• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Haying solutions

Help Support Ranchers.net:

B

burnt

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 28, 2008
Messages
6,617
Reaction score
0
Location
Mid-western Ontario
The help situation is sure different around here than it used to be. Our family is pretty well grown up got jobs of their own and making lives on their own.

So another thing that's changing is that this will likely be the last calf crop for me.

So I need to find a way to utilize my hay ground.

Big round bales aren't very valuable if one is trying to market them profitably. (I know, I know, they are too darned expensive if you need to buy cow feed, but that's another story . . .)

So I'm thinking of buying a self=propelled stacker and doing the hay up in small squares. Got my eye on a NH 1049, I think it is.

Anybody have any experience with putting hay up this way?

Is it feasible for one man to bale and stack alone?
 
I put up 6 to 700 acres of hay and 80 acres of silage corn pretty much alone I get a little help rakeing but not alot. I get help chopping corn but I trade help and machinery with a few friends so thats basically a wash on the labor end.It boils down to how bad do you want it. I want to run cows pretty bad so I'll do all I can to do so.Plan is to hire someone to rake or mow this summer. My older kids got jobs about the time they were worth a hoot and the youngest is 10 he'll get a rakeing job this summer but I don't think it's good to work them to death they are kids also. I do think buying machinery to get'er done quickly with the least amout of labor is a good idea.

When I went elk hunting in Colorado they were putting up hay with a couple of those carting off the hay. The ones they had were basically a truck mounted stacker. they would load at a pretty fast pace get a load and head to the stackyard or deliver it right to the person who purchased it.It looked like more fun than hunting to me.They had self propelled square balers also pretty neat for sure.
 
my brother in law puts up several thousand small squares a year. uses a self propelled stacker. gets by very well.
 
We put up hay in SW Montana for years using a 1046 Harrowbed. The
bales were 2 wide and on the NH they are 3 wide. Mr. FH stacked all
our hay with it for years. He enjoyed running it....there is a trick to it...
as with anything, but heck, burnt, you're pretty darn tricky yourself. :wink:

Try to find someone that knows how to operate it to teach you and you should be just fine. Mr. FH says there is a lot of things you gotta learn how to do, but after that, it's pretty much a piece of cake. The worse part for us was having to load the hay onto a trailer to feed the cows every day, every winter. It finally ruined Mr. FH back. So try to keep that part out of it!!
 
I haul about 500 tons a year with a self propelled bale wagon. If you haul grass hay it works a lot better if the bales are baled good and tight. Grass is a lot slicker than alfalfa and therefore harder to stack if the bales are loose. A good back stop is a muct as well because your stack is only as good as the first dump. If it is rickety or leaning so goes the rest of the stack. I have hauled everything from alfalfa to tall wheat grass to meadow hay with a bale wagon. If I can do it, an actually intelligent person like yourself ought'a have no worries! :D PM me if ya need any more info.
 
A friend of mine has one like this but alot bigger. http://agriculture.newholland.com/us/en/Products/Hay-and-Forage-Equipment/Bale-Wagons/Pages/Products_overview.aspx
That thing even stackes it in his barn. Then he has an attachment on his front end loader to load it on trucks to sell.
He tells me that it is the only way to make it pay. You can't make anything if you have to touch it.
 
I wondered why I was going broke so quick! :lol: I spend all summer hauling and stacking hay and all winter loading it and feeding it. I use a bale wagon for custom hauling for my neighbors but haul all mine by hand cause it's cheaper. :wink:
 
Those self propelled bale wagons are the only way to stack square bales. I agree with H, you better darn sure get the first load nice and square or you will spend the rest of the stack trying to get it squared up. From what I have seen, it is going to take some coin to get into a decent used bale wagon. Probably find some cheaper, may run into problems with repairs, maybe not!
 
Anyone remember the little round bales made by an Allis Chalmers baler? When I was a kid, we put up thousands of those things. Pitch them on a hay rack and haul them to the stackyard then stack them in a stack that was triangle shaped. Haul them back out on a pickup and feed them in the winter.About 40 bales to a load. Ah the good ol days! I think the day I left home, dad went to town and bought a BIG round baler. LOL (Sorry Burnt, Didn't mean to hijack your thread)
 
We used a square baler and a bale wagon. The trick is to bale good tight bales and pick them the same day. Here we could bale with the dew if we had any in the morning and pick them in the afternoon. For your small square to have greater value you would need to stack them in a shed and peddle them off to the "Horses people" and acreage owners I would think.
 
