Advice on doing my own hay

[JHK Farms]

I am not endorsing any company but check out this company on the web. It is Small Farm Innovations, they deal in low horse power mowers, rakes, balers, including round balers. I started out small with very used equipment. 2 wheel Vicon rake, Used my brush hog to mow for several years, and still using a NH 271 sq baler. I bale small "Hobby Farm" plots and few gave yards. I am a hire hand for a larger operation baling hay. I liked the looks of the mini baler, only seen one in use. He implied he made some good extra money "mini" baling hay. Talked to my county ag agent, he had never heard about the mini balers. So I sent him the web site and he said he will get back to me.
Thanks, JHK Farms, Maud, OK

Another site is Agriquip.com. Sweet I appreciate all your help on this site, I am just giving out information that I found doing my research, hopefully it will save others some time. The only reason I am looking at the "mini" balers is my mom lives in a "green" belt. I brush hog their pastures, just thought about it. Its tough hauling a big baler 80 plus miles to the green belt, plus tractor, cutter and rake...

 

[Reyer Farms]

I have looked at the minis and smaller full size balers. I am impressed with the amount of use the minis get baling pine straw. I am a sucker for niche markets. Any one use one?
I bought a good older new holland baler, mower conditioner, rake and Tedder with boxes of blades and spare parts four years ago. A few grand and a trip to Arkansas. I was setup and sold it before I unloaded the trailer. I was able to get a little further down the road and did it without one drop of sweat.

 

[Reynolds4020]

Hey original poster ElginFarm, if you are in Elgin and need help on weeks let me know im in Elgin and would love to help out. But cant really do much more than weekends because of school. But if you need help pm i would be very interested in helping with what ever kind of work you got.

 

[schmism]

Ive been wanting to do small scale bailing for the past 3 years. I figure 10 acers tops on 2-3 acre fields. many fields of this size owners are happy with 50/50 or will even take it all as long as the field is maintained.

Ive watched CL for small haying equipment for the past 3-5 years. here are my results.

9' ground driven bar rake. (usually NH) $500-1000 depending on condition. less than $500 (ive seen) but expect to put 2-300 in it to get it reliable.

7'-9' Sickle bar (often JD but sometimes NH) $800-$1000. Around my parts they dont sell them less than that because if its only worth 3-500 then condition is likely that the owner is likely to scrap it then to try to sell it.

small sq baler. Avoid the old wire tie. Old string tie can be upgraded to plastic twine if you reset the tension. The trick ive heard is buy a roll of real string, get it tieing knots well on real string, measure the tension, then switch to plastic and reset the tension to the same as it was with the string and you should be good to go.

bailers run 1500-3000. smallest are usually new-idea but depending on age JD was popular as well as NH.

Kickers for hay wagons will toss a small machine around, pass on trying to use a kicker. a nice setup is an accumulator table, or my perfect world, an old NH bail wagon but they are rare and/or expensive (1003 is on my list)


dont underestimate the need to haul your newly acquired equipment home. sucks to buy a $1000 bailer at an auction only to find out your another $300 in the hole just to get it back to the farm and see what else it needs. IE if your looking for CL hay equipment, have a 20' equipment trailer ready to go pick it up. FYI it will also make a great hay trailers for the small sq's also.

what i listed above is the bare minimum. you may choose to also get a ground driven hay conditioner. but by the time you buy a decent Sickle bar plus the conditioner you could probably just by an older 8' haybine. Likely cant run a discbine behind small equipment.

tedder, a small 2 basket tedder is nice, and if you get a version with reversable baskets you can also rake with it, so you can eliminate the bar rake and just have one verison do both the tedding and rakeing.

 

[tshiverd]

Keep us updated on how you progress. I bought a small farm a month ago with a 10 acre hayfield and I want to be able to do the hay myself in 3-5 years. Following your progress will certainly help.
Thanks,
Todd

 

[Mini Baler Guy]

I bought brand new hay equipment, cutter, baler and rake for less than 13k from small farm innovations. There are many preople who wish to control the quality of their hay by purchasing their own equipment. I had the best hay crop ever when my contract guy backed out on me the last minute and it rained that next day dropping the quality a tremendous amount. So I bought my own stuff and since my equipment is easy to move on a 18ft trailer I make a few bucks baling for my neighbors.

