What size/type Massey for square hay baler?

[Robert_in_NY]

One more thing I didn't mention regarding hay. If you go with wagons you need to have a good building for storage with good access for wagons. If you don't want to handle the bales you can buy a NH stack wagon and eliminate the need for wagons behind the baler.

 

[MrSteve]

Thanks so much, I have all kinds of info. Robert...Great info, thanks again.

 

[jimg]

Are you planning to hay all or a significant portion of the 150ac? If so it seems that youll need a couple sets of everything to get it done in a timely way. That said I know the inline balers dont get much respect here but I think theyre a good deal and perhaps the highest capacity small sq baler you can get. Hesston makes them and MF rebrands those. I doubt though whether the baler is going to be the factor which dictates the tractors hp...thatll be the mower, as was mentioned above. For the size hay ground youre talking about a disc mower/conditioner is what youll want and thatll need upwards of 80 pto hp depending on cutter width.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Agco owns Hesston now and brands those balers in just about every name Agco owns. It gives people plenty of dealer options to buy the same baler.

 

[jimg]

Was just over looking at the Agco inlines and discovered MF carries some 'intermediate' square balers. Theyre bigger than the std small sq bales but not as big as big sqs. Not sure how well theyll sell but its an interesting idea if not perhaps impractical on the face of it.

I havent decided exactly what Im doing for a baler but Im not ready to rule out the inlines. The offset style is well known but the inlines are supposed to make perfect bales one after another w/o much (any?) adjustment. Ive yet to hear a bad report from an owner. OTOH the offset type do require some care in adjustment and use to get good bales. Im sure some strong opinions for and against both types exist.

One things for sure Im going for a combo rake/tedder and have decided on the Vermeer TR90 which was formerly the Lely 300. Ive never heard anyone say a bad thing about them, only great reports. The ability to switch from tedding to raking to moving to swathing easily/quickly and w/ the same implement is very appealing.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

The only knock I have heard on the inlines for small square bales was that they put the cut ends on the string side so when you grab the strings you ram your hand onto the cut hay

New Holland also has intermediate size balers. I think it is the 580 or 585. The intermediate size balers are popular on the western side of the US.

 

[jimg]

The 580 is a 16x18 which I call std along w/ the 14x18 just b/c everyone makes one in those sizes. I didnt see the 585 on their website. The MF mdls make a bigger 3 string bale, 15x22 and 15.75x22, w/ lengths to 50ish" and weigh as much as 180#.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

I just checked the NH site and didn't find the 585 either. I must assume they discontinued it. Anyway, here is the 585 New Holland 585 Baler-Square 1998

It is a 3 tie baler that makes 16x22 inch bales and if the picture works looks amazing like an inline baler

 

[jimg]

Oh right, thanx for the picture...I remember that now! I think the MF balers arent much different.

 

[MrSteve]

Great replies, love it...

jimg... No we don't plan on doing every piece of land we have in hay. Our plans are more or less this. We will have a good amount of horses over time (well for us it will be a good amount, not 100s), so we will need good size pastures just for the horses, not sure how big, but they will not be using the hay fields at all. With that said, we will need our hay supply for them in the winter and at this time we don't know how much that will be because we aren't sure on how many horses we will max out on, but it will be in the 10+ , but not over 20.

After the horses hay supply is taken care of, we hope to have 3 to 4 loads of 300 bales each to take down to the Southern states in the winter. We don't plan on making lots of money doing this, we are doing it more to have something to do over the winter. well me that is... Just to get "away".

Lets see if we can figure this out...

Lets say each horse around October will take one bale per day until the month of May. That would be about 200 bales and lets say we have 10 horses, so that is total of 2000 bales per year for the horses only.

Then we want 1200 bales for my trips down South.

With that said above we are looking 3200 bales per year.

Now lets say this... Lets hope we will get 3 cuts per year to make the 3200 bales. How how many acres are we looking at to get the 3200 bales that we need for that year?