'Real Farming' with a CUT

Bill Barrett · Jul 13, 2007

nice blog slowzuki

VA Rebel · Jul 13, 2007

Bales look great. Looks like youve been doing it for years. If you had it to do over, would you recommend the auto tie?

Greyfields · Jul 13, 2007

I did not find having to manually tie the bales to be an issue. It didn't take 20 seconds looking over my shoulder before the gate was opening up. It can be installed on the baler for around $400 I think as an option. It's something I would do, but probably only if I took the baler in for some other repair. It wasn't driving me mad sitting there.

I just went out in the field and drove around the bales again. They're still there. I don't know what it is, but looking at them out the back window it makes this place feel like a 'real' farm. I also got a neighbor, who "doesn't like round bales one bit" to come out and look at the 30 inchers. I'll be doing 5 of his acres in small round. So, I got myself a job... gotta make the tractor payment... gotta make the tractor payment...

Greyfields · Jul 13, 2007

possum_hollow said:
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.

I found the biggest feedback was doing the 5' diameter when I was turned around doing the tie cycle. You could feel a pulse as the bale span in the chamber. You could feel it, but at no point did it feel like the tractor was going to shake apart. 4' diameter was very comfortable. 30" was a breeze.

slowzuki · Jul 16, 2007

Thanks Bill,

and about tedding and drying speed, even if we had ideal weather here and could leave hay out, even conditioned hay in a windrow would take a week to dry. We don't have a week without rain here so it isn't an option.

Grass gets tedded every day until baled usually.

Bill Barrett said:
nice blog slowzuki

civesnedfield · Jul 16, 2007

possum_hollow said:
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.

I think that you will find that the 4530 will handle the baler without a problem. If you stay away from the max. bale size of 62" and silage bales you will be ok. I have been looking for a round baler for myself, I am working on trying a 1745 out as we speak. If I can get my handson one I'll let you know how the 4530 handles it.

Greyfields · Jul 16, 2007

My 1745 came all the way from Colorado to get to me... but, I'm assuming you're looking for a new one. I'm not sure what the availability is for used ones.

I've had one hiccup with the baler so far. As the tie arms head out, they sometimes will hit the blade if it hasn't released from the anvil properly. I greased the crap out of it thinking the blade was sticking. After looking at it further, I realized that the bolt holding the pivoting blade was contacting the drive chain. So I'm going to reverse the bolt or saw the end off to see if it clears up. It happened maybe with 5 bales out of the 14 acres I did.

Grrrr · Jul 19, 2007

Looking good Greyfields. I wish I had some of your nice shiny equipment. One thing I do notice though is that round balers like a nice big windrow. I don't know how high your yields are but I know here in England we have rakes that are about 30' wide to make a big windrow. This tends to make the bale much more even inside. You might want to try doubling up your windrows if your rake can do that. What sort of speed do you find you can bale at. We had a contractor here a couple of weeks ago with a big baler and 160hp tractor and he must have been baling at 14 - 15 mph. Pretty impressive.

Greyfields · Jul 19, 2007

The windrows work best if they're either the full width of the pick-up, or half the width. Even at full width, I had to go from edge to edge to evenly pack the bales. I didn't spring for a baler with the sensors that tell you witch way to go, so it was a lot of trial and error. Not all windrows are equal. Some have more hay on one side versus another, which leads to cone shapes.

I can't exactly recall the speeds. I think I was raking at 5 mph and baling and 3 mph. I have about 6 more acres to do for neighbors, I'll try to jot down the speed.

Regarding buying new equipment, it wasn't the first choice. But I found I was able to tack on quite a bit of kit along with the 0% on the tractor... and alos, much used equipment required higher HP than my 4120 delivers (43 HP/35 PTO). So, I probably ended up spending too much on attachments. But, it will someday be paid-off. It's all business expenses to me anyhow.

I'd also like to point out, we started our hedgerows last winter. That's something you rarely see in America. We used all sorts of willows, birches, hawthorns, blackthorns, etc. to start laying the lines out. Next year will be a lot more trees, bushes and cutting. They should be read to lay for the first time in 2-3 years. The English really have a lot of things right regarding land use and the ecology of small farms.

Grrrr · Jul 19, 2007

I know what you mean with odd shaped bales, and the bale wrapper really hates odd shaped bales. I didn't notice our contractor going from side to side but his machine is probably very different to yours. Next year we hope to get a round baler and we will be able to find out for ourselves.

I'm sure you will be glad you brought new when something breaks and you have a warranty to fall back on. Theres nothing worse than a broken baler with a field of hay to bale and the weather about to break.

It is nice that you are putting in hedgerows and I'm sure the birds and other animals will thankyou for it. You might have seen how many hedges we have in the first thread I started. Can you get grants to do the hedges where you live? Maybe it is an excuse to buy a hedgecutter for your tractor?!