oat hay Baling issues

[stuckmotor]

My neighbor baled his irrigated alfalfa 3-twine, 100-120 lb bales. His customers complained about the weight so he changed to 2-twine 45-55 lb bales. Even then he was losing money what with the cost of consumables (irrigation water, fuel, fertilizer, etc). So he ripped his fields last fall, leveled them and planted a plum tree orchard for prunes (aka dried plums) last month. Sunsweet pays better than the alfalfa buyers.

If 3 twine balers are used around here, they must be well hidden because I've never seen one. I knew there had to be at least one in California because, I've seen the bales on TV.

 

[flusher]

If 3 twine balers are used around here, they must be well hidden because I've never seen one. I knew there had to be at least one in California because, I've seen the bales on TV.

Yesterday my next door neighbor baled about 8 acres of non-irrigated oat hay with his 3-twine baler.




Another neighbor down the road and around the corner bales about 25 acres of irrigated alfalfa with a self-propelled 3-twine baler



A third neighbor baled about 150 acres of non-irrigated oat hay with a 3-twine baler.

Those things are all over the place around here.

 

[Tx Jim]

I never seen an aftermarket sq baler drive system such as in your photo.

 

[stuckmotor]

Those things are all over the place around here.[/QUOTE]

Does just one man usually throw those big bales on a truck?

 

[donais]

Oh gotcha. When I was working on this baler frying to get it to tie a k.ot I set it to about 15 inch lengths the kids loved that!

 

[donais]

They only load by hand if the bale picker is broke. But in highschool I delivered hay for a feed store and got to hand move 60 100-120 lb bales. And stack them in people's sheds.

 

[aczlan]

Oh gotcha. When I was working on this baler frying to get it to tie a k.ot I set it to about 15 inch lengths the kids loved that!

I do that manually when I finish baling a cutting and want to clean out the baler. Perhaps I should do that for the last 2 bales to make the easier to get out...

Aaron Z

 

[flusher]

I never seen an aftermarket sq baler drive system such as in your photo.

Don't think it's available nowadays. It's vintage from the 1970s. It's called a "One Wheeler" and it was made by Keith Foster in Madras, OR.



KEITH - Making History

The name on the side of my neighbor's one wheeler is "Keith Rankins". Don't know the significance.

 

[flusher]

Those things are all over the place around here.

Does just one man usually throw those big bales on a truck?[/QUOTE]

The bales are dropped on the field. Generally the small time buyers just drive onto the field with their pickups and load their flat bed trailers with a dozen or so bales. My neighbor has a New Holland bale stacker for moving the bales to the barnyard. He has used the stacker to make large volume deliveries to nearby customers.

 

[stuckmotor]

Handling those big bales ought to build a 'young' man man up. I suspect they'd tear this 'old' man down.