JD 14T baler with small tractor

[quicksandfarmer]

What kind of bale quality do you get with your Deere baler? I need a cheap baler to get started and a Deere or New Holland are on my short list. I don't think I can afford a Hesston inline yet but would like to have one. Gonna be pulling with a 38 horse 4,500 lb tractor.

I get very uniform bales. All the same length and and very rectangular. Normally the only time the baler misses a knot is when I run out of twine. They're probably not as dense as I would like, but I don't spend as much time fiddling with the settings as I should because I don't do a lot of baling, I just get it close enough and go. I think I did 700 bales last summer. I try to make the bales about 36" long and they're about 40 lbs., I can pick up one in each hand when gathering them.

If I do miss a knot I'll run over the failed bale again. That twice-baled hay is very dense, probably 70-80 lbs per bale.

The one thing I find is that my rake can make a bigger windrow than the baler can handle so I have to go slow to avoid overloading the baler. In my lowest gear I go just about as fast as the baler can handle a big windrow. I find that going uphill the feed is just right, but going downhill the tractor goes ever so slightly faster and I have to stop every now and then and let the baler catch up. One of my projects for the summer is to try and adjust my rake to make a smaller windrow. I like to set the engine speed so that the baler does about one stroke a second and when I have a good windrow it makes about 3-4 bales a minute.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

It's not that it won't do it, it's that the pto drive line in some of the small tractors is quite "lightly made" and the pounding of the baler will take it out

There's been more than a few compact owners that have found this out the hard way...

SR

 

[gdk22984]

It's not that it won't do it, it's that the pto drive line in some of the small tractors is quite "lightly made" and the pounding of the baler will take it out

There's been more than a few compact owners that have found this out the hard way...

SR

I agree. This guy just wants to bail a small amount for his small hobby farm, nothing crazy. What will save him is it's all flatland. The physical size of this tractor is small, it weighs around 2000 lbs. with the FEL.

Although, it has impressed me with some of the things I have seen the guy do with this thing for being a sub compact. I guess this will add to it because I have NEVER seen it done before with a machine like this. Then again, I don't know of anyone who would bale so little but I guess for 500 bucks he couldn't pass it up. Like I said, I will take a video if I am around.

 

[ProjectKing]

I get very uniform bales. All the same length and and very rectangular. Normally the only time the baler misses a knot is when I run out of twine. They're probably not as dense as I would like, but I don't spend as much time fiddling with the settings as I should because I don't do a lot of baling, I just get it close enough and go. I think I did 700 bales last summer. I try to make the bales about 36" long and they're about 40 lbs., I can pick up one in each hand when gathering them.

If I do miss a knot I'll run over the failed bale again. That twice-baled hay is very dense, probably 70-80 lbs per bale.

The one thing I find is that my rake can make a bigger windrow than the baler can handle so I have to go slow to avoid overloading the baler. In my lowest gear I go just about as fast as the baler can handle a big windrow. I find that going uphill the feed is just right, but going downhill the tractor goes ever so slightly faster and I have to stop every now and then and let the baler catch up. One of my projects for the summer is to try and adjust my rake to make a smaller windrow. I like to set the engine speed so that the baler does about one stroke a second and when I have a good windrow it makes about 3-4 bales a minute.

Great info! I appreciate it very much!! What tractor are you pulling it with?

 

[Tx Jim]

What kind of bale quality do you get with your Deere baler? I need a cheap baler to get started and a Deere or New Holland are on my short list.

All JD small sq balers I've repaired/owned made very good quality bales of hay

 

[flusher]

My neighbor down the road is looking to bale about a 200 bales from a small field using a 14T and his JD 1025R 25 HP small tractor. All flat land and dropped in field. I told him I had my doubts. He picked it up for 500 bucks in working condition.

I know this baler has low HP requirements, but has anyone heard of anyone using a machine like this to bale? Even on a small scale? Thoughts?

Folks have used a variety of small tractors to operate small squares balers like your 14T.

Here's one using a Farmall Super A that has about 18 hp (pto).

FARMALL Super A - YouTube

Good luck

 

[flusher]

Forgot to mention that the Super A baling part comes around 6 minutes into the video.

 

[SSdoxie]

Dad had a 14T baler while I was growing up on the farm. When in my teens (some 50 years ago) I had the job of baling road ditches and some other small areas not worth the effort to plow and till. From mid-June to early July after 1st crop of hay was put up I would do this baling while Dad, older brother, and an uncle were busy spraying and cultivating with the larger tractors so only tractor I had was CA Allis Chalmers. HP was never an issue. Weight of the tractor to counter-act the momentum really made things interesting. When plunger would go back to compress it would try to shove tractor forward the jerk back when plunger withdrew, only way I could stay in the seat was bracing my feet tight to the foot rests and locking my arms pushing against the steering wheel. Tractordata list this CA at 2800+ lbs. twice what the JD sub-compact is.
Hope he doesn't damage the tractor and keeps the seat belt fastened to keep from getting thrown off.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Great info! I appreciate it very much!! What tractor are you pulling it with?

A 35 HP Jinma. Keep in mind that a 24T is probably going to be 50 years old so the condition can vary tremendously.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

It's not that it won't do it, it's that the pto drive line in some of the small tractors is quite "lightly made" and the pounding of the baler will take it out

There's been more than a few compact owners that have found this out the hard way...

SR

The 14T and 24T had an option of an air-cooled engine that sat on the baler and powered the baling. With that the tractor doesn't have to supply any power, you could even pull the baler with horses. Of course you'd have to decide if you want to try to keep a 50-year-old air-cooled engine running.