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Yeh, I don't wanna even throw the small squares. Use a NH stacker wagon. Picks them up ok but doesnt stack them worth a shzt. I put a steel band around each layer to make sure everything stacks up nicely. Gotta find a better way, though.
125 acres...! You must do many thousands of small bales...or hammer them up real tight into 36"+ long bales that weigh 99 lbs each..... Whats the end use of plain straw?
Jon.
We have a bale wagon too, but our old Massey 124 won't make good enough bales for it. I throw them on the wagon by hand. It's basically a funny-looking, hard to load hay rack. We're going to upgrade to an inline baler, though. They should spit bricks out the back, and we can finally use the wagon!! Our bales weigh about 50#, but I hate loading them on. I don't like Doctor Who, so when it's on, I go and pick up straw! :D
We put up about 8000 bales per year, give or take. A lot go for smaller orders- 10 to insulate a dog house, or 5 for gardening. But, a lot of ranchers use it when calving/lambing/foaling. We've had a few customers who load 200 bales on a gooseneck. One loaded 8 high, and got 250 bales on his gooseneck. I'd never want to drive anything that high!!
We have about 200 to sell, so we're almost there. We don't deliver, so when we start doing that, we'll be able to sell more.
Trust me- don't load bales manually on a Stack wagon!
Oh, try sinking posts in the ground. Lean your stacks on them. A bunch of posts look ugly, but they work.
matador: "It's an income source. And my gym membership!"
Not sure why you need a gym membership with 8000 bales to handle....:)
I've drooled over those inline balers. Spendy, though! I have a JD348 which seems to do a decent job. God help you when buying parts, though!! I put an airbag tensioner on mine to get rid of the hydraulic cylinders that were getting old and started seizing.
Would love to find an in-line moisture meter that would mark any bales that have a wet bit of hay in them. Not a huge problem, but would like to be able to step up the quality a notch. Feed any wet stuff first and don't lose anything to mold.
Yeh, the posts went in the ground the first year we used the stacker wagon. Then made large pallets to go under each stacker wagon stack so snow melt can run underneath without wetting the hay. (its triple tarped to stay dry) Then built a 9' fence around the haystack to keep the Elk out... Umh, whats that you say?...when will I get REALLY smart and just build a hay shed? Oh....maybe this year...
Jon.
I don't need the gym membership. Over the last two years, I've lost almost 40 pounds. I'm back to just "slightly heavy". Throwing them isn't easy, and I have to get out of the tractor every 3-4 bales. It's a workout!
The 348s are a nice machine, but I absolutely hate our Deere dealer. It wouldn't bother me if nothing we owned was John Deere. Our White tractor works just as well as the Deere, and our Massey has baled over a million bales. It's just plain worn out. Our Deere equipment has worked well, we just don't want anything to do with the dealer here.
Straw doesn't have as bad of mold issues. Our MF 124 spits out bales that are sometimes well-tensioned, sometimes loose, sometimes trapezoidal, and sometimes banana bales (Or any combination!). We don't have mold issues, though.
Another cheater's tip is to lean the stack against a building if you can. Other than that, you'll have to use a lot of prop poles. Our hand-stacked stacks are much tighter than anything that a bale wagon will ever do.
That's all I can think of right now. Just sell your hay before it falls down. Duh! ;)
Reminds me of being a kid again.
Throwing bales onto that ol trailer at my friends family farm.. Best part after the hay was all stacked swinging from the barns rope swing into the giant pile of hay basically unstacking it all... HA.
$5.50 a bale here up .50 from previous years..
gotta make hay while the sun shines.
oh yeah -22 f.... off to pickup a truckload of steel.
Man I F'd up this weekend...couldn't stand the sound of crunchy grass anymore and turned on the sprinklers the other day. Now it's supposed to snow on and off starting Thursday and not stop for 4-5 days.