Changed my whole operation

[Hay Dude]

The price of the big square baler is a factor as well... not everyone as 100k for a baler

100K? you can get a decent used one for that. I have been lucky enough to find 2 in good condition for about $50K each.
Try 250k for a new one.

A small horse operation can buy and store large square bales without any tractor.
What you do is have the bales delivered and stacked into your barn. Many large square baling operations will offer to do this. You have them orient the bales so you can access the end of the large square bale. You simply pull flakes off one at a time and put them in your feeder.
We also have customers drive over with those little single axle trailers and buy one bale at a time. They drive it home and park it in a barn or garage. They lower the tailgate ramp, walk up it, cut strings and pull flakes off.

 

[WM75Guy]

When we built our barn large squares weren't available to us. Large squares would be nice and now I have access to buy large square bales. Unfortunately, my barn doesn't have a space to put a large square bale. One side has four stalls. The other side has one stall where we put feed, an open space for the wash rack, a tack room, and a space we put shavings on pallets. We drive down the aisle with the Mule and manure spreader when we clean stalls or empty a muck bucket. So we will stick to small square bales. We go thru 200 a year so it is no big deal.

 

[Xfaxman]

For small bale users that haven't seen bundles:

Here are 21 bales on a dolly:

And 42 bales stored, never lifted a bale by hand:

The thread with more pictures: Hay Bale Bundle

.

 

[Hay Dude]

Farmers with a Bale Baron or a Krone multi-baler will deliver you those packs of small squares. All you need is a pair of steel strap cutters. The old lady that buys my square bales owns nothing but a single axle trailer. I put the bale on the trailer, she drives home, pulls it into garage and pulls off flakes as needed. She loves that I can sell her hay for 1/2 price. An old cheap skate lol. Just keeps coming back for large bales.

 

[piper184]

Everybody has different sized operations and needs. Personally I just unloaded and stacked 300 55# alfalfa bales by hand yesterday. We don't have the storage space or the equipment to handle anything but small squares. We also made 20 bales of ditch grass hay (mostly brome) with an hand powered baler last week. My wife runs a small dairy goat operation with an average of 10 head of adults at any given time.

Our producer is about 20 miles away and we would load our own in the field. Wife would drive, I would pick up and stack as we went. 125 bales, take home, unload and repeat. Usually on the hottest day of the summer. Much easier to do 10 years ago. This year our producer called and asked if we would pay a little more if he could load them for us. All of his small bale customers said yes. He got an accumulator for his skid steer and can get 240 bales on his trailer easily at a time so he just delivered them to us. I went out with my trailer at the same time and he put the extra 60 on it. He charged a premium price for the service but it saved us over half the labor we used to do and 80 miles of driving. As we age it is becoming apparent that as long as we can afford it, avoiding the hardest work is worth it.

An added benefit is that the bales were still nice and tight, not having the wear and tear of picking and stacking by hand kept them that way. A year's supply. High dry and vermin free.

We have opened two year old hay and the flowers inside were still purple. Quality feed leads to quality production and for us this is the most economical (and now least labor intensive) that we can come up with.