finished baling hay

[Mobuck]

 

[RoninPA]

All that land and you only got 2 bales??? Just joking, I helped my FIL on his ranch (NW Colorado) cut and bale AND stack hay on about 700 acres. They were square bales about 75lbs per bale and we built some pretty big stacks. People who have never done it don't know the work that goes into baling hay and putting it up.

 

[Ale-8(1)]

High school summer job, custom baling crew, all season. Dollar an hour, good money. Hated working the haymow.

 

[Gator89]

MoBuck posting pictures?!?!?!?

What is the world coming to?

 

[Mobuck]

No kidding, not sure how I managed that
Oh BTW, the blue Ford 4000 pictured is similar to the one I started with and Ford 8N pictured is one of the tractors I started with in 1967. I still have the original 4000 but it wasn't available at the time of the picture.
For those interested in or familiar with farm stuff: the 4430 on the left is under 5000 hours and the 567 baler has only 4000 bales on the counter. Finding either of these units would take a LOT of looking and finding both in one place would be like finding a 10 carat diamond in a can of peas.

 

[protoolman]

I know how to run the 8N. But my version of baling had some kid 10 years old driving the tractor because us older guys could pitch the bales higher on the wagon. Never made the transition to the "new" big round bales!

 

[Mobuck]

We 'made the transition' in 1972 or 73 because we couldn't find enough help to continue baling/handling/feeding small bales for the size of operation we had. After consulting with a local farmer who had a large round baler (turned out to be my future FIL), it was decided and here I am 5?_years later. Six models of big baler from 3 manufactures and this one will finish me out.

 

[Danjet500]

I did a lot of laps on a Ford 4000 pulling a field cultivator back in my teens for my uncle.

 

[Killer Bee]

what's that on the right? 756?

 

[Gator89]

We 'made the transition' in 1972 or 73 because we couldn't find enough help to continue baling/handling/feeding small bales for the size of operation we had. After consulting with a local farmer who had a large round baler (turned out to be my future FIL), it was decided and here I am 5?_years later. Six models of big baler from 3 manufactures and this one will finish me out.

My father switched to rolls in 1975, we used New Holland hay equipment back in the day.

 

[Jeepnik]

How many mows do you get a season? Which number is this?

 

[Watertender]

I spent some time swinging a hay hook. It's not something I could do today but it does build muscle. The farms here all have the big round or square bales now.

 

[roylt]

Good job!

 

[Mobuck]

Killer Bee, that's correct (good eye). It's Son's tractor. He wanted one like his maternal Grandpa had. We use it for mowing and odd jobs.
Jeepnik, this is brome grass so we only cut/bale it once per year.

 

[Mobuck]

Back when we were baling small squares, it was a really good day to bale and stack 45,000# (1000x45#) bales with a crew of 5-6. Today, a 70+ year old man can bale (and have the hay basically weather tight) 80,000-100,000# in big round bales in 4 hours w/o breaking a sweat (depending on how well his tractor's AC works). My Cousin has a much newer baler that will roll and wrap a 1600# bale every 3 minutes in perfect conditions (flat/smooth ground with big windrows).

 

[Watertender]

My dad ran a sawmill for years and we sawed a lot of lumber for contractors and farmers. One of the services we offered was building truck decks and wagon bodies.

I spent a lot of days building them and could lay one out practically by eye. We had a 3/4" drill with a D ring handle and 1 speed. If you were lucky it would drill through the planks and timbers smoothly but if it caught it would almost jerk your arms loose. We used to buy carriage bolts with nuts and washers by the bucket full.
After I would build the deck I would mop used motor oil into it for some preservative and let it set in the sun for a couple of days. Before delivering the finished product I would retighten the bolts and make sure everything was tight and fairly square.

I think there are a couple of old wagons that I built still around. One gets used for hay rides every year.

 

[kentucky yeti]

We are doing second cuttings right now. Hot but dry weather. This is our last year for any square bales (wanna buy a couple New Holland balers LOL). First year that we couldn't get a crew to show up. They had committed like every year (we have used them for the past 4 years), but no call, no answering the phone, no-show, nothing. Then the rain, followed by more tedding and re-raking, they another surprise rain, teddered and raked again, then a couple more times of these pop-up showers we started having almost daily. We ended up losing those three fields of cut alfalfa, timothy and clover with orchard grass. I just windrowed them and burned them. That was the expensive to grow horse hay that we sell. We are roundbale only as of now. We did 112 bales the first cutting. The piece of junk NH round baler that we bought new last year broke down twice, so we went and bought a new Vermeer. It's pretty sweet. The NH baler had trouble from day one last year with sensors and cameras malfunctioning constantly. Hoping to get around 150 bales this cutting, even though second cuttings are lighter than the first cutting, since this time we have the hay fields that I lost in June.

