Time to go bigger or get creative?

[MikeInEburg]

At $1400 per year, I'd just buy. Maybe augment with hay on your land. What about the small square balers? Have you considered letting someone else hay your land for a portion of the hay/proceeds? If you put forks on the 3ph you get a bit more lift on the CK. I have a hydraulic "high lift" set for my 3ph. It lifts to about 5' high. But, it won't lift 2200 lbs either. So if you need more lift, you'll have to consider a bigger tractor.

Ditto. Hire someone who already owns the equipment to bale it for you - either for a fee per bale or for a portion of the proceeds.
Mike

 

[Coyote machine]

You have been given a number of options to think about. If it were me I'd consider what EXACTLY you would be getting for the expenditure in buying a bigger new or used tractor. Cost/benefit analysis.
Then consider regarding the cubes- the loader capacity for Kiotis is rated at the pins so even though you might be able to lift a full cube you might have some difficulty transporting it depending on the dimensions of the cubes. Plus transporting liquid that tends to slosh and make its own momentum could be risky unless you have a good amount of ballast on the back end.
You could get through this season by buying and supplementing with your own hay and meantime seek out your eventual solution. Seems certain you are under-capacity for your future needs with the CK line. Even the DK may be too small as you grow your farm, though they do go up to 90 HP. A 'real' farmer up the road from me has a cousin who I turned on to Kioti. He bought a DK-55 used. He tried doing real farm work with his cousin's implements and found that he was blowing up his hydraulics due to not enough sump capacity, the fluid was overheating too much.
The real farmer is using an old 2x2 Massey with about a 12 gallon sump, (or something similar), and has no problems haying, etc.
Get something designed to do your specific tasks and then some!

 

[Mini Baler Guy]

Hello,

Please go to Small Farm Innovations they have a wide range of balers cutters and rakes to fit you tractor.
We baled 330 bales an hour with a TYM T353 and it has 25PTO HP. they got mini round balers too.
Mini Hay Balers and Compact Hay Balers | Small Farm Innovators Customer service is 24/7.

 

[Kilo69]

Well thanks for all the suggestions guys. Right now I'm going to stick with the CK35 and pick up a transfer pump. I've been just using gravity to drain out water from a full cube which works well as I can let it run overnight and in the morning I have a cube that the CK can just barely lift. As for the hay there is a farmer just down the hill that would be willing to hay my fields for cash or bales. Seems like a nice guy I just returned one of his stray guinea fowl cocks that decided to spend the night with my ducks. As much as I'd love to have all the equipment and tools to do everything myself you have made me look into what I can do with my time that has the best cost/benefit. And right now I can make more money working than I could ever hope to by haying so paying someone else to do it with the proper machinery or buying bales makes the most sense at this stage.

Now to begin work on a trailer. I had planned to turn a jeep frame and axles into a PTO powered logging trailer so it likely could double as a cube hauler in the summer months.