 

[flusher]

I bought brand new hay equipment, cutter, baler and rake for less than 13k from small farm innovations. There are many preople who wish to control the quality of their hay by purchasing their own equipment. I had the best hay crop ever when my contract guy backed out on me the last minute and it rained that next day dropping the quality a tremendous amount. So I bought my own stuff and since my equipment is easy to move on a 18ft trailer I make a few bucks baling for my neighbors.

Good choice. I like the 4-ft drum mower that SFI carries. Much less hassle than a sicklebar.

 

[petes]

As follow-up on my earlier post: I found some pictures of mowing and baling last summer with my B7100DT (without a live PTO), JD 14T baler and NH 451 7ft sickle. No pics got taken of raking with the Kuhn 2 basket tedder/rake. The tractor pulled a bit to the right with that mower hanging out there, but I could hold a straight line.

My neighbor said he put up 16,000 bales with his 16hp B7100 before buying a bigger tractor. So haying can be done with a compact tractor, but they're not all built the same and some of the lighter-built ones may not be as durable.

With such a light tractor you definitely don't want to go down any hills, but on reasonably flat ground it was no problem. Baling uphill caused it to grunt (and puff) a bit, but plunger strokes didn't surge the tractor much at all... maybe old balers had better flywheels than newer ones to smooth out the plunger strokes.

I recently picked up an IH B-275 (35hp diesel with a live pto) so this year should be a piece of cake... once I get it running, of course!

The last couple pics are recovering from the result of a worn clutchring on the knotter and a misadjusted stop dog in the bale chamber. After about 50 bales it folded up 1 needle quite substantially, but thankfully it didn't break. Of course this was early evening on a Saturday and no hope of getting a new one for a couple days, so I threw together a makeshift forge to heat it, then straghtened it back out good as new and got the rest baled and into the barn on Sunday.

 

[rankrank1]

...So haying can be done with a compact tractor, but they're not all built the same and some of the lighter-built ones may not be as durable.

.... maybe old balers had better flywheels than newer ones to smooth out the plunger strokes.

...so I threw together a makeshift forge to heat it, then straghtened it back out good as new and got the rest baled and into the barn on Sunday.

Ah hum... Correction needed...you are baling with a "sub-compact" tractor not a "compact" tractor. Impressive and this is coming from a guy who actually bales with a compact tractor for several years now (my tractor is a Kubota L285 compact tractor around 23 hp at 540 rpm on the PTO and pics are on this sight. And I do NOT have live PTO either).

Older balers are generally much more suited for low hp compact tractor applications. Balers of the 1950's and early 1960's were designed to work with the common tractors most farmers had back then and statistically most of those were 30 hp or less in that era. The JD 14T was actually designed to work on the tiny JD 40 2cyl tractor as a minimum power unit. Of course it saw much more action behind JD B's and Farmall h's which were much more common in volume numbers. Rumor has it that the early Deere balers like the 14T had heavier flywheel designs to help compensate for the uneven PTO power pulses of their 2 cylinder tractor engine - which also helps for low hp applications too. As the 1960's evolved tractor horsepower increased dramatically and newer balers from the late 1970's on are typically designed for increased capacity and to still work with common tractor sizes farmers have - remember that it takes a decade or two for trickle down of larger tractors to the small time farmer who is usually buying used stuff. Pretty much all farmers now have much bigger tractors now so 50hp-60 hp or even more may be needed with a newer baler if it is a high capacity one.

Impressive makeshift forge and implementing an excellent repair. What is the heat source? Charcoal?

 

[whitmerlegacyfarm]

My list of equipment that i picked up over a years time watching CL dailey and few consignment sales.

I know i hayed and cut a total of 40 ac between 3 cuttings this past season, was a lot of fun, lot of work, and consumed a lot of time up. It is very rewarding and also very Addicting atleast for me lol. Enjoy and Good Luck

NH 68 Baler-$600
NH 269 Baler-$400 (Baled 1600 Bales this past summer 2012 no problems)
Nh 479 Haybine-$850 ( mowed 30ac. rollers not the best)
NH 56 Rake-$400 (Works Great)
NH 1469 SP Haybine-$750 ( Favorite piece of equipment fun to drive)
NH 255 Rake/Tedder-$550 (Havn't used yet ust picked up)
2 flat bed wagons total $550 between the two
H&S 8 Tedder/Fluffer $450 works ok keep welding

Total of $4500ish i think and i got 2 of everything pretty much for back up it just kinda happen that way.