Square Baler for Hay?

5030 · Oct 2, 2003

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 · Oct 2, 2003

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 · Oct 2, 2003

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 · Oct 2, 2003

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 · Oct 2, 2003

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 · Oct 2, 2003

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 · Oct 2, 2003

Re: Square Bailer for Hay?

Daryl,

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

Fred

cowboydoc · Oct 3, 2003

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 · Oct 3, 2003

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 · Oct 3, 2003

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