Why not pull a wagon behind a baler?

[Robert_in_NY]

I see so many guys running balers and they are dropping the bales on the ground and then pull a wagon around afterwards to pick up the bales. The tractors they are using are big enough to handle a wagon so why do the extra work of fighting gravity and pick the bales off the ground? The fields here are flat also.

Even if you only had one wagon it seems like it would make sense still to at least fill one wagon behind the baler and save your helpers a little bit of work.

I personally will stay with a thrower until I build a new hay barn that will accept a NH stack wagon, then its all automated

 

[ToadHill]

When I worked on a dairy farm some 48 years ago or so, we pulled a baler with a kicker and a wagon behind that with an old Oliver 77.

 

[Wesdor]

When we baled hay we usually pulled a wagon behind the baler. Some thoughts about why people do and do not do this.

I believe you correctly identify that weight could be a problem. You can figure a bale is going to weigh at least 80 pounds. We typically put at least 100 bales on a load and if we had to go very far, even as many as 150. That means the tractor is pulling all that weight plus running the baler. So my first concern is if the tractor is big enough to handle that much weight.

Another factor to consider when pulling a wagon behind is the demand of workers. We would usually had 1 person on the rack behind the baler, then 1 person unloading to the elevator at the barn and at least 1 person in the loft.

The good part of having that setup is that you never had to stop. The bad part is that you never got to stop.

One other thing to consider is how hilly your ground is - but you say you have flat ground around you. If you have a flat field it is much easier to bale and pull a wagon.

I think being more automated is really a good answer.

 

[JoeinTX]

The reasons I can figure are:

-tractor isn't big/powerful enough to pull both the baler and increasingly heavier wagon as bales are produced.

-without a helper in/on the wagon, the bales are going to ejected into it in a haphazard manner and may become a bigger headache than a benefit.

-if the wagon gets full and you've got plenty more baling to do, what then? Leave the field, baler and all, and head for the barn to unload? Unhook trailer at which point you are leaving bales in the field thereafter that will still need to be manually hauled.

I've never seen wagons directly pulled behind square balers here but I have seen bale elevators used to help load flatbed trailers once the baling is done. And, I've done a lot square bale loading myself once the baling was done....

 

[zzvyb6]

I presume you are speaking of square bales. The methods I have been involved with are:

1: No thrower, so drop on ground. Fetch later with truck, trailer, or machinery. Bring all hay back to barn, send up elevator to mow, and/or deliver direct to client's barn.

2: Thrower, so run one or two 'Kick wagons' in a chain, Fill trailing wagon, then fill lead wagon. Bring back to barn. Team unloads from wagons; elevated to mow. Requires second tractor and operator.

3: No thrower, use NH stacker wagon to pickup and deliver and drop off at barn. 2 person team: one at base and one in mow.

The worst 'Job' for me was trying to unload the kick wagons, wooden sides are the worst, they 'give' and tighten up the randomly strewn bales. Steel wagons are bigger and more likely to form "bridges" within the random stack. Pulling bales out in the wrong order gets you dirty, hit, and sore. This usually requires 3 helpers: 2 at wagon and one in the mow. or some combination. Minumum requirement is 3-4 wagons for large acreage.

I even tried to 'stack' within a kick wagon using a helper to catch the flying bales. Works for a while until they get hit with one.

I'd say that it depends on how much acreage is done in a day in hay season.

The big operations have gone to big squares or rounds, both left in the field. This means you have cows to eat the rounds as needed.

The money crop is till the horse small squares: delivered to client's garage or loaded into my mow by the client and her kids.

Minimum paid help is zero if I do 200 a night to her place, 1 if they are full and I need to load into my barn, 2 if its not for a committed horse barn. I pay $20. per hour for a helper if they are not from a local client. A case of cigarettes (from your Reservation) is even better. (Winstons). This ensures the help will show up when called. If you pay minimum wage, they show up for a night and its too dirty, too hard, or too tough.

I'm still waiting for a machine that would take hay cut the previous day, super dry it using microwaves, and pack it into a 8' by 16' bale group ready to store. Now don't laugh, I saw a paper by a college team which built such a device. Yes it took some HP for the dryer to bash, press and microwave the hay but it worked. Hay juice and steam were the byproducts.

Until then, the worst job is to snatch them off the ground, stuff onto a wagon or truck, dump at the barn and throw them into a loft.

Sorry I rambled, It took me back in time for a few memories. Many a time on 95 degree nights I swore I'd never do it again... Can't wait for 1st cutting !

 

[Rara Avis]

The reasons I can figure are:

-tractor isn't big/powerful enough to pull both the baler and increasingly heavier wagon as bales are produced.

-without a helper in/on the wagon, the bales are going to ejected into it in a haphazard manner and may become a bigger headache than a benefit.

-if the wagon gets full and you've got plenty more baling to do, what then? Leave the field, baler and all, and head for the barn to unload? Unhook trailer at which point you are leaving bales in the field thereafter that will still need to be manually hauled.

I've never seen wagons directly pulled behind square balers here but I have seen bale elevators used to help load flatbed trailers once the baling is done. And, I've done a lot square bale loading myself once the baling was done....

Well almost every vermont haying operation hauls wagons...

70 hp is a minimum for baling with wagons...