I won't be in the hay business if I have to handle them by hand. I'm thinking about the horse market or export market, not feeding them to my livestock.

The machine I'm looking at is fairly old, 15 -20 yrs?, has a rebuilt tranny, new rear tires ($1500 each) and a 361 gas engine. I would only be doing about 8-10 thousand small squares so it wouldn't be dong a lot of work. The guy wants 20G for it.

I'm thinking that it would work pretty good in our new building with the 20' wall.

Or just make big rounds like we always have and sell the hay for less and leave the 20G where it is.
 
We put up about 10,000 small squares of hay. Use a disk bine to cut, an inverter the flip curing hay over on to dry ground, A Hesston small square baler and a New Holland pull type bale wagon to pile(104 bales). All this is done by myself over two cuts. Wife helps put tarps on top of the stack. (she stays on the ground). We have an accumulater the goes on the frontend loader to load semis. Most is sold to horse people. Lots in small orders of 20 bales- some in semiloads of about 900. Putting up with horse guys is quite a challenge I will tell you! Some want to buy just enough so they don't have to take the bottoms. New rule this year-- take all top to bottom or pay more for the top ones and leave the bottoms. Sell the bottoms after cleaning them off cheaper to some customers that arn't so pickey. A lot more money doing small squares, but a lot more work. After Xmas a lady called to buy hay. Cleared snow from the stackyard and for an hour or more and she showed up 2 hours after she said she would and said she had only one 8 month old colt and said she would only take 2 bales. Talked her in buying 4. Boy O Boy. Something to think about. I'm retired and don't go too far so thats my small square bale story. Putting up the hay is the easy part. Just have to deal with the weather. Marketing the bales is an alltogher chapter. Also the 1049 balewagon was built in the '70s, so talk to your NH dealer about parts availability. Make your bales tight and happy haying Burnt.
 
Well thanks for the great response. Lots to think about now. As for grazing it, there's a lot of alfalfa in it and I'm kinda scared of bloat.
 
Small bales, bale wagon, bale head on loader, add some horse lovers, equals good money for hay.
100_1040.jpg

[/img]
 
Horse people around here do not want much if any alfalfa in their hay. Also there are only so many horse people to spend anymore. Export is a profitable market but your season has to be perfect it can be really tricky. Friends of ours grow timothy for the export market but alot of years the bales do not qualify.

Good luck, it is going to a big change for you without having cows around . I know a few people that have made that transition this past year. The wives are happy and the men are miserable. :wink:
 
Get it put up on shares and cull down to the top half of your cows. The most hay I put up by myself with one tractor was 1600 acres and 3800 big rounds-it was a long summer to say the least lol.
 
burnt said:
The help situation is sure different around here than it used to be. Our family is pretty well grown up got jobs of their own and making lives on their own.

So another thing that's changing is that this will likely be the last calf crop for me.

So I need to find a way to utilize my hay ground.

Big round bales aren't very valuable if one is trying to market them profitably. (I know, I know, they are too darned expensive if you need to buy cow feed, but that's another story . . .)

So I'm thinking of buying a self=propelled stacker and doing the hay up in small squares. Got my eye on a NH 1049, I think it is.

Anybody have any experience with putting hay up this way?

Is it feasible for one man to bale and stack alone?[/quote

Burnt,I have a neighbor that caters to tthe horse crowd/small bales,he round bales costal and moves it into his barns all summer,as you know one man can bale and move alot of round bales,then he has 2 square balers in hiis hay barns on a conveyor system,feeds round bales in one end ,gets small squares out the other.
There was an article on an operation like his in progressive farmer,looks like it keeps llabor to a minimum to me,might be more cost effective than buyin the NH equipment.

goood luck
Click to expand...
 
If you want to do it cheap, you can get an older NH 1037 pull type stacker which handles 104 bales pretty cheap. You can haul a load about every 30-45 minutes depending on how far you are transporting them. A good operator can do a real nice job if the bales are solid And the ground pretty level.

We had one on the ranch we sold and let the buyer have it. We paid $7500 for it years ago and pulled it with a JD 3020. It is still setting there unused for the last 5 years.

There is a learning curve with these and there are ways of getting hurt.(my nephew was killed by one, although he was doing something not smart.)

Worth the money tho - most smallbales go for about $6-6.50 around here.
 

Latest posts

Top