Haymaking with Walk behind?

[Timberwerkz]

Thinking about cutting hay with a walk behind and wanted to talk to someone who is or has done this. Interested in cost per bale. And real world pros/cons and things that I wouldn稚 have thought of.

Thanks for the help,
Chris

 

[JamesHW]

Not enough info (not that I could answer the question as to price per bale in any event), but using walk-behind attachments to make bales of hay with a walk behind involves three devices, sickle bar mower, Molon hay rake /tedder and the Caeb round hay baler. Those three attachments would be well over 10k new (mostly the baler). Of course you could sub a sickle, hay fork and hand baler of some sort to bring cost way down along with production. The cost of planting the field of hay needs to also be factored in in addition to inputs to be able to sus out a price per bale.

 

[stuckmotor]

I've seen some impressive youtube presentations on walk behind hay equipment. I believe these were filmed in places with cool climates like Switzerland. I see you're in Texas where it's hot. If you're young and thin you might be able to hold up to the heat and the walking. I wish you the best of luck and if you try it, let us know how it works out.

 

[jbradley]

I cut approximately 2 acres (half of my hayfield) with my 948 with 45" sickle mower. It took me almost 6 hours. I raked it with my 4-wheel tractor. No rain was forcast, but it rained. I re-raked it to dry it out, and it rained again. It subsequently got moldy, so I burned my windrows. I'm glad I hadn't mowed the whole field. I've subsequently purchased a 7' sickle for my tractor. Unless you have a hillside that you can't mow with a 4-wheel tractor, get used. 4-wheel equipment and do it that way. It's a lot less work and faster, too.

 

[atsah]

The only walk behind haying equipment we used years ago were a team of Percherons..

 

[freedomlives]

I used to do the hay making with various walk behinds. Up to five acres. Except the baling, which I pay someone to come and do.

Time is the big thing to look at. And its a question what equipment you already have. For some years I enjoyed listening to podcasts while mowing with the sickle bar mower and walking around the field. But as the area I was mowing got bigger, I just started to feel like it wasn't a good use of my time. Plus, when it came to moving large round bales, I was able to roll them up a ramp onto the trailer, but then comes stacking, which isn't possible. Last year I gave in and bought a 4 wheel tractor with a FEL. I still didn't have a mower for it last year, so cut the field with the walkbehind, but then borrowed a hay rake from a neighbor for turning. This year I got a drum mower. All done much faster, and fact is, the used attachments for four wheel tractors are usually more common than for two wheel, so likely you're going to pay about the same, if not less for the four wheel tractor attachments.

Now if you're getting the walk behind because you are also gardening, want the rotary plow, rotovator, power harrow, those sort of things, and you don't have much hay to cut, then it might work for you. But if you are just planning to cut hay, a four wheel tractor is going to be better, given that from what I can tell, East Bernard Texas is quite flat.

 

[BrokenTrack]

Not enough info (not that I could answer the question as to price per bale in any event), but using walk-behind attachments to make bales of hay with a walk behind involves three devices, sickle bar mower, Molon hay rake /tedder and the Caeb round hay baler. Those three attachments would be well over 10k new (mostly the baler). Of course you could sub a sickle, hay fork and hand baler of some sort to bring cost way down along with production. The cost of planting the field of hay needs to also be factored in in addition to inputs to be able to sus out a price per bale.

This is all true, but have you priced haying equipment for a 4 wheel tractor?

When I did my classes on sheep farming, I showed where a 2 wheel tractor was $9,0000 for new haying equipment, and using a dealers haymaker bundle deal, it was $27,000 for new haying equipment for the 4 wheel tractor. Sure you can buy used haying equipment, but that is not comparing apples to apples.

At a fair a dealership had a USED baler and were proud of its cheap $14,000 price tag! That is a steal, the same thing new was $44,000.

I break everything down by lamb costs, so assuming a $100 profit per lamb, I would have to raise 90 lambs to pay for the 2 wheel tractor haying equipment, and 270 lambs for the 4 wheel tractor before even beginning to make a profit. That is a lot of extra lambs for getting the exact same thing: hay.

