Square Baler for Hay?

[Libertine]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

5030:
Fascinating thread - one of the few I've printed out for permanent reference. All seem to recommend the NH or JDs. Spent some time looking at New Idea square bailer - seems (understand I'm not very knowledgable on this so I'm sure I'm missing a lot) solid. Know anything about them? Again, fascinating information. Thanks for posting it.
JEH

 

[RonR]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

Part of our custom operation was buying/selling hay as a kid. We handled bales made by all models of square balers. Maybe part of it was operator error, but the best bales we ever saw were out of JD balers.

We also picked up a lot of jobs where some guys "Brand X" square baler just wouldn't make good bales. They were always impressed with our work. Our manager knew how to make good hay bales and the JD's were pretty error free. Sometimes we'd loose a knot when the twine or wire changed, but that was about the only miss. Pretty good for doing it 6, 8, 10 hrs per day.

Best wishes,
Ron

 

[jackd]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

I have to put my $.02 in as well, and agree with Cowboydoc and 5030. I have 4 horses and 10 acres of pasture that I have to bush hog, which I've elected to do rather than bale. My first year, I had a 5 acre plot cut, teddered and baled for me @ $2.50/bale ON THE GROUND! My wife & I loaded, stacked (on trailer) unloaded and restacked (in the barn), and took advil for the next few days. The next year I bought for$3, and to me it was well worth it. I've bought each year since, even though I have to cut (& still maintain) the pasture, and now I have 500 bales in the barn, delivered and stacked!
It sounds romantic to bale your own, until the 50th or so bale! /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Jack

 

[icat]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

Thanks again for everyone's comments. As some of you may have assertained by now, I'm just a city slicker with a country background. What I want is a release from city life, and I'm prepared to work for it. My "real" job is CFO for a VERY small company (I also answer the phone). So I fully understand that it is less expensive, easier, and more pratical to just buy the hay. As a matter of fact, I could NOT justify the cost of the tractor either. It would have been less expensive to hire out mowing. It would also have been very "city" to do so. After driving a desk for the last 12 years, I'm ready to flex a few muscles and try to extend my life and it's quality. Hopefully with that will also come quantity (I'll live longer).

I mean, let's get real. I'm planning on raising horses for gosh sakes! No one should be paying any attention to me at all! It's obvious that I've completely lost my mind and I'll be totally broke inside of five years. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif But I'll be one VERY happy farmer.

For me, I've worked my fanny off to earn enough cash to play gentleman farmer for my golden years. My goal is NOT to sell the hay I produce, cut, and bale. But to use it for my own livestock. If I make money, that's great. If I break even, that's great as well. If I only lose a little bit, well that's fine as well. I'm looking for the nirvana of watching something I plant, farm, and harvest, grow into something I can use. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[icat]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

Rick,

Thanks for the real world view. I was counting on someone speaking up who had done this before. It's interesting that you picked up some side work as a result of being able to handle the small tracts. This was something I was tossing around in my head. Of course I then concluded that sounded too much like work. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Egon]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

5030

My Father used to rotate his fields. About three years growing grain, three years hay and three years pasture. There was only one cutting in our climate zone. The only moisture tester was experience.

More than one barn burnt down when damp hay started to heat up and caught fire.

Those little square bales were a labor intensive nightmare. We use a farm hand to build stacks and a stack mover to get them to the feed lot. If I was farming I think I'd still do it that way depending on location and amount of rain.
Egon

 

[yellowsocks93]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

If you can pull the trick off of cutting the hay when its cold you get bales that stay geen for a nice time!

 

[jackd]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

Keith...some of us are City Slickers too, (I'm a CEO as well, with all the stresses, etc.) and have a 1 hr commute each way, etc. but the "country life" is WELL WORTH IT! And welcome to the life! And the horse business IS a lot of work, but worth it too...many new great friends, and many times I don't start the car on the weekends...love my tractor (this is my 4th!) and "playing" cowboy...(2nd childhood!)
And enjoy your haying...I understand perfectly how you feel...I guess I'm just too old (or soft!)

Jack

 

[RonR]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

The other thing is to bale it when it's still got some moisture and to STOP when the stuff gets too dry. If you bale it dry, all the leaves fall off and onto the ground, leaving you with stems!

My old boss "Knew" when it was the right time, no meters or anything. He could tell by twisting the hay in his hands. Too wet and it molds; too dry and you lose the leaves...... The old farmers can probably show you.......

Good luck.
Ron

 

[5030]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

Richard:

Do you think I should tell the folks about Greensaver? I see a post about cutting hay when it's "cold". I certainly don't understand that.

I know you round like me but we do some squares, about 2000 per year. Mostly 2nd and 3rd cut, for those "horse" people.

My horses prefer rounds and so does my back.

 

[5030]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

I should probably add that for some customers we get our hay certified.
We use Litchfield Analytical Services, Litchfield, Michigan. There aren't very many accredited testing labs in the United States and we are lucky that there is one close by.
For anyone interested, Litchfield will send you mailers and sample bags upon request. They do Near-Infrared and wet Chemistry analysis, usually with a 5 day turnaround.

The NIR test costs $11.00
The NW test costs $18.00 (basic)
They have many tests for crude protein to trace minerals.

