Cutting, Raking, and Baling this week - YouTube Videos

[chetlenox]

All,

Cutting, raking and baling the winter grasses in North Texas this week. We live about 20 miles south of Ft. Worth. The equipment used is:

JD 4520 (our tractor)
Rebuilt 70s era New Holland 256 hay rake (finished rebuilding ~3 days before)
Frontier sickle-bar mower
Case tractor (sorry, don't know model) w/~12 year old baler (neighbors)

We were most excited to see the sickle bar (which we bought new this year) run as well as the hay rake, which we bought off craigslist last year and spent significant time rebuilding and repainting.

The grass is mostly winter rye with some clover and wildflowers mixed in for good measure. Not too bad for horses and good for cows. We baled 505 40-50 lb bales off our 14 acre pasture, which is pretty typical. Our 2nd and 3rd cutting will be good clean Coastal Bermuda (which just started growing). It's my wife on the tractor in all the videos, which is actually pretty representative. We've got ~180 hours on the tractor, and I'll bet more than half are hers.

The new sickle-bar in action

Night Raking

Re-raking (for bigger windrows) and baling

This is our 2nd year baling hay on our place, and we are really enjoying ourselves. Next year the final big purchase, the baler, is planned.

Just figured ya'll might enjoy the videos. I am a casual browser of tractorbynet, but I always enjoy the farming-related threads. Especially when they are just little farms like me...

Take care,

Chet

 

[RobS]

Very cool, thanks for posting!

 

[sandman2234]

Great videos!
Just wondering, do you have a market for the bales, or are you just doing it for the fun of driving the tractors?
David from jax

 

[jsboening]

That looks like fun. I helped my neighbor do that once. It was fun. Of course i wasn't the one who was fixing the old equipment. I'd like to use my 3720 for that some day! Thanks for sharing.

 

[chetlenox]

Great videos!
Just wondering, do you have a market for the bales, or are you just doing it for the fun of driving the tractors?
David from jax

Sure, I definitely have a market. Many of my neighbors are horse folks who need the hay and like the small squares for handle-ability (is that a word?). Around here a good quality grass hay bale goes for $4/bale, with good Coastal Bermuda it's more like $6 or $7/bale. Granted, that varies a lot with the weather (ie, supply).

Chet.

 

[Egon]

Does you wife also compete in the local stock car races??

 

[L4400]

Does you wife also compete in the local stock car races??

LOL, I was thinking that too. She looks like she's flying out there!

 

[chetlenox]

Does you wife also compete in the local stock car races??

Ha! That's funny.

Yeah, she was really haulin' the mail that morning. We needed to turn two windrows into one to help feed the baler. She only had about a 15 minute head start and I think she felt like she had to hurry (even though the baler was doing, what, 2 mph?). I was running the rake at 6-7 mph on my field, and I'm guessing she was closer to 8 or 9 in that daytime video...

Chet.

 

[kbuegel]

Would like to see some details on your rake. Maybe some close-ups of the work you did. I was very impressed to see your wife racing through the fields and the rake was able to keep up with the volume of hay with no problem. I also have a NH side-delivery rake, but much older, and it gets overwhelmed easily with large clumps of hay. In fact, last weekend it got completely covered and clogged with hay that you could not tell it was running, it was just a quivering pile of hay on wheels.

Your hay operation looks great. I'm sure you'll be very successful. The small square bales are going for almost $10 each out here in Northern California because so many fields are growing cow silage hay and not horse hay, plus there are just a lot more horses now with all the rescues from the PMU industry and racetracks. So baling and selling horse hay should be very lucrative for the next few years at least.

 

[warhammer]

Thanks for posting the videos. They were very cool!

Warhammer

 

[chetlenox]

kbuegel,

Sure, I can post some shots. I don't have a whole lot of close-ups, but enough to get the idea. I also have a "before" shot. We really worked through the rake from top-to-bottom, replacing all the bearings that needed to be replaced and repacking the rest (there was more of the former than the latter!). That thing has a whole bunch of bearings, that's for sure. 10 on the tine bars, 3 in the gearbox, 1 on each of the spider wheel splines, in the wheels... everywhere! It actually was a pretty fun project though. My retired father came and stayed with us for three weeks and we worked on it like crazy to get it done in time for hay season. So that's why I'm so pleased it is working well in the videos...

Chet

 

[slowzuki]

You have some nice smooth fields there! I wish I could stay on my tractor when raking that fast!

 

[Texashayman]

Nice job on the rake!..when i first started out, i was running a 258 and 260 NH with a dolly..(i was running rubber teeth instead of the steel ones you have)those rakes were truly bullet proof! Keep up the great work!

 

[chetlenox]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the feedback.

Chet

 

[schmism]

for those of us not up on all the models but like to keep up with what equipment does what..

that JD4520 is listed at a 53hp machine
the rake is a 8-8.5'
and the cickle bar is 7' (i think)

 

[zzvyb6]

By running the rake that fast, she's knocking all the seeds off the grain contents. That's the food value so there's a lot of waste in that hurry-up activity. If you have her run the rake to move/slide the hay into a windrow instead of beating the crap out of it, your hay will have some real food value instead of just chew value. The closeups showed grass seeds, etc in the freshly cut field. Bet they're not there anymore ! Your customers will spot that kind of hay real fast.

 

[chetlenox]

zzvyb6,

Thanks for the feedback, thats a good point. To be honest, we aren't really used to thinking about how badly we "abuse" the grass (like I hear folks that grow alfalfa have to), since the Coastal Bermuda we typically work with has leaves that are firmly attached to the stem and no seeds. But you are right, for the Winter Rye, it wouldn't hurt to be more gentle.

Thanks!

Chet

 

[Rara Avis]

All,

Re-raking (for bigger windrows) and baling

Take care,

Chet

Why didn't you swing the baler out so you wouldn't have to run over your windrow?

 

[Bill Barrett]

Does you wife also compete in the local stock car races??

LOL that's what I was thinking also, she hauls butt.

 

[HayDR]

Why didn't you swing the baler out so you wouldn't have to run over your windrow?

With the high cost of fuel these days, single roller-bar rakes like a NH 256 may become less desirable. That entire field could have been raked in less than one hour by a V rake (wheel or hydraulic) or double rotary rake. These larger rakes will rake 10-20 acres per hour easy. A new Vermeer 20' rake sells for $3,100 in our market.