Cheapest way to try my hand at making hay?

[beppington]

I'd like to try my hand at making hay. I have a tractor, & a rotary cutter , but am curious how cheaply I could give it a try?

What would I need? I'd prefer the square (rectangular) bales vs the big, round jelly-rolls.

Is this a situation where the "cost-to-enter-the-market" is so astronomical you'd never "just give it a try"?

 

[wvpolekat]

Never made hay myself, but the rotary cutter is a no-go. It will shred the hay, what you want is to cut it down. Sickle bar or disc mower is the most common.

 

[MMagis]

If you go to local farm auctions you can pick up needed equipment at low cost. You could use the rotary cutter if you REALLY wanted to, but I would advise against it. It just won’t work well for a few reasons. Sickle bar mowers go cheap since no one wants to use them anymore, but they don’t show up at many auctions. The consignment auction I went to this weekend had a lot of haybines go for under $500, but they needed a lot of work. If you spend time looking you can find a workable rake and square baler for under $1k each. Some times much less, but not always. I’ve seen great deals on Craigslist, but you have to jump on them. In the end, many folks still think it makes more sense to just buy hay, but sometimes it depends on what sort of hay you’re wanting.

 

[sweettractors]

I'd like to try my hand at making hay. I have a tractor, & a rotary cutter , but am curious how cheaply I could give it a try?

What would I need? I'd prefer the square (rectangular) bales vs the big, round jelly-rolls.

Is this a situation where the "cost-to-enter-the-market" is so astronomical you'd never "just give it a try"?

Good sickle mower $895 + Good used 4 wheel hay rake $695 + Good used NH #68 square baler $1500 + 1.85 per loaded mile from 42722, Ky. Ken Sweet

 

[Egon]

Cheapest hay!

snath, sickle blade, rake, pitchfork and hay wagon

 

[flusher]

I'd like to try my hand at making hay. I have a tractor, & a rotary cutter , but am curious how cheaply I could give it a try?

What would I need? I'd prefer the square (rectangular) bales vs the big, round jelly-rolls.

Is this a situation where the "cost-to-enter-the-market" is so astronomical you'd never "just give it a try"?

A rotary cutter (i.e. brush hog) is not the best hay mower. A sicklebar, disc mower or drum mower is much better. The rotary cutter will chop the hay and fling it around instead of cutting it cleanly and allowing it to drop onto the stubble. It's important that the hay lay on the stubble, not on the ground, so it dries quickly.

I have 10 acres, 6 of which I plan oats (plant in Nov, harvest the following May). Here's a list of my equipment:

Tractor--2008 Mahindra 5525 (54 hp engine, 45 hp pto, 2WD, gear tranny), FEL with 6-ft bucket. Cost new: $19K. The photo shows the 5525 pulling a 10-ft wide grain drill--an old Minneapolis Moline P3-6 drill. Cost: $275 for two units. Used parts from both drills to make one good one. Drilling seed generally is preferred to broadcast seeding because of the better germination (90% for drilling, 60% for broadcast). You can improve broadcast seeding germination somewhat by using a cultipacker to press the seed into the soil.



Probably the best seeders are Brillion and Landpride seeders which are drop seeders with dual cultipackers.

Offset disc- pull type 6-1/2 ft for primary tilling. Cost: free (gift from a neighbor). I had to replace a few pans (the discs) and lube it. I built a simple drag out of old tires or a hunk of chain link fence with concrete weights to bust up the clods.



If you're doing annuals like oats, beardless wheat, etc. you don't need to work the soil deep with a moldboard plow- 3-4 inches with a disc is sufficient. However, if you plan to do a perennial like alfalfa, which is deep rooted, you need to plow deeply or rip the soil to break through the hardpan so the roots can get established.

Tandem disc - pull type 7 ft for secondary tilling. Cost: $200. YOu can get 3pt hitch type tandem discs.



Mower: 7-ft Massey Ferguson model 31 sicklebar mower. Cost: $550. Put about $150 in new parts into that mower. Rebuilt it 3 times. It still doesn't cut perfectly. You can find refurbished sicklebars but expect to pay $2-3K for them. New ones are $5K or more.



