'Real Farming' with a CUT

[Bill Barrett]

Thanks for the thread! I want to do the same, square bail with a Kubota L3130. Most on TBN talk like 40 to 50 hp is as small as you can go,but I was going to try anyway. If it dosen't work I'll, find a old Farmall or Allis. I have 17 acers of flat ground. I have been looking for used equipment.

That sure is a nice drill you have! I would like to see some pics of it in action!

 

[slowzuki]

I small square bale with a Kubota L5030 HSTC with a JD336 baler, my tractor tips the scales at about 6500 lbs dressed with loader and loaded tires.

The square baler works the tractor pretty well, I wouldn't want a whole lot less tractor. The older JD units like the 14-T and others are much easier on equipment and would be a good choice for a CUT. We are also on a bit of a hill which makes a huge difference. Baling uses almost no power on the flat but point it up the hill and things change quickly.

On the flat I could pull a rack behind my baler but on the hills there is just too much weight to do it safely. I fear it would damage my transmission too.

I put up some pictures a week ago or so in my blog at On The Farm… take a peek at east coast small squares.

 

[Greyfields]

Ok, here are some bale photos. They should be self explanatory. Except the piggies, which is just a gratuitious animal photo. They were weaners last Sunday, so they'll be coming to breakfast about December. A few more days in the nurse pens there and they'll be out on the green pasture.

 

[FL4400]

Tedding....

Basically, this fluffs-up the hay, inverts some of it and un-bunches it so that it can dry more uniformly. All the research I've read says it actually does not make the hay dry faster, but it does help it dry uniformly. Regardless, after you have mowed, the grass is in long parallel lines in the direction you cut. Once you have tedded, it's horizontal to the way you've mowed.

It's really hard to see in the photo, but I'll give it a try.

One other note, always ted in the morning while dew is still on the hay, or after dusk. Doing it during the heat of the day will break leaves off clovers, reducing the forgage's nutrition.

Greyfields,
I bale about 250 acres of coastal bermuda and have never heard of teddering while the dew is still on the hay. When you tedder it actually turns the hay over so all the wet stuff would seem to be on the bottom which could start the mildew process in the hay. We do not start fluffing until the dew is completely burnt off.

Skeeter Ranch Hay Farm

 

[Z-Michigan]

The baling looks great - even the wonkey bale isn't too bad. I'm jealous!

3) A made 30", 3', 4' and 5' diameter bales. After some discussion and head scratching, we decided that the 4' would be best for half our hay and the 30" for the other half. Two people can lift the 30" diameter (the lenght is 46") without too terrible a struggle and they will fit in my front loader. I was thinking of using these for goats, sheep, and other animals who won't eat the big bales quickly like cows would. 48" was really manageable on the tractor, it didn't bog the PTO down; whereas going from 48" out to 60" I had to throttle up a bit to keep things running smoothly.

One comment is that I wouldn't store anything smaller than 4x5 outside. The outer 8-12" or so of a bale is likely to go bad if stored outside. On a 4x5 this is somewhere around 40-50% of the bale - a pretty bad loss. But on a 30" it's basically the entire bale.

If you store them inside I see no issue.

We're now using 4x5 round bales for our horse, but everything we're feeding will be stored inside (13 already are) and we're planning to build an off-the-ground feeder to put large flakes in, to avoid having nearly the wastage we get from placing hay on the ground.

 

[Greyfields]

Thank you for the comments and links. You have a very smooth operation.

I think I left the point of emphasis out in the paragragh you quoted. The field I was tedding was 50% clover hay. For tedding clovers (and I assume other leafy forages like alfalfa), it's best to invert in the morning when the leaves are less likely to be torn off. Most the nutrition in clover is in the leaves, so tedding in the baking sun will cause more to be shattered and broken off.

Grass is an entirely different matter as you point out.

 

[Greyfields]

The baling looks great - even the wonkey bale isn't too bad. I'm jealous!

I'll leave them outside for another week or two since we're expecting hot weather. We have dew every morning around here being coastal. I like your advice and just wanted to state I have a 5000 SF barn including a hay mow upstairs in the dutch barn portion. It will definitely be inside hay as we get stupidly high rainfall here most the year.

 

[Z-Michigan]

Sounds like a good plan to me. I suspect your barn is big enough to store all the hay you'll make, but if not, do a web search for "round bale storage losses" and "round bale storage methods" for lots of useful info from the extension services of various universities.

Our horse barn was setup with square bales in mind, and not really wonderful even for that. I'm going to be out of room at around 18 round bales (stored two high). We may be able to get another 12-15 into our lean-to by rolling them in by hand. After that, if I have any more hay after that (was hoping for 40-50 round bales this year, but only got 13 from first cutting) I'll have to store outside. It's a shame that the richest hay comes when storage is already full from the earlier cuttings!

 

[possum_hollow]

Great pictures! I was wondering how things would work out, since you went with the 1745 instead of the 1734. How did your tractor handle the larger baler?

 

[possum_hollow]

Sorry, I missed your earlier comment. I am very interested, since I am planning on doing the same thing. I would like to do 4' bales, and would love to try the heavier 1745. My tractor is similar in horsepower to yours, a Mahindra 4530. However, it weighs about 1500 more pounds more than the JD, so if yours could handle the baler pounding, mine should not be a problem. I would not want to tax the tractor doing the baling, it is too important for so many other tasks.