Baling Small Square

[ArrowHBrand]

Honestly baling hay isn't something fun like clowns at birthday parties, but I don't mind doing it. It's good hard honest work and when you are finished it's nice to see the loft full of fresh green hay. My wife and I put up 200 bales yesterday and when we were finished, stinking of sweat, grease on her cheek, dirt and grass covering our arms and faces, we were both smiling...but dead tired!

 

[cattleluvr18]

i also love the smell of fresh hay too.

 

[The Bachelor]

The baling hay is not the bad part, its the unplugging the baler, adjusting the knotter, threading the needles, and getting on and off the tractor 100 times...

Honestly, I don't mind it either, but I have to have something to complain about......

 

[dun]

In my younger days I didn;t mind and even sort of enjoyed bucking bales. Those were 120 - 160 lb 3 wire bales of alfalfa and I used hooks. Now I hate messing with even the light 50 - 60 lb bales of grass. I decided that I won;t mess with small squares anymore, nothing but round bales and let the tractor do the work.

dun

 

[R.T.]

In 1960-1964 I would travel a couple of days ahead of the
rake and balers mowing hay feilds for a custom baler.
Nothing like the smell of fresh cut fields. Using a old ford tractor
with a belly mounted sickle mower. I guess those were the days.
R.T.

 

[R.T.]

Sorry field was misspelled.

 

[BrianL]

:shock: Now I would like to see that...

 

[johndeerefarmer]

Our last square bales were in 1992. We had 1200 squares in the field and our hay hauler wouldn't or couldnt come. We couldn't find anyone else. Myself, my brother, mom and dad hauled the hay in a pickup. Took 30 loads at 40 bales per load. I got the job of stacking on the truck and in the barn. :roll:

Took us 3 full days...........

A month after that we had our first round baler........

Between the no labor situation, the prices they charge if you can get them and fire ants............. no more rounds for us..

 

[Just_a_girl]

:shock: Now I would like to see that...

I've seen something like that out west of Wichita Falls, Texas. A guy in a tractor went from pile to pile, picking up about 6 bales at a time and stacking them on a trailer. there were two guys on the trailer, they just arranged the bales tightly on the trailer. There were 250 bales loaded in no time loaded in no time. Now helping unload and stacking in the barn was a different.

 

[johndeerefarmer]

Several companies sell them.

www.hoelscherinc.com/testimony_balestacker.htm

Guess if I wanted to sell to people with horses, I could buy some of this equipment.

 

[ArrowHBrand]

The baling hay is not the bad part, its the unplugging the baler, adjusting the knotter, threading the needles, and getting on and off the tractor 100 times...

Honestly, I don't mind it either, but I have to have something to complain about......

Your right about that. We got five bales up and then went around the whole field without getting up another bale. Dang right side twine kept breaking. Jump down, walk behind baler make sure its threading smoothly, jump up, broken bale. Jump down, repeat. Finally just put in two new spools of sisal, adjusted the compaction, wife broke three shear bolts in a row, adjust compaction again, knotter kept one knot on the left side, got that fixed and away we went. Worked like a dream for the next two days of baling. Hate working out winter bugs.

 

[msscamp]

In my younger days I didn;t mind and even sort of enjoyed bucking bales. Those were 120 - 160 lb 3 wire bales of alfalfa and I used hooks. Now I hate messing with even the light 50 - 60 lb bales of grass. I decided that I won;t mess with small squares anymore, nothing but round bales and let the tractor do the work.

dun

I watched some balers the other day doing small squares. No one ever touched a bale. The square baler had a device on back that kept the bales together ( an accumulator?) until it was full. It then raised up leaving the bales pushed nicely together in a big square, on the ground. The baler continued on to bale and fill up the device again. Another tractor would come with a similar device (mounted on front of the tractor) and pick up the large grouping of bales (10 bales maybe) and place them neatly on a trailer. I've heard they take them off the trailer and stack them in a barn with the same type of equipment! There were just these two people working a 100 acre tract of hay - incredible.

Yep, accumulator and either 8-pack (8 bales in a grouping), or 10-pack. The bales are removed and stacked with the 8/10-pack, also.

 

[Just_a_girl]

8 or 10, huh? I was so impressed that I didn't really even notice the number of bales it was able to pick up at one time. The gears in my head started cranking, and I was too busy trying to figure things out, like how the accumulator could pick up that many bales at one time and not drop the ones in the middle.

I amuse easily..... :lol:

Someone was really smart to invent that accumulator. I was so impressed that I'm sure the man was tired of me asking a bunch of questions.

ArrowHBrand.

You're right, after all that hard work, it is nice to see a barn full of fresh hay.

 

[msscamp]

8 or 10, huh?

Yes, ma'am! I discovered today, that one can also get a 5-pack for skidsteers.

I was so impressed that I didn't really even notice the number of bales it was able to pick up at one time. The gears in my head started cranking, and I was too busy trying to figure things out, like how the accumulator could pick up that many bales at one time and not drop the ones in the middle.

The accumulator doesn't pick up the bales, it hooks on behind the baler, the baler feeds the bales onto a 'track' (for lack of a better term) on the edge of the accumulator and, when they reach a certain point - a trigger is tripped, the hydraulic arm pops up and pushes the bales onto the bed. When the bed is full, it trips another trigger that causes the bed to rise and dump the bales in groupings that the 8 or 10-pack can then pick up. Usually works like a charm, but occasionally the bales are dumped in a fashion that requires them to be aligned manually.

I amuse easily..... :lol:

Not a problem, so do I. I was so fascinated by the accumulator and 10-pack when we first got them, that I nearly drove Dad nuts asking questions about how this works, and what does that do. :lol: :lol: Even now, 4 years later, I still marvel at how it all works and really enjoy watching it in action.

 

[ArrowHBrand]

Maybe the hours spent baking in the sun on a hay rack has scrambled my eggs, but yesterday when we were baling I was just fascinated by how a small baler works. Driven by the PTO the fingers pick up the hay, it gets moved over to the plunger, compacted, and how the knotters and knives work really fascinates me. I don't know maybe I'm suffering from the relentless heat we've had up here the past week.

 

[dun]

Maybe the hours spent baking in the sun on a hay rack has scrambled my eggs, but yesterday when we were baling I was just fascinated by how a small baler works. Driven by the PTO the fingers pick up the hay, it gets moved over to the plunger, compacted, and how the knotters and knives work really fascinates me. I don't know maybe I'm suffering from the relentless heat we've had up here the past week.

Shear boredom makes a lot of things really interesting. And if the baler is working right it's a boring job. Not quite on the level of raking, but mighty close

 

[KNERSIE]

And if the baler is working right it's a boring job.

If this is true baling with a small baler is never boring :lol:

I have yet to see a small square baler that is working properly for a length of time.

 

[VZCR]

And if the baler is working right it's a boring job.

If this is true baling with a small baler is never boring :lol:

I have yet to see a small square baler that is working properly for a length of time.

I use a JD 334 that never misses a lick until I let it run out of wire. It eats that hay as fast as I want to feed it to it....I have replaced the wear parts once, and kept on baling. (Grippers, rollers, etc.) I pull it with a JD 2755 (75 hp.) I love the rhythm of the machine as it cranks 'um out. :lol:

 

[ArrowHBrand]

Once we get the winter bugs worked out of our small square baler we usually don't have a problem for the rest of the summer. We use a Case 830 and just have to watch how much we feed into it because too much will clog it and break a shear bolt. Oh, and ours works better with sisal vs. plastic twine. AND I LOVE RAKING HAY! FAST AND FURIOUS! I caught my wife and her sister watching me once and they both were laughing because I was enjoying myself so much and maybe because I was in 2 High.

 

[msscamp]

And if the baler is working right it's a boring job.

If this is true baling with a small baler is never boring :lol:

I have yet to see a small square baler that is working properly for a length of time.

We've had far less trouble with our small square baler than with our 3X3 baler.