I plan to get a drum mower next year and junk the sicklebar.

Rake: mine is an old John Deere 350 model (3pt hitch type) 5-bar side delivery rake. Cost: $800. These side delivery rakes are being replaced by wheel rakes and rotary rakes nowadays.



I'm looking for a wheel rake (4 wheels) for next haying season.

Baler: mine is 1970s Massey Ferguson 124 2-twine small squares baler. Cost: $2000. Works OK.



Hope this helps.
Good luck.

 

[mf2640man]

old skl is always cheepest wether you go full hog and go by hand or go for cheeper old machines is up to you

but tip hope you are handy with the spanners

 

[Mike_Kanzer]

I have an L3830 and I don't have enough PTO hp to run a square baler (30hp) - not sure you would either. Usually it requires a bigger tractor. - Mike

 

[blueriver]

I have an L3830 and I don't have enough PTO hp to run a square baler (30hp) - not sure you would either. Usually it requires a bigger tractor. - Mike

I don't know Mike ... my dad baled a many bales of hay with an H Farmall ... I think they are like about 24hp.... I think his baler was an IH #27.

 

[wvpolekat]

I have an L3830 and I don't have enough PTO hp to run a square baler (30hp) - not sure you would either. Usually it requires a bigger tractor. - Mike

Many a Ford N has bailed hay with way less than 30hp.

 

[CompactTractorFan]

Have you looked at mini-haying equipment?

 

[beppington]

Wow, this is a lot of good info. I gotta get readin'! Thank you all.

 

[Gizmo2]

I have an L3830 and I don't have enough PTO hp to run a square baler (30hp) - not sure you would either. Usually it requires a bigger tractor. - Mike

I've seen it before, a guy I know had never fertilized his fields and he was getting about 1/3 the yield he should have been getting, so he fertilized. Then found out he did not have enough tractor and had to hire it done. The more fertilize the bigger the tractor you will need. it's that simple. I would also agree, a 30hp PTO tractor would be questionable.
Note: Rain and haying, those uncontrollable circumstances will get you every time, well almost.

 

[skspurling]

I ran an old square bailer off an M John Deere just for kicks back in my college days. As long as I didn't overload it, I was able to run just fine. The M has 12HP? IIRC.

 

[aczlan]

I have an L3830 and I don't have enough PTO hp to run a square baler (30hp) - not sure you would either. Usually it requires a bigger tractor. - Mike

We have an L3830 and it does our hay just fine. We have a 9' mower conditioner, a 18' Enrossi tedder, a side delivery rake, a small square baler with a kicker and 2 wagons. We have to slow down a little in the heavy stuff, but it works well. The tedder was new in 2009 but everything else is 30+ years old. Before we got the L3830 they did the hay with a model M farmall. It worked, but it took 30mins to get it to start some days. The Kubota starts right up no matter what.

Aaron Z

 

[SSdoxie]

Once you get that flywheel on the baler spinning, doesn't take much HP to keep it going. As kid my dad & I baled many 1000's of bales with Super H the only constrant was how much we piled on the wagon pulling behind it. If dropping it on the ground to pick up later, won't take much to run the baler.

 

[nwngunner]

Be ready for break downs. Every time i go to make hay i end up breaking down or something. I run a mf round baler, sickle bar haybine with roller, and an 8 wheel vrake.

The v rake works so much better then the roto rakes. I had one and it never gave me big enough wind rows for my baler. My round baler requires a lot hay to feed evenly. When you take your baler over your wind rows move in a zig zag over the wind row.

Making hay is not as easy as people think and it is not a fast process.

