Will poly twine damage hay equipment?

[40Kchicks]

I bought my farm a few years ago from some of the nicest people you would have ever wanted to meet. They were very old school. They didn’t have a TV, computer or use technology much at all. They were only in there 40’s but they lived like it was still the 40’s. That was kind of neat about them but I wish they would have been more progressive about trash. They burned or buried everything. I have all these burn piles where they burned all variety of plastic. The remnants of those piles are terrible. But I’m getting off my topic.

What I need to ask is if poly twine will damage hay equipment? I was spreading an old compost pile this last week and the last owners had broke open hay bales and just thrown the poly into the compost pile. Surely they realized that it would never rot but that was their trash policy. Burn it or burry it.

Much of the twine just wrapped up on the spreader flail but I’m sure some did get spread. Do I need to walk the field to keep the hay equipment from being damaged? I won’t be selling much of the hay so what do you hay experts think? The field is about 20 acres.

Thanks Eric

 

[5030]

Eric:

The problem with poly is that besides being hard on your hands (lifting bales), it is hard on the pickup of a bailer when it is in the field. A good example of this was last year when Troy and I were bailing wheat straw. As the day wore on, the straw became harder to bale (round). A couple of bales failed to start or started and then mis twined. The ejected bales had twine on and in them. In order not to leave a round rotting in the field all winter, we re-bailed the broken bales. Even though we picked through the bales, some poly got wound in the pickups of the round balers (a square bailer has the same design of pickup). At the end of last year, the pickups had to be disassembled from the balers and the entwined poly had to be removed. That is quite a bit of labor and time.

Another drawback to remnants of poly twine in a hayfield is the fact that it may be ingested by a horse. A horses gut is touchy enough. A steer would probably pass it, but a horse may colic from it.

If it had been sisal, it would have degraded over the winter.

 

[Woodbeef]

I'm with 5030 on this. Yes it could cause trouble with both your mowing system,and baler. What I'd worry more about is what it will be fed to. I'd not be happy eating plastic twine,would you????

 

[Bird]

Yep, like Daryl (5030) said, I've spent more time than I wanted to digging and cutting that stuff out of the baler pickup.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

What gets me is who ever came up with the idea of plastic twine? I have never seen an advantage to it. It won't go away so all you do is create more garbage. At least regular twine or wire will go back into the ground over time.

 

[Bird]

Robert, that darned twine when not properly disposed of is a nuisance. Besides the hay baler, I've had it wrapped up in the blades of my finish mower, the brush hog, and even the string trimmer at one time or another. The neighbor I worked with baling hay heard about a biodegradeble twine, sounded like a good idea, so he bought a few spools and we tried it. It didn't look too much different when we were baling the hay, but he stored that hay on the ground in long rows, and six months later, sure enough that that was on the bottom touching the dirt disintegrated. Sure was a mess trying to move those bales then. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[Robert_in_NY]

I see, up our way no one stores squares outside because of our weather (we get a lot more rain then you guys). I still don't like the plastic twine though /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

 

[Bird]

Oops, Robert, I was talking about the big round bales. The only square bales I've had anything to do with had baling wire instead of string.

 

[Woodbeef]

Hey Robert,

The mice do not eat it!!!!!!!!!!

 

[cowboydoc]

The plastic twine, like Bird said, was created because regular twine disintegrates in a year outside. In Idaho all of our square bales are stored outside. And like Woodbeef said the mice make quick work of the other twine.