New Holland Procart 1225 Plus wheel rake-pics

[tacticalturnip]

The equipment you run is just so much larger than anything used around here; that rake is about 3 times larger than the ones I'm used to seeing. Your bailer? 4 times larger, easily lol. Of course you're not haying with 40+ year old open station tractors either, so you're just keeping to scale.

 

[mo1]

Thought I’d give a update on the wheel rake after making 600 large squares (500+ tons) of hay.

Ease of use: VERY easy to transport, unfold, fold, angle, extend, etc. In the field it tracks real nice. Not much to worry about except driving the tractor and that’s the way it should be. Adjustments can be made on the fly. All the rake wheels are adjustable with a simple wrench if you want to change down-pressure. Hooking up and unhooking much easier without the PTO shaft. Also no rake guards to field down/up. I’d give the rotary rake the nod in smaller fields, especially a single Rotary. This rake shines in bigger fields where you need to cover a lot of ground. You can lock one of the rake arms up and rake with one side if you want to flip your raked rows to aid drying.

Raking quality: Doesn’t clean up as good as a rotary, period. But it’s still acceptable Rake quality. When you turn, the wheels on the inside of the rake “drag” the hay along until you straighten out. This results in some hay being left behind. We are getting more skilled at the nuances of the rake. I have found it’s better to rake the fields headlands, then bale the headlands clean. Then rake & bale the main middle part of the field. Makes raking go extremely fas with little effort. The faster you rake, the better it seems to clean up. Has some issues with hay that’s been laying a while and new grass has grown. I have wheels set extremely light, so I may add some “down pressure” to help with this.

Roadability: Folds down lower than tractor cab. Width is maybe 9’, which is less than my tractor width with the mirrors. Has lights & turn signals. Tracks perfectly straight.

Value: At 1/2 the price of a rotary. Admittedly, this is what sold me. I was faced with a $30,000 Kubota or $33,000 Claas double rotary rake. At $16,900, this rake felt like a steal. For the $16,000 in savings, I can afford to leave 1% more hay on the field. Money is tight and financing rates are awful, especially on used equipment. That amount of hay left in the field may be reduced as we learn the rake better, too. Another thing worth noting is you are not using the tractor’s PTO, which saves wear on the tractor and lowers fuel consumption.

Overall: I would suggest this rake for fields greater than 5 acres. It works best in medium to large fields or if you need a rake on a budget. It’s easy to use cheap to buy and easy to own & maintain. It rakes a LOT of hay very fast, so it’s ideal for making a lot of round bales or large square bales.

I've used the 10 wheel version of that rake. Adding more wheel pressure will let you get more hay but you will get more stones and dirt and such in the hay. Turning with a wheel rake generally doesn't go well- the wheels absolutely have to keep rotating. Usually turning too sharp ends up plugging up the rake with the wad of hay that collects on the inside rear wheels as they aren't kicking that hay out the back into the windrow for a bit and then dump the wad all at once.

I would not recommend this kind of a rake in a field less than about 15-20 acres unless it's real long and skinny where you don't have to turn around much. It also isn't the greatest for making narrow windrows for small square balers. But, in a large enough wide open field in front of a round baler with a wide pickup or a large square baler, it is indeed fast and pretty foolproof.