Square Bales Beware ...

[flusher]

Well my new 10 bale grapple came today ... now I just got to build the accumulator ...

All the hay equipment went up for the season and dad gum it ... sure would like to bale some squares!!

I wanted to put the 3rd function valve on but have decided to route the hoses from one of the rear remotes ... maybe I'll buy some square bales to play around with!!!

Nice grapple.
When I started haying several years ago I shopped for accumulator/grapple combos--really expensive. Figured I could build something a lot cheaper. Thought about building a grapple like yours, but it's a pretty complicated gizmo. So I came up with my own design---a combination 8-bale accumulator and bale squeeze that couples to the skid steer quick attach on my Mahindra 5525.



The photos were taken during the final steps of construction and the four brackets that attach the accumulator fence assembly to the squeeze arms still had to be welded on. You round up the bales in groups of eight with the accumulator attached to the squeeze. When finished with that step, the accumulator is detached and the squeeze is used to move the bale groups to the flatbed trailers .

Cost including hydraulics was about $1.5K.

 

[jayste]

BTW Seminole county is not that far. GOT ANY WAGON RUNNING GEARS???

Used to. The last one here had a box on it with bows and and sheet. All was on an older John Deere gear with spoked wheels and disc brakes on rear!

It left here along with a good team of mules and hasn't been back.

The last deal I saw on a good running gear was a guy on Craigslist up at Chandler and he had it for $250.

Below is the running gear we had. It was in the process of getting it's brakes.

 

[blueriver]

Jay ... They are hard to find. Been watching CL hoping to get a couple ...