australia
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!
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
20190910_150931.jpg
 
Last edited:

Tones

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Mar 15, 2009
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3,059
Location
Ubique
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Ex land clearing contractor, part-time retired
Got electons coming up so it all change again
 

Tones

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 15, 2009
Messages
3,059
Location
Ubique
Occupation
Ex land clearing contractor, part-time retired
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
View attachment 224029
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
 

skyking1

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 3, 2020
Messages
7,465
Location
washington
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.
 
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