MAKE SURE YOU CARRY A FIRE EXTINGUISHER

Also if you use a round baler expect to replace bearings every year. Just the amount of weight and stress even with maintenance you will have to replace the flange bearings and they are not cheap. Last year my neighbor was helping me make hay and he was pulling my baler with his 2-135 white and had a bale start on fire. He got the bale out of the baler before it could catch it on fire as well. Had to hurry up and get the fire department out there, if it wasnt for me being close with the four wheeler and my big fire extinguisher we would have lost most of the field

Last year i took my 12 foot disk and went across my fields one way, then went 90 degrees to that, then 45 to that. Also when you go to make your turns lift your disk so you are not leaving ridges. After going those three directions you will have broken up most of the sod, then you can go on and plant, then run over it with a cultipacker to level and smooth the field. When you go to disk be ready to go find weight for your disk. My 12 foot disk did not have enough weight to cut up the sod in my field. Then again it had been 5 years from the last time it had been disked.

The last and i feel most expensive part of hay is the seed its self.

 

[KennyG]

My memories from "back in the days" was that balers were the most maintenance intensive machines on the farm, even worse than corn pickers. It was the one machine that most farmers didn't own, preferring to pay someone else to bale instead of taking care of the equipment.

Check around and see if someone would be interested in baling for you.

 

[CompactTractorFan]

MAKE SURE YOU CARRY A FIRE EXTINGUISHER

+1 I think there was a thread about this last year. :thumbsup: I would get a 2 1/2 gallon pressurized water. They are charged with air so anyone can recharge them.

 

[rankrank1]

Several questions need to be asked:
a) Is this a hobby? Or will this be a business venture for profit?
b) How many acres will you be haying?
c) Is the hay for your use or do you plan to sell it?
d) What size and hp tractor will you be using?
e) What type of hay? (grassy based or leaf based like alphalpha)


Theoretical answers:
If you plan to use the hay yourself then you really do not even need a baler assuming your acreage is modest. Balers have only existed for 80 years or so, but hay has been put up for centuries without a baler. Hay can be put up loose in a barn hay mow, or it can be shocked and stored outside. (Only if you plan to sell it for profit then you will need a baler).

As for cutting: a hand scythe can be used for small acreage, although I will not cut by hand. A bush hog while not the best tool can actually work pretty well if set-up properly in grass hay, but will not work well in leafy hay as you will lose lots of leaves. Added benefit of the bushog is that it sorta conditions the hay for faster drying plus tenderizes stemy grasses to make them much more palatable to the animal that eats it. Downside of the bushhog is that you will definitely lose some of your potential yield (estimating 20% - 40% yield loss as compared to cutting with other methods), but if this is a hobby who cares - you already have the bushog, and they require next to zero maintenance. Sickle mowers is the next cheapest cutter up from a bushhog but they require quite a bit of maintenance but any small tractor can run a sickle. From here there are also drum mowers, haybines, disc mowers, and discbines - some are suitable for small tractors and some are not.

Small acreage: If you have small acreage it will take years to make a profit if you purchase expensive reliable equipment. For small acreage, then older stuff can be had pretty cheap, but I hope you like working on it (I actually enjoy working on my old junk, but some people hate turning wrenches). That said, I have still yet to turn a profit, but am close to breaking even and do enjoy it as a hobby.

If you have a small tractor: Modern mini-hay balers is available brand new (e.g. MicroStar) that will work on very small 15 hp tractors not much bigger than a lawn mowers, but it is prohibitively expensive and can usually only be found brand new - at $15k they are too expensive for small acreage operation. That said, there are old vintage balers that will work with your small low hp tractors in the 25 hp range, but these balers will be 40-50 years old and full of wear - so again hope you like to tinker. Unfortunately newer balers from the mainstream manufacturers require more horsepower than the older ones did. Newer balers will need 50 hp or me as they have much more capacity than the older ones did.

Literally hours worth of reading on this subject if you do some searching on this site and Yesterday's Tractor for vintage baler info. Just remember there is no such thing as easy money in hay.

Here is my hobby/junk operation with a 1978 L285 Kubota (26.4 max PTO hp at WOT, but closer to 23 hp with throttle set at 540 PTO rpm). A 1940's antique JD 594 hayrake, and a 1960 NH 65 compact baler (smallest of the vintage balers). Tractor looks terrible, but runs excellent. I spent considerable time on the Rake and baler getting them usable.

My helper (my wife) sabotaged my pics - she hates cameras and painted herself out.