To make it easier though, I would buy a sulky and save myself a lot of walking. That is always the limiting factor with my BSC; it actually accomplishes a lot of work, I just get tired from all the walking. But a sulky is cheaper than buying 4 wheel haying equipment.

 

[leonz]

It would be less costly to hire a neighbor with a windrower to cut your hay and windrow it in one pass.
The other thing is dealing with vermin and using a hay preservative where you would use a bale wrapper that would
cover the hay with a plastic sheet bale wrap and also spray a preservative in it as you bale it.

The netting type bale wrap will not hold a preservative or prevent vermin from burrowing the hay after its baled.

The other thing to remember is that the hay bales need to be stored with the sides up to hold the shape of the hay
bale in place as it will not compress the ends/sides of the hay bale when stored vertically.

You might want to consider a struck kit tracked tractor to do this too as it has a front PTO and it is less costly than
a BCS unit and has many possible uses.

A Wolagri R500 combi minibaler has a round baler with w rear mounted balewrapper that will let you bale and wrap at the same time using
a small subcompact tractor.

 

[herm0016]

to be sucsusful you have to figure out what your labor is worth. I figure mine at about 35 an hr. if the price to have someone else do something is less than my est hr rate and materials, then I hire it done, as my time is better spent elsewhere.

my contractor charges 50 per hr and his helper is 35. for certain projects they can do more work per $35 spent than i can, so i hire them.

figure out what you are worth and run the numbers again. i bet you can get a used tractor and equipment and have more time to raise sheep to pay for it.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

This is all true, but have you priced haying equipment for a 4 wheel tractor?

When I did my classes on sheep farming, I showed where a 2 wheel tractor was $9,0000 for new haying equipment, and using a dealers haymaker bundle deal, it was $27,000 for new haying equipment for the 4 wheel tractor. Sure you can buy used haying equipment, but that is not comparing apples to apples.

At a fair a dealership had a USED baler and were proud of its cheap $14,000 price tag! That is a steal, the same thing new was $44,000.

I break everything down by lamb costs, so assuming a $100 profit per lamb, I would have to raise 90 lambs to pay for the 2 wheel tractor haying equipment, and 270 lambs for the 4 wheel tractor before even beginning to make a profit. That is a lot of extra lambs for getting the exact same thing: hay.

To make it easier though, I would buy a sulky and save myself a lot of walking. That is always the limiting factor with my BSC; it actually accomplishes a lot of work, I just get tired from all the walking. But a sulky is cheaper than buying 4 wheel haying equipment.

The difference is there is a robust market for used hay equipment for 4-wheel tractors. I bought a 50-year-old Deere baler for $900, when I'm done with it I will sell it for $900 and some other fool can fiddle with it for a while. There are millions of those old balers out there, they're easy to buy and easy to sell. Two-wheel stuff is hard to find and hard to sell.

There are only two business models that make sense for haying: the first is to invest in new equipment, and run it continuously for the entire haying season. New equipment is so expensive that you have to make lots and lots of hay to justify the capital outlay, hay is a low-value commodity. The other model is to use old, cheap equipment to make hay on your own property for your own needs. You don't have to pay for transportation and you have so little invested in the equipment that your only inputs are fuel, twine and your own labor. If the equipment breaks down and you lose some hay it's no big deal, because you have so little in it in the first place.

You're not going to get rich with either model. Hay is a low-value commodity. Around here a good cutting might yield 5,000 pounds per acre, and a generous price would be ten cents a pound. So for $500/acre you have to mow, tedder, rake, bale, gather, haul and store that hay. Plus the costs of whatever amendments you choose to put on the field. The new equipment is much more productive than the older stuff, so you need less labor, but more capital-intensive so it evens out.

With a 2-wheeler you get the worst of both worlds: low productivity and high equipment cost. From an economic standpoint it's never going to pencil out. However, life isn't just about economics. If you enjoy spending time in your field, feeling productive and independent, go for it. I've never believed you should tell other people what they should want.