Getting started in hay making... Basic set-up

roadhunter · Jan 14, 2016

Good advice so far. Don't make small bales unless you have horse yuppies or hobby farms to sell them to. Most real farmers and ranchers do not use many small squares anymore.

My advice woudl be to go work for someone who bales hay for a living one summer. This sounds more like you have a tractor and thought it would be neat to use it to make hay. By the time you figure what it costs to buy and keep all that equipment running as well as move it from property to property it's' like not going to make much money and more likely lose money. They guys who make money at it around here have thousands of acres they hay and they use big equipment.

How much land do you have lined up to work on?

Farmer495 · Jan 14, 2016

Put up thousands of square bales each summer for years, 80 to 120 acres. All of it for feeding our cattle

Majority of it that time with one 42 PTO HP tractor or smaller and 1970's/1980's equipment.

MF 41 6' sickle bar
Kuhn GF22N tedder
NH 256 rake
MF #9 baler

All of the above will run easy on 30 PTO HP.

Only do 90 acres now, upgraded to round bales and disc cutter. Still do about 2k idiot cubes a year.

I'd get a disc mower if you can find a good one cheap, you can run a 4 disc mower ok. For rounds, an 8420 CIH / MF 1734 / Hesston 530 (all same machine) required 30 PTO HP and make a "less than 4x4 bale" so that might appeal to folks that don't want large rolls and don't want to handle squares

Lawnman TX · Jan 15, 2016

JD855guy said:
I don't know anything about haying but to add to the discussion a local large animal vet told me that most of the colic cases they see in horses are animals being fed with round bales. They recommended only using square bales for horses. I did not go into the reasoning behind it. Just repeating what I was told about round versus square.

My horses don't know anything about square bales

. All the hay they have gotten in the last 20 years was round.

powerscol · Jan 15, 2016

Then they are not getting a square meal................................................waite.....................................waite :cool2:

Could not help it....sorry

As a side note MF now makes a very efficient small round baler that is rated at 30hp which means it will run with less hp. I thing it is their 1734 model.

But I did have to laugh as I sell to horse people. I know the habit's they have. They want GREEN, even though bailing with lots of color means high moisture content and mold (can be deadly to horses). I try to bale dry - 8% to 10% so there is no issue with mold (no higher than 14%) . I also bale light bales - no heavier than 50 lbs. The ladies love that. Most horse folks want square so they can feed flakes. Neighbor gets the small rounds and has a table she rolls them out on to cut her feeding size. To each their own as long as it is good hay.

RedNeckRacin · Jan 15, 2016

Horse people are idiots when it comes to hay. They are exceptionally picky because they"know" hay. Why in the world they wont switch to mechanized handling i will never know other than some can't handle round bales. They are fussy and show no loyalty when they get a "deal". We had 40 head at one point and had to make 6k squares a year and 400 round bales to feed them all. If you are betting on kids helping you collect it, good luck. We fired all the help after a terrible year of let downs and excuses along with poor work ethic. Ended up getting a bale accumulator and hydraulic grapple and never looked back.

IMO the biggest problems with hay are keeping the equipment running, fighting the weather, having the time and knowledge of when the hay is ready(NOT when you are ready),having an efficient way of collecting the hay, and storage. If you can overcome all of that, you have it licked. Do not over look the storage. Hay that gets rained on is junk.

Boy do I sound bitter about making hay....lol.

Creamer · Jan 15, 2016

In my opinion IH sickle bar mowers are the best because they do not have a pitman stick and have a very high sickle speed - close to 2000 strokes/min for a model 1100/1300. I currently have a an NH 455 which is not a bad mower either but it does not cut as clean at 1750 strokes/min. Parts are readily available for either. Your tractor will easily handle a 9' sickle bar.

I am also a fan of the bale stooker versus a accumulator because the bales do not lay flat on the ground and you can pick them up with a loader with just tines or I use a toolbar with four points on the 3 pt. I am only familiar with the AgriTec stooker which did not have a motor, just an automatic trip when the sixth bale came into it.

Always been a fan of NH balers and there are lots around everywhere. Any rake will do the job but the NH 5 bar were very good.

Nissan197 · Jan 15, 2016

I sell them to horse owners. There are not many square bales in my area anymore.

CDennyRun · Jan 15, 2016

RedNeckRacin said:
Horse people are idiots when it comes to hay. They are exceptionally picky because they"know" hay. Why in the world they wont switch to mechanized handling i will never know other than some can't handle round bales. They are fussy and show no loyalty when they get a "deal". We had 40 head at one point and had to make 6k squares a year and 400 round bales to feed them all. If you are betting on kids helping you collect it, good luck. We fired all the help after a terrible year of let downs and excuses along with poor work ethic. Ended up getting a bale accumulator and hydraulic grapple and never looked back.

IMO the biggest problems with hay are keeping the equipment running, fighting the weather, having the time and knowledge of when the hay is ready(NOT when you are ready),having an efficient way of collecting the hay, and storage. If you can overcome all of that, you have it licked. Do not over look the storage. Hay that gets rained on is junk.

Boy do I sound bitter about making hay....lol.

As a horse person, I agree that most horse people are WAY too picky. Definitely more picky than their horses! Green like the green on a dollar bill is good in my opinion if it's fresh. A lot of that depends on the types of grasses in the bale. We have fed our horses two year old hay that was pretty dry, and course, and they seemed to love it! The biggest thing we look for is mold, and knowing the grass species.

But yes, most horse people are too arrogant and waste a lot of money.. and probably drive hay farmers crazy. :confused2:

Chris

leeave96 · Jan 16, 2016

We got started with a MF 50 diesel, 34-38 PTO hp and later added a JD 5055d 51ish PTO hp tractor. Bought and spruced up a MF 32 sickle mower which is a pitman type mower - but works great. Downside to a sickle mower is no conditioning of the hay and so it takes longer to dry out. Bought a 7 ft Hesston haybine this winter to mow and condition the hay going forward. We have a NH 2 basket tedder and a JD 3 pt rake. For baling, we have a New Holland 68 baler and did a refurb on it. Not a hard job, but lots of stuck/rusted bolts and knuckle busting. Bales great now. For added reliability, we just added a JD 348 baler. We sell to horse customers so having a baler down for a day can make the difference between horse or mulch hay. Conditioner and tedder also help shorten drying time between our frequent summer rains.

Here are a few videos:

http://youtu.be/Hj7ziy8NTU0

http://youtu.be/Skqq9bdeiUA

I would recommend a haybine, definitely a tedder and most any New Holland or John Deere baler provided they are not projects.

Good luck,
Bill