Need Advice - Hay Equipment

[Brent.Roberts]

You're between a rock and hard place.

We have about 10 acres. Got a local to seed it then spent 3 frustrating years trying to get it cut when it should be cut. It's all but impossible to find someone to do it. You make hay when the sun shines and when it shines the equipment goes to the big fields and you sit and suck.

In our case, to make matters worse, we have steep hills and we're in our 60's. So we needed a tractor big enough to pull a hay wagon up and down along with the baler. Got a JD 4040, NH315 baler with thrower, NH 217 7 foot haybine, first an inverter that didn't work worth a poop when the cut was heavy, now got a rotary rake. All up, nearly $40K. We just cut 1350 bales last week. Do the math and you end up like the dog that chased the trucks on the highway until one day he got his teeth firmly embedded in a tire and immediately began to wonder about the purpose of the exercise.

I love / hate doing it all. Try real hard to get someone reliable to do it for you, but good luck, you'll need it.

Rambler's comments above are pretty much on the money.

It's a no win deal. Do it if you think it will be fun, but remember the dog.

 

[rmonio]

All of these replies tell me one thing - that if I want to do this it will probably be because I WANT to and that I don't mind spending the money. Otherwise I'm money ahead buying the bales and using the fields for pasture during the summer.

I will probably buy my own equipment someday - it's interesting to see the prices quoted for some of the stuff. I don't know what all of the equipment is - haybines, etc. - so I will probably do some research on those (anyone know of a good site with definitions?). I do enjoy doing the work when I have time.. is a JD4600 going to be enough to drive the cutter, rake, and square balers that are being mentioned here?

Thanks in advance - this is great stuff and why I find this site to be so valuable.

-Bob

 

[chh]

Don't feel bad if you are not finding someone to bale your hay. I have 300 acres of hay ground and have used custom operators, partnerships and cutting on shares over the years in addition to doing it myself. If you want it on a time schedule doing it yourself is pretty much the only way that is going to happen. It is also the most expensive way to go. I round bale and sell hay, when we got new equipment this year after the last patnership deal fell thru, I invested several grand in new/near new equipment and started out doing a little custom work on the side since the area immediately around me doesn't have anyone doing that. Going into the custom business has been an eye opener. A 10 acre or less field can be a sinkhole money wise for a custom operator unless he is literally right next door working in another field. Moving equipment with $4+ diesel prices can ad up in a hurry. It is just my wife and myself so wages doesn't factor as big as some of the larger crews, but still I have to consider if I'm giving my time and labor away.

Just some food for thought.

 

[Brent.Roberts]

I think it "should" do it all, but it will be on the light side. The baler will get you rocking and rolling pretty good

Looking up the specs on tractordata.com it shows it weighs in at 3600 lbs. My 4040 weighs near 10,000 and at times the 60 strokes a minute becomes my bounce rate.

You'll have a lot of hiccups along the way but when you fill the barn for the first time with real good hay, you'll be on a high that will last a long time, and almost nobody in your life will understand why.

I love doing it.

 

[aczlan]

we bale here in Upstate NY with a Kubota L3830 with loaded rears, no FEL (yet), we pull a Sperry-NH Hayliner 273 with a belt style bale kicker and a wagon on small drumlins (~30' of hieght change from one side of a rectangulat 5ac field to the other) as of yet we have not had any problems with this combo, the tractor bucks a little on each stroke of the plunger, but it is not very bad. I havent yet (knock on wood) felt like it was able to push the tractor around.
IIRC this tractor has 38 hp and ~30-35 PTO hp

we also pull a 8' Mower Conditioner behind this tractor and a 2x14? hyd lift Oliver trailer plow, the plow was hard to pull (not enough tractor weight) until we had the rears loaded and I adjusted the plow for the tractor. the tractor hardly notices the mo-co once it gets up to speed, no matter what we are cutting


HTH

Aaron Z