 

[Mobuck]

kentucky yeti, Vermeer and John Deere are the major contenders for top dog baler in my part of the Midwest. I just talked to a custom baler a few days back who had bought an older NH baler to use for 'nasty' hay because big weed stalks and saplings were damaging the belts on his JD. His comments: when it works, it works pretty well.
Sounds like you've had about the same luck with baling as I have (maybe worse since I didn't burn mine). Hay buyers around here base their buying on one thing-- PRICE w/o consideration of quality.
Last winter, a guy just up the road bought several semi loads of CRP junk hay 20 miles away and hauled it right past my 'HAY FOR SALE' sign. That stuff (I wouldn't even call it hay) was so full of weeds and crap that the only reason his cows ate it was because they were starving. It was priced 20-25% lower (per pound) than mine but had 50% less feed value.
Right now the guys just across the road have cows that are starving on grubbed off pasture so they can bale 80 acres of marginal hill ground. By the time they pay for a custom baler to harvest the hay, they'd be $$ ahead to pasture that 80 acres and buy my hay. Save a penny/waste a pound.

 

[Ale-8(1)]

Have yet to see anybody menton riding the hay wagon being pulled behind the old small square baler. Two guys on the wagon, grabbing the bales as they came up the chute and stacking them five high with a "tie course" on top. Usually another wagon and tractor keeping the wagons swapped out, hauled to the barn and unloaded, then returned to the field just as the other wagon was completely loaded. And yes, driving the tractor pulling the baler was the son's twelve-year-old son . . . or daughter.

 

[Mobuck]

We didn't have enough help to have two stackers on the wagon behind the baler. In 68, I had no help and baled 4-5 letting them slide off the chute onto the wagon, then stop and stack those, back to the tractor, repeat until not enough room left on wagon, go unload those, and repeat. That went on for days until I finished.

 

[Ale-8(1)]

We didn't have enough help to have two stackers on the wagon behind the baler.

Well, I was on a custom baling crew, usually four of us. Two to a wagon made loading pretty efficient. We'd alternate between the baling wagon and returning/unloading the loaded wagon.

 

[turd]

Brings back some memories. First beer I ever tasted was after my dad and I helped an uncle. I was up in the haymow with my cousin, stacking them up there after they came up on the elevator. Hot, whew. My uncle and dad had a beer after we finished and I got one. Ice cold beer, what a learning experience. NW Iowa.

When I was in college, a friend convinced me to come back about a week early so I could help him bale for a farmer he worked summers for. Just the two of us, and he drove the baler. I stacked them on the wagon - the farmer drove the full wagons back to his place after returning an empty one. Many beers were consumed after those 10 hour days. SE South Dakota.

 

[protoolman]

Brings back some memories. First beer I ever tasted was after my dad and I helped an uncle. I was up in the haymow with my cousin, stacking them up there after they came up on the elevator. Hot, whew. My uncle and dad had a beer after we finished and I got one. Ice cold beer, what a learning experience. NW Iowa.

When I was in college, a friend convinced me to come back about a week early so I could help him bale for a farmer he worked summers for. Just the two of us, and he drove the baler. I stacked them on the wagon - the farmer drove the full wagons back to his place after returning an empty one. Many beers were consumed after those 10 hour days. SE South Dakota.

I think that was my first beer too. After a long day baling for the neighbor. I also remember a similar aged girl to me (about 15) offering me cold lemonade one day when we pulled in the farmyard. I never even got her number or saw her again but getting to chat with a pretty girl was enough reward in those days to make a long day stacking seem worth it.

 

[wproct]

I was raised on a farm in southeast Iowa. I was the last of the boys in the family. When I was too little to put up hay my Dad and my Uncle would put up hay together and I had older brothers and cousins who would all work together and the boys had fun. Then, when those boys got older and left home it was just Dad and me, he quit pooling with my Uncle. We had an 8N Ford and a WD Allis Chalmers and we went to small round bales and I hated it. We would bale and let them drop on the ground because if the round ones got wet no big deal. