Just purchased a piece of property outside of Rocksprings that hasnt been taken care of in 30 years. Need to clear alot of cedar and dont particulary like to let it lay. Want to get a good chipper to do the job and am looking for some help. Best size to get and places in between San Antonio and Rocksprings to get one for a weekend. Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks

What will you do with the mountains of chipped stuff? How many acres of land needs to be cleaned up?

Greetings,
Rental places have them but don't know how much they cost.
The bigger the better....
The bigger ones usually have a feed roller that pulls the brush into them and will save your behind.
Take some of the mulch to your wife to gain "honey-do points"....LOL!

Don't mess around. Doze and burn it.

cut it stack it for future campfire use. or sell it

We've got a dr chipper shredder we bought at TS for like $450 or so,it works great,it has a top feed for brush and a side feed for limbs.Let me tell you,BE CAREFUL,always wear eye protection and dont be looking into the feed bin when adding limbs,sometimes they will shoot out of there.Like grillgod stated,save the bigger stuff for future burning.If your on a hilly area the mulch will help keep what little soil you have in place.

You can rent a bobcat with a treecutter on it. Drag the trees to a central location or several concentrated brushpiles. Move your chipper from pile to pile. You'll need the biggest chipper you can rent-probably 10" and even then not everything will go through it. Plan on hauling a BUNCH of fuel out with the equipment. You're gonna need a 3/4 to 1 ton truck just for the rental company to let you rent the chipper. You'll certainly need the same to drag the bobcat down there. Certainly all this can be done... You should also plan on this taking a LOT of time. The fastest option would be to drop drag, stack and burn if permitted.

Before you do all that though, you might contact your new neighbors and see what equipment they have for dealing with clearing brush. They may want to barter or even charge but at least you won't have to haul equipment far!

Are you clearing lanes or thinning the brush all over the place? Really Don K's option is gonna be less overall hassle for either option!

Or you can rent one of those Bobcats with the Chipper Shredder Mounted on it, like the professionals use. They take down Cedars to a pile of chips in like 15 seconds and you sit int he cab the whole time.

They must be a lot smaller cedar than I have.

Vermeer makes some of the best chippers in the buisness find a dealer near you and see if they have any customers that rent there equipment...or just pile all the post sized ceder to the side and give me a price..

No they will take down anything up to 6" 18" in diameter. Fecon makes these rotating heads in various sizes, I have seen vidoes of them and they are amazing. Here is some pictures from a texas company that uses them.

http://www.texasrightofwayclearing.com/TexasRightofWayLandBrushClearing.asp?3

check out five star rentals in comfort of kerrville or ingram

Leave a few small piles of trees here and there. Cedar doesn't rot very fast and they make for good quail habitat once they dry out.

Those machines are amazing! We've had them come out before and literally decimate the mesquite. They can grind the stump all the way to the ground and then make a couple of passes and make sure all the branches are shredded. Takes about 2-3 minutes max per tree to obliterate it.

You don't make a 18" diameter cedar into chips in 18 seconds I don't care what kind of machine you have. Especially a bobcat.

. X2

We found that it is better to spend the money and rent the biggest shredder you can afford. Make sure it has an enclosed cab.

We have been fighting cedars for the last 5 couple of years trying to get everything under control. We generally spend a couple hours every weekend with chainsaws and just pile them up and burn.
Three years ago we paid a guy to come up with one of the attachments on the front of skid steer - see the links above. It is basically a giant roller pin with metal teeth. It was amazing to watch how he would lower it on a big cedar and it would just disappear into shreds. The smaller cedars would be gone in under 10-15 seconds while the big ones (15-18 inches) would take a minute or two as he had to move around to get rid of everything. It was expensive at around $90 an hour but these things move so quickly he could cover ALOT of ground during a typical 6 hour day - 6 hours is all he could take as the operator takes a beating with one of these. You can also use it to take out cactus - it shreds it so fine that it will not grow back - been three years since ours and zero regrowth.

You will be sorry for that in a few years unless you sprayed the stump with good herbicide. Those mesquites just get mad when hit with a grinder and come back bushy and with more thorns.

I too have been looking into what I call "earth eaters". I have called two seperate business who have the mulcher machines.

Bob Walkers Brush Mulching in Marquez and Precision Land Developent.

I have called each but only could get ahold of Bob Walker. He told me that he gets $100.00 per hour with a 8hr min plus a fuel surcharge of $150.00. Exspensive!!

I have called the Precision Land Development guys about 10x's but they won't return my phone calls...I guess buisness is that good!! Anyhow my father in law and uncle used them this past year. They told me for one day of mulching at their places just get ready for a $1400.00 bill!! They do however supply two men who will clear up low hanging trees all day...but I was told that you have to watch them to keep them on "task".

Lastly when these guys came to my father in laws place their maching broke...they blew a hydraulic line and were down for a few hours. My father In law told me that they tried to charge him for their down time!!! He told the operator to call his boss because that was not right. Apparently the bill was reduced.

Bobcat in Fort Worth on the other hand will rent you a mulching machine. It is $2500.00 per week and you must provide a copy of your homeowners insurance and watch a instructional video. Alot less money for 40hrs. Just alot of hassle.

Hope this helps anyone who is looking.

Nobody wants to listen. Doze it, stack it and burn it. It will disturb the ground but grass and forbs will grow back. Probably faster than trying to grow through all those chips.

A dozer is fine if the cedars are out in the open. On my place there is no way a dozer can get around the Oaks/Pecan trees without taking them out as well.

From what I have seen, there are not a whole lot of pecan and not an abundance of oak in the Rocksprings area. It is not that hard to not doze the trees you want to keep. There is going to be a certain amount of hand cutting after doing any type of clearing. The bad thing about the Rocksprings is the rock. It takes its toll on dozers and especially shredder chipper type machines.

anybody know how a Bobcat with chipper will work on south TX brush (blackbrush and quaillo, whitebrush, purple sage, etc). thanks