JD 346 sq baler.
- Thread starter AKfish
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AndyL52
Bronze Member
Accumulator and grapple verses bale wagon. What's the pro's and con's. Seems I'd prefer the wagon. But then again the grapple could be used to load out sales.What's y'all take on that.
OP
AKfish
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If you've got the bale numbers to support another piece of equipment - they're a good option. A good condition, self-propelled NH (116 bale model) is gonna be somewhere between $10-15K. Then you gotta feed it and take care of it, too.
I don't have the production numbers, personally. We've been lookin' at some more ground on a lease-rent option but even then I'd only be around 2,500 bales on a good year.
I've been able to get enough high school kids @ $15hr (and all they can drink and eat!) to get the hay off the field and into the barn. However, the kids are gettin' older and fewer in number! Pretty soon it'll just be me and the wife!
I'm gonna go big rounds for alot of my hay. I'll keep doin' some small squares (~300) and the rest will be 4'x5'.
AKfish
blueriver
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My 2 cents ... as AK says another unit to feed and take care of ... they are very nice for the large producer and I'd think one would need a big barn to manuver around in. For a producer my size doing 5K squares a year and stacking in a smaller barn the accumulator and grapple are the ticket for me. Of course the price is attractive.
AndyL52
Bronze Member
I was thinking the pull bale wagon. But I'm just kicking the thoughts around. I wanna make some squares on my good grass, but don't wanna be dependent on help from others to get it up.
Tx Jim
New Member
Have you thought of getting a bale basket to pull behind sq baler?
AndyL52
Bronze Member
Those seem handy, but would still have the chore of stacking in the barn.
I don't know if you have seen these or not, but you might want to take a look at the Maxilator -- Hay Grapple and Hay Handling Equipment by Maxilator features the Accumugrapple Elite that does it all; gather, load and offload hay with one piece of equipment. It combines the accumulator and grapple into one with removable chambers. Folks at the Kansas City Western Farm Show were using them and swore by them. I want to say the price was around 5500.00 for a new one.
blueriver
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What they don't show you in the video is that you have to remove the "chambers" in order to unload and stack in the barn ... then you have to put them back on when you go to the field to accumulate ... on and off and on and off .... I want to put up hay not be laying under a piece of equipment on a hot summer day trying to get the pins lined up and chambers back in place.
Tx Jim
New Member
You left the door open. Put accumulator under a nice shade tree to on/off-off/on the chamber sections :dance1::laughing::dance1:
