Forestry Attachments

Attachments Built To Last

Fecon Stands Above The Rest

Our forestry attachments, deck mowers, grapples, and tree shears are designed and customized to arrive fully compatible with your tractor, excavator, or skid steer. We offer product lines with multiple models to work seamlessly with different drive systems and horsepower capabilities.

Fecon forestry attachments deliver excellent ROI for the equipment investment. Our reputation for durability, reliability, and Dealer and Factory support is recognized across our line of forestry attachments. The Bull Hog is the mulching head at the center of that line, built for skid steers, excavators and tractors for over thirty years.

Forestry Attachments by Carrier

Fecon builds forestry attachments for four carrier types, and the right attachment depends less on the job than on the machine underneath it: its hydraulic flow, its horsepower and its weight class. Below is the short version of which Fecon attachments fit which carrier, from skid steer forestry attachments to excavator and tractor heads. If you are not sure where your machine falls, send us the make, model, hydraulic flow and horsepower and we will match it.

Skid Steer and Compact Track Loader Forestry Attachments

Skid steers and compact track loaders take the widest range of forestry attachments we build. For mulching, the Bull Hog mulching head for skid steers and CTLs is the standard high flow forestry head for a skid steer, with the standard flow Bull Hog for machines without a high flow circuit and the Blackhawk where you want the most aggressive cut available on a loader. For faster, coarser clearing the Disc Hawk is a disc mulcher rather than a drum, and the stone crusher handles rocky ground in place. Below full mulching duty, the Red Line skid steer brush cutter and skid steer brush grapple cover clearing and material handling, and the felling saw drops standing timber. Mini skid steer operators have their own range: the mini skid brush cutter, the mini skid brush grapple and the mini skid log grapple.

Excavator Forestry Attachments

An excavator gives you reach and the ability to work slopes, ditches and ground a loader cannot safely stand on. For forestry excavator attachments, Fecon builds excavator mulching heads in four weight classes: 3 to 10 ton, 8 to 15 ton, 12 to 20 ton and 15 to 45 ton, so the head is matched to the machine rather than the other way around. For lighter vegetation and trimming work, the excavator brush cutter and the Trim Ex tree saw, which works to a height of 26 feet and rotates the blade for continuous cuts from one machine position, cover jobs that do not need a mulcher. The rotating grapple handles the material once it is down.

Tractor Forestry Attachments

For tractor owners there are two routes into forestry tractor attachments. A PTO Bull Hog mounts to a three-point hitch and runs off the tractor’s power take-off, which suits landowners and ranchers maintaining fence lines, trails and pasture edges. Above that, the Bull Hog tractor heads in the 150 to 200 horsepower and 200 plus horsepower classes are hydraulically driven mulching heads for purpose-built mulching tractors. Where the tractor cannot supply enough hydraulic horsepower for the attachment, the power pack is a dedicated hydraulic power source that solves it. Fecon also builds complete mulching tractors: the FTX 150-2, FTX 200 and FTX 300.

Hitting rocky ground? A skid steer rock crusher clears it in place without excavation or hauling.

New to the method? Read the top benefits of forestry mulching.

Forestry Attachments by Job

The carrier decides what an attachment can run. The job decides which one you reach for. Most clearing work comes down to five jobs, and each has its own tool.

• Clearing standing brush and timber: a mulching head. The Bull Hog grinds trees and brush into mulch in one pass and leaves it on the ground. For faster, coarser work across open acreage, the Disc Hawk.
• Knocking back regrowth and lighter brush: a brush cutter. The Red Line skid steer brush cutter handles material up to 6 inches across, the mini skid brush cutter handles up to 4 inches on a mini skid steer, and the excavator brush cutter works from the boom.
• Picking up, carrying and stacking: a grapple. The skid steer brush grapple has a 60 inch jaw opening and dual independent lids for tangled brush, and the rotating grapple is built for logs and timber.
• Felling and trimming standing trees: the felling saw or tree shear on a loader, or the Trim Ex tree saw on an excavator, which works to a height of 26 feet.
• Rock and stumps: the stone crusher processes rock in place, and our stump grinders remove what is left below the cut.

That list is also the short answer to which skid steer land clearing attachments to buy first: start with the tool for the job you do most, then add the second one when the work calls for it.

Building a Skid Steer Forestry Package

A skid steer forestry package is the set of attachments that lets one loader handle a whole clearing job instead of one stage of it. There is no single right package, but most forestry skid steer attachments get bought in a similar order: something to cut, something to process, and something to carry.

A common starting package is a skid steer brush cutter and a skid steer brush grapple: cut the brush down, let it fall, then grapple it to a pile or a truck. Where the material is too heavy for a brush cutter, or you want it ground in place rather than hauled, a Bull Hog mulching head takes over as the main forestry head for the skid steer. Add the felling saw when you need to drop standing trees selectively instead of mulching them.

Two things decide what your package can include. The first is hydraulic flow: brush cutters and grapples generally run fine on standard flow, while most mulching heads want high flow. The second is lift capacity, because a heavy attachment uses capacity you would otherwise spend on material. Send us your loader’s make, model, flow and horsepower and we will help you build the package. Our brush cutter vs brush grapple guide covers the first two pieces in more depth.