How to Choose a Plough for a Compact Tractor: Bodies, Power, Hitch

Start with power, not field size#

The most common mistake is choosing a plough by the size of the field. What decides it is how many bodies your tractor will actually pull. The working rule for a mouldboard plough is 15–20 horsepower per body on medium soils at a depth of 18–22 cm. Light sandy ground sits at the bottom of that range; heavy clay, or greater depth, sits at the top or beyond it. The arithmetic follows: a compact tractor of 18–24 hp works comfortably with one body, 25–35 hp with two, and a three-body plough starts around 45–50 hp, which is no longer compact-tractor territory. The second limit is weight and traction — sufficient power does not help if the rear wheels slip. Before buying a two-furrow, check whether ballast weights or liquid ballast are available for your tractor; without them you are buying output you will not be able to use on damp ground.

Types, and where each one belongs#

A single-furrow plough is the baseline for plots up to a few hectares on light and medium soils: simple, inexpensive, and forgiving of setup errors. A two-furrow doubles output per pass and earns its place from roughly 3–5 hectares, but demands matching power and correct ballast. A reversible plough turns the furrow to either side, so there is no empty return run and no dead furrow — noticeably better on small fields, but heavier and more expensive. A disc plough is not a substitute for a mouldboard: it belongs on wet ground, on fields carrying heavy residue, or on very hard soil where a mouldboard smears or refuses to penetrate.

The hitch is what most often does not match#

Mounted implements attach to the three-point linkage, and the categories are standardised under ISO 730. Compact tractors are mostly category 0 or 1, and the plough has to match: pin diameter and the spacing between lower links both differ between categories. A category 2 plough will not physically fit a category 1 linkage without bushings, and improvised adapters are a reliable source of misalignment and broken links. Measure your own linkage before buying rather than trusting a catalogue description. Check the rear lift capacity separately: a plough in transport is a lever, and the rated capacity is quoted not at the mounting pins but at a specified distance behind them. The practical conclusion is to leave headroom, because the figure on the plough's spec sheet is its own mass, not the load the hydraulics see while lifting it out of the furrow.

What to look for in the steel#

Shares and mouldboards are wearing parts — they will wear out. So the question is not which steel it is but whether you can buy a replacement share a year from now. A plough from an obscure maker with no parts supply becomes scrap after one season on stony ground. Look at the thickness of the leg and the quality of the welds where it mounts, because that is where a plough breaks when it meets a rock. A trip mechanism — a shear bolt or a sprung release — extends the life of the frame considerably. Depth and pitch adjustment should be screw-type and reachable without tools: a plough that is awkward to set usually runs unset.