StuartDK45SE
Silver Member
This site was helpful when I was gathering equipment to do my own hay. I already had a Kioti DK45 SE (gear tractor) that had 39 PTO horsepower so I gathered equipment based on that.
Here is what I ended up with
Drum mower from Small Farm Innovations in Caldwell TX :
I decided to go with their midsized drum mower, the DM 3065 that has a 65 cut. I have two 5 acre fields. Mowing at a conservative speed, it takes me about two hours to mow each of them. I'm happy with the cut and overall build quality of the unit. It can be a little bit of a handful to swing in and out from transport mode to cutting mode, but not too bad. With two people it is a snap. At close to 900 pounds and 9 feet long in transport mode , I wouldn't want anything bigger. Btw I looked for a used drum or disc mower, but they were mostly worn out and/or too big for my tractor.
Rake from Small Farm Innovations:
I went with their 3 point, four wheel rake and it does a pretty decent job. It also has the feature where you can flip the position of the two sets of wheels and supposedly it will help spread your hay out. I haven't found that feature to be very effective. I will be looking to get a tedder or a tedder/rake combination in the future. I like how it rakes the best at this angle which is great, but I'm not covering much ground.
Round baler:
Through a lot of looking here and other places, I determined that I should go with a 4 x 4 round baler. That really limits availability which is bad on one hand, but good in that you don稚 have as many choices to weed through. I ended up finding a used New Holland 630. I think they stopped making them in the mid 90s, but not sure? It looks pretty rough and it has had its share of repairs and welding done on it but I was comfortable with talking to the guy I bought it from. If I would have known more, I would have checked the CV joint better before I bough it. I noticed the first time I used the baler that it was really loose and making some racket. I decided to bite the bullet and buy a whole new cv joint along with the entire pto shaft. At $1200, it wasn't cheap but the baler was about $1000 cheaper than anything else I looked at in my area. I just need this baler to do between 90-120 rolls a year. As far as the baler / tractor combo, it will be adequate for now. The baler density works off of spring tension and not hydraulics, so that helps. The tractor is working when the bale gets close to full but it is not struggling. I wish I had about 5 more PTO horsepower at times. Btw, I average about 8 minutes run time per bale.
Anyway, just thought I would post this up to help others that were in the same situation I was.
Here is what I ended up with
Drum mower from Small Farm Innovations in Caldwell TX :
I decided to go with their midsized drum mower, the DM 3065 that has a 65 cut. I have two 5 acre fields. Mowing at a conservative speed, it takes me about two hours to mow each of them. I'm happy with the cut and overall build quality of the unit. It can be a little bit of a handful to swing in and out from transport mode to cutting mode, but not too bad. With two people it is a snap. At close to 900 pounds and 9 feet long in transport mode , I wouldn't want anything bigger. Btw I looked for a used drum or disc mower, but they were mostly worn out and/or too big for my tractor.
Rake from Small Farm Innovations:
I went with their 3 point, four wheel rake and it does a pretty decent job. It also has the feature where you can flip the position of the two sets of wheels and supposedly it will help spread your hay out. I haven't found that feature to be very effective. I will be looking to get a tedder or a tedder/rake combination in the future. I like how it rakes the best at this angle which is great, but I'm not covering much ground.
Round baler:
Through a lot of looking here and other places, I determined that I should go with a 4 x 4 round baler. That really limits availability which is bad on one hand, but good in that you don稚 have as many choices to weed through. I ended up finding a used New Holland 630. I think they stopped making them in the mid 90s, but not sure? It looks pretty rough and it has had its share of repairs and welding done on it but I was comfortable with talking to the guy I bought it from. If I would have known more, I would have checked the CV joint better before I bough it. I noticed the first time I used the baler that it was really loose and making some racket. I decided to bite the bullet and buy a whole new cv joint along with the entire pto shaft. At $1200, it wasn't cheap but the baler was about $1000 cheaper than anything else I looked at in my area. I just need this baler to do between 90-120 rolls a year. As far as the baler / tractor combo, it will be adequate for now. The baler density works off of spring tension and not hydraulics, so that helps. The tractor is working when the bale gets close to full but it is not struggling. I wish I had about 5 more PTO horsepower at times. Btw, I average about 8 minutes run time per bale.
Anyway, just thought I would post this up to help others that were in the same situation I was.
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