My square baler has the ability to drop the wagon from the tractor's seat... then either I, or one of the crew, haul a new wagon into position to be hooked up to the baler

Most of us have several wagons, so that when the field is done there are either several full wagons sitting in the field waiting to be hauled to the barn...or the crew has been hauling full wagons to the barn for unloading while the baling has been continuing...

 

[JoeinTX]

"Well almost every vermont haying operation hauls wagons...

70 hp is a minimum for baling with wagons...

My square baler has the ability to drop the wagon from the tractor's seat... then either I, or one of the crew, haul a new wagon into position to be hooked up to the baler

Most of us have several wagons, so that when the field is done there are either several full wagons sitting in the field waiting to be hauled to the barn...or the crew has been hauling full wagons to the barn for unloading while the baling has been continuing..."


And thus the differences there are.....


70hp is a fine haying tractor and just about where I'd go if I were looking for one. But, we still see smaller rigs especially since they're only pulling a baler (square or small round) or small swather. You could also see 150hp rigs pulling 14' cutters and the big round/square balers.....but no trailers.

As for the ability to unhook and relatch a bale trailer in operation is just not seen around these parts. There aren't that many people involved in the baling process and I could see that time spent simply manually hauling them versus an elaborate wagon system.

From observation, somewhere between 80-90% of the bales made here are round bales. The relatively few square bales are made for ranchettes, small acreages, and seasonal use. Not like it was when I was a kid and the round bale was a novelty.

More often than not, when counting small square bales, the easy part is baling them...........then you have to haul them yourself. That's only given me heat-stroke 2 or 3 times over the years but it's what gets you the paycheck at the end since the customers aren't at all interested in doing that themselves.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

The few operations I have seen that prompted this post have tractors that are big enough, heavy enough and powerful enough to pull a flat rack behind the baler given the flat ground. Some operations I even see another guy pulling a flat rack and loading it by himself while the baler is still baling in the same field

Another guy bales some of my fields if I don't have a place for the hay, he drops all the bales on the ground and shortly after he starts a truck comes in with a flat wagon and a few guys who start picking bales off the ground and stacking them.

These operations seem very inefficient as these guys are not pushing a bales out that fast. One guy on a wagon can easily keep up with the baler. It seems a lot easier then throwing bales from the ground to the top of the stack on the wagon.

Of course they guy that bales some of my fields left a loaded hay wagon in the field last year and let it get rained on. He ended up leaving it there for a week

My operation is set up to be as efficient as possible. I have one helper that is usually there when I need her and she can run any part of my operation. If I am in a bind or on a weekend my father will help out either running the baler or shuttling wagons.

I run a NH 575 behind a 90pto hp Ford 7710-II. The baler has the model 72 thrower on it and I have 5 kicker wagons. As I am baling I usually have the wagons being shuttled to their destination. Very seldom do I have to use the fifth wagon (it is a wood wagon, the rest are nice metal racks). I try to keep everything moving while we are baling but am not hard on the help unless they start getting lazy (you know the types). I can not stand the workers who think they are better then the rest and don't have to work as hard. I have three workers who will work their butts off, a 19 year old girl (she is great at getting extra help ), her younger brother and a friend of mines one son. These three have proved their worth and get paid well. I know how hard their job is so I can't see paying them next to nothing and expecting them to work hard.

I am looking forward to hay season

 

[pengs68]

Well I am going to experiment with pulling a wagon behind our NH 310 this year.We have always dropped the bales into to a Farmhand sled accumulator. You can get about 8 bales in it it at a time. Then my brother and I load them onto a flatbed wagon driving to each pile. Last year we put in 7500 bales.
My father bought the baler at an auction 15 years ago for $3000 with a kicker. Then he sold the kicker for $1700. The hitch went with it. So I bought a whole hitch assembly on Ebay for $40 shipped and am looking for a chute and we will be in buisness.
My concern is our biggest tractor is a Ford 4600 which is only 52 HP. I dont know how big a load I will be able to pull making 50 pound bales. The old man wont budge on a new tractor or a kicker so I am trying to make the best of the situation.
I will let you know how I make out in June. (Only 5 months away!!!)

 

[chh]

Around this part of Oklahoma bale wagon's never caught on, even in the days before round bales. Of course many of the feilds aren't very smooth at all and there are a lot of hills. I learned to drive as a kid in the 60's for the haulers. Most used half ton PU's and worked by themselves or with 1 other person. No one drove, you just stuck the truck up in first and let it walk while you loaded. I was Dad's bonus to the guys as a free driver, who was going to knock free help and what 6 or 7 year old was going to complain about getting to drive? There is still a lot of horse hay done this way now. Finding help willing to buck hay on a truck or trailer is very hard. Usually there is a real discount in the pricing if you purchase the hay direct off the feild and haul it yourself.
North of me near the Kansas border and in Kansas a lot of operators use self propelled stack wagons to load and dump/stack the hay in a barn.
The labor situation converted all the ranchers around here from square bales to round bales in an amazingly short period of time in the 70's. In the late 70's and early 80's you almost couldn't give a square baler away. I saw a lot of fairly nice ones sell for under $1000(some as low as $200) at auction then.

Robert are most of the square balers in your area twine or wire? This area was almost exclusively wire balers and I have been told that this was really a regional thing and that nation wide twine balers were more popular. Just curious.