Their website is: www.litchlab.com
Phone: 517-542-2915

They also do soil and tissue testing.

To test hay, you must have a hay probe. I use an old golf club to sample bales, but companies like Seedburo sell complete auger and probe kits.

 

[icat]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

I hear ya Jack. My Houston commute is just over an hour EACH way! And the sad thing is, I car pool with the wife so we get to use the high speed HOV lane. So here I am wizzing by the traffic, which is solid bumper to bumper BOTH ways! Now why anyone would want to live in the city is beyond me? And I can not for the life of me figure out why it's stacked up both coming and going???

But every day I just keep telling myself that I'm getting just a little bit closer to retirement. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Bird]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( To test hay, you must have a hay probe )</font>

I looked at the Seedburo kits on their website just now; couldn't tell from the pictures about the diameter of the tube, but it appears pretty small. I never heard of using a golf club. A neighbor in the hay business had a probe that was a stainless steel tube that I think was either 24" or 30" long, but it was at least an inch in diameter. The front end had teeth making it look just like a hole saw and he powered it with a half inch Chicago Pneumatic air drill. Of course since he had contracts selling hay by the ton to dairies and horse farms, and since he had fields of different kinds of hay, he was having his tested for protein content pretty regularly.

 

[RichNJKubota]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

To all you guys that make hay to sell:
Here in NJ I keep my farmland assessment by doing hay. This way I save $4k per year in real estate taxes. Do I care about the quality of the hay? Not really. Most of what comes off my property is used for mulch.
Next year may be the first year I do all the hay myself - that is if I get all the equip I need. So far I've got the tractor, baler and barn.
Rich

 

[yellowsocks93]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

I always thought if you cut the hay after a frost the hay would stay green. I know at a few hay auctions I went to to sell hay one guy cut his right after a frost we had and his hay was really green. I could be wrong, I have not been around haying that long.

 

[Slamfire]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

Amen on the mulch, you can use junk hay that can't be sold. Yes square bales are labor intensive, but are handier for folks who can't afford the equipment for round ones. It seems to me that Allis once made a small round baler, but I don't remember the model numbers. You'd want to make sure though, that your grass doesn't include anything that would harm your horses, before you feed the hay you make.

 

[Phred]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

Daryl,

How late do you usually get the last cutting up their in the frozen north?

Fred

 

[cowboydoc]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

I've got hay that was baled in June and July that is about as green as the day it was cut. You can also put hay treatment on that will preserve the hay better as well. This hay looks like a picture.

 

[rambler]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

> pent some
time looking at New Idea square bailer - seems (understand I'm not very knowledgable on this so I'm sure I'm missing a lot)
solid. Know anything about them?


Well - no acutually, I didn't know they made a square baler? And NI was pretty popular around here...... (you didn't look at a New Holland, but a NI for sure?)

New Holland & JD got things 'right' with the knotters first. And that is the whole deal with a baler. It is just terribly, terribly frustrating to have the baler miss every tenth bale or so. I'm upset if my NH baler misses more than 3 out of 500 bales - 2 of those would be when the twine ball changes. And it's a 1950's built machine I believe.

Other brands of old balers just were not as good, and now with age & wear - really hard to get a dependable baler.

Then, there is knowledge & parts availability.

Who's going to fix your baler, adjust those finiky parts? There are a lot of JD & NH balers around - so you can find a mechanic that knows how to fix them. Who knows anything about a NI baler? Who knows all the little tricks to make it work right when it gets wore - when you have the only one in the county????

And, where are you going to find parts? NI merged with a couple different companies, finally a part of Agco nowadays. But do they stock any parts? How long does it take to ship them in, while your hay gets rained on? Do they even have parts available?

I can get parts off the dealer shelf for my 50 year old NH baler (as can JD owners from JD dealer) because the parts are pretty common to a range of models, and so many are out there it pays to stock parts.

I'll bet you can get a NI baler real cheap, compared to NH or JD.

It's no bargin, tho. You'll pay a lot over the years - mostly in frustration.....

--->Paul

 

[5030]

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

Bird:

I took an old golf club shaft, the metal one with no head on it and ground the end to a chamfer so it had an edge. Then you take a saw and cut the top of the grip off so you can insert a dowel rod down the length of the shaft. You leave the rest of the grip intact for leverage.

You insert and twist the shaft into the bale and then withdraw it.. Then you stick the dowel rod in the end and push out the "plug" of hay.

It takes about 10 "plugs to make a sample. That goes in the plastic bag and into the manila envelope to go to Litchfield Labs. I usually sample about 10 different bales from the same field, as each field is different. I segregate the hay with a field number attached to the bales and marked on a plastic tag tied to the bale twine. We usually pass on the cost of the chemistry to the buyer, ie: if the buyer wants NIR, the cost is for that, if the buyer wants Wet Chemistry, the cost is appropriate. If the buyer wants other tests like Boron content, that is added too.

Seedburo and other suppliers sell sampling kits. You can also use a soil probe. Some probes are drill powered, hand powered or have a crank auger. The golf club probe is cheap, and if it get damaged, you are not out much.

Heck, the club was probably already damaged, by an IRATE golfer. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif