Making Hay

[gertman]

It seems that quality hay gets more expensive and harder to find every year, so next year I'm considering baling my own. I'll have to buy everything (round baler, mower, tedder, and rake) any suggestions on what features or options you fellow cattlemen think are must haves on the above listed equipment.

 

[john250]

Get a pencil out. Or a spreadsheet.
Good (emphasis on good) hay is as expensive to make as it is to buy. You must have equipment good enough to go when you need it to go, not a day or even 12 hrs later. You need to be able to drop everything else and cut hay when there is a weather window and you need it into the bale quickly.
All that equipment is expensive.
So look hard at what is going to work for you.

 

[glover36]

i like my trucks black,tractors green,balers green, haybines red and tedders foreign

 

[hurleyjd]

It seems that quality hay gets more expensive and harder to find every year, so next year I'm considering baling my own. I'll have to buy everything (round baler, mower, tedder, and rake) any suggestions on what features or options you fellow cattlemen think are must haves on the above listed equipment.

I just bought a very good 2 year old vermeer rebel baler for $8000, I have been using the 8 wheel rake from vermeer for the last six years, have had to replace teeth. You should be able to pick up one of the rakes used for around $1000 to $1500. A lot of people really like the disc mowers, I am, still using a sickle mower. You can buy a good used sickle mower from $500 to $2000. The international 1300 or the new holland are both good mowers. Look for a 9 foot one. A friend gave me a New Holland mower conditioner model 488 it needed a little work. It will also do a good job. I cut rye grass and bermuda with it. It is a nine foot cut. My rake will rake two windrows together behind the conditioner. I really do not see any need for a tedder. Tedding hay is a step that is not necessary in my opinion. The tedder has only been in the USA for the last 15 to 20 years. All of the equipment listed above and owned by me can be run with a 45 to 50 HP tractor.

 

[Sage]

We found it most cost effective for us to use a swing tongue swather(MacDon 5020), JD535 round baler w/net, H&S 16 wheel V-rake and use either a JD 2950 or JD 4440 tractor. The big thing is like stated before timing. Net wrap seems expensive but it save about 12hrs of baler time on 1000 bales, fast is nice when trying to beat a rain storm plus the bale shrink is minnimized.

 

[tom4018]

It seems that quality hay gets more expensive and harder to find every year, so next year I'm considering baling my own. I'll have to buy everything (round baler, mower, tedder, and rake) any suggestions on what features or options you fellow cattlemen think are must haves on the above listed equipment.

I just bought a very good 2 year old vermeer rebel baler for $8000, I have been using the 8 wheel rake from vermeer for the last six years, have had to replace teeth. You should be able to pick up one of the rakes used for around $1000 to $1500. A lot of people really like the disc mowers, I am, still using a sickle mower. You can buy a good used sickle mower from $500 to $2000. The international 1300 or the new holland are both good mowers. Look for a 9 foot one. A friend gave me a New Holland mower conditioner model 488 it needed a little work. It will also do a good job. I cut rye grass and bermuda with it. It is a nine foot cut. My rake will rake two windrows together behind the conditioner. I really do not see any need for a tedder. Tedding hay is a step that is not necessary in my opinion. The tedder has only been in the USA for the last 15 to 20 years. All of the equipment listed above and owned by me can be run with a 45 to 50 HP tractor.

Tedders will save you a day curing time in this area, our humidity probably makes a difference.

 

[Subsoil]

Here's a pretty good spread sheet to figure breakeven on equipment.

http://www.dasnr.okstate.edu/agmach/screen.htm

 

[BlackBaldyMan]

How many acres you going to put up? If its not much then you can easily get away with one or two tractors to do it all. Also, I would look into getting a rake/tedder combo. We run a Hesston, put up about 250 acres of hay every year and it works great.

 

[gertman]

How many acres you going to put up? If its not much then you can easily get away with one or two tractors to do it all. Also, I would look into getting a rake/tedder combo. We run a Hesston, put up about 250 acres of hay every year and it works great.

I'll be baling 40 to 50 acres.

 

[Millerfamfarms]

I don't know what type of operation you have going but if you want an extremely high retail feed value (RFV) we plant a brand called Dairyland Seed. Of course we don't feed it to any of our cattle. We ship it south to Oklahoma and Texas to big Dairies. Same thing with our Pioneer seed.

As for equipment...We use a Fendt 920 to run our Hesston Big Sqare baler. The Fendt allows us to go 33 mph down the road which works great for commuting everywhere. We do mostly custom baling and found that almost everyone has a round baler so we got something different. If you want to do custom, check what everyone else has got. If you got a place to store the bales, you can't beat big squares for handling, shipping, and stacking.

The best rakes we have found to use is Wheel V rakes. They make the nicest windrows. I believe ours is called a Trontutti. They are fairly popular in our area. Try and stay away from bar rakes. They make a mess. We have to tractors for windrowing. A IH 666 which works fantastic and a IH 450 which does just fine.

I haven't heard any complaints about John Deere and New Holland Round Balers yet. Both make excellent bales. Many guys like Vermeer but I hear they don't work as well with Cornstalks. If you don't do any of that then it won't be a problem.

When Looking for a baler make sure if its used its been kept up. If its sitting on the lot filled full of hay from last season, its probably not very sound. The best used balers come from people you know who always keep them shedded and cleaned out. Anal people are terrible people to work with but man I love buying equipment from them!

Hope that helps!

 

[ironpeddler]

John Deere was the last company to make a closed throat baler. JD flat out copied Hesston & Vermeer technology and lost the court case and had to pay royalties to both Vermeer and Hesston. JD made a few of the 30 series balers in late 1984 but the real first production was in 1985. Hesston, New Holland and Vermeer all had open throat balers in the late 1970's.

Many of the late 70's and early 80's open throat balers are stilling running today. But it is not a fair comparison to take a late model JD baler and say Vermeer has problems baling corn stalks when Vermeer does not have problems baling corn stalks. I see this all the time when a JD green blooded farmer views a well worn baler of another brand at a neighbors and says his current model has less problems. It should but when you compare a current JD baler with a current Vermeer baler the JD is allot less baler for more money. The JD had less steel, smaller shafts and smaller bearings, less features and the JD will not take hay as fast as a Vermeer M baler.