Accumulator

[3 M L & C]

For those of you that mess with small squares. What would be a good one to have or good one to stay away from?

http://balecaddie.com/

I think this one looks pretty nice. Pretty new business though can't find a used one.

Also for those of you that have horses. I have heard that good oat hay is good horse feed. What would your opinions on it be. Might bale some small squares of it also if can put it up nice. Would a person be able to get rid of it compared to other horse quality hay?

 

[Mike]

Bright green oat hay sells for a premium to horse folks here. I sold some for $10 per 50 lb bale a few years ago. Better have some cats around where you store it though. Rats will come running and ruin it..

We still use an old style square baler with a chute that pushes the bales up on a wagon pulled by the baler with a human stacker or two. I couldn't see investing in all that unless you sold an awful lot of small squares.

 

[Denny]

Theres used farmhand's simular to what you have a link to. They work quite well as I know a couple people that have them.Even know where there sits a used one for sale.

 

[Faster horses]

Good question 3 M. I didn't know the answer about feeding oat hay to horses. I know for cows it has more nutrients when it is cut in the early dough stage before it has set to hard grain. (Like Mike said, "bright green" is best.) I found this bit of information that cautions about nitrates which is easily found in oat hay:

Oat Hay, (Not Straw...) Can be a great way to maintain horses and especially senior horses. The reason it does not make horses hot is because the protein content is usually much lower than other forms of grasses. When and how it is harvested is very important! The biggest safety factor is nitrate content. If you plan on using oat hay exclusively, it is imperative that you have a batch sampling. Max Nitrate safely for horses is 0.5 %

 

[loomixguy]

I used to do the idiot cube routine. I still have the Farmhand accumulator and 8 pack head for the loader. Works damn good, though they can be extremely hard to find in certain parts of the country.

 

[3 M L & C]

I agree that's a lot for something like that. But there is nobody around that bales small squares anymore and even fewer kids that want to stack or load them. Even when we bale just straw bales a "few" for some neighbors turns into a couple thousand and I don't enjoy that workout in the heat as much as dad thought I did when younger. Think going to try some oat hay and see how it goes.

 

[loomixguy]

With the 8 pack fork on the loader, if you have the right building, you can stack the bales from the tractor seat.

Virtually impossible to find teenaged help these days, and if you could, they wouldn't have a clue as to how to build a stack that would stay in one piece.

There's some really good money to be made with the idiot cubes, but you must have the right equipment & facilities. I used to sell hay at Fonner Park & at State Fair Park in Lincoln when the Thoroughbred's were in town. 70 miles to Fonner and 150 to Lincoln. 40 on the pickup and 100 or so on a 16 foot car trailer. No problem to come home with $1000+ cash every trip, and you never had to unload. I had connections with the trainers back then.

 

[Faster horses]

Selling hay, and horse hay in particular, is interesting. We had people come clear from Louisiana to SW Montana for our
Kentucky Bluegrass hay. It didn't produce much tonnage per acre, but man would they pay dearly for it!

Good luck 3M L & C. I bet you do well. One word of caution....get the money up front. Horse people, sad to say, are
notorious for not paying. In fact once we had 2 brothers who came and got horse hay. One brother didn't amount to much and he had broken his arm at one time. Whenever it looked like work was involved, he would put the cast back on his arm. So, he and his (good) brother came to get horse hay; he with his casted arm didn't have to help load it. :wink: They each wanted a ton of hay. They each didn't get their full ton on that load. Mr. FH told them to wait and pay when they got the rest of the ton they wanted. One brother paid, the other brother.....I saw him in the grocery store about 6 months later and asked him about paying for the partial ton of hay he had gotten. He replied, "Mr. FH said I didn't have to pay until I got the rest of the ton of hay." :? He never came back
and has not paid to this day. That happened almost 50 years ago. :lol:

Makes a good story tho. We've gotten a lot of mileage out of that. At the time, we really could have used the money and it
wasn't funny.

 

[loomixguy]

The guys at the track ALWAYS paid cash...on the spot.

Your chances of getting screwed in a hay deal are way greater when you deal with horse people vs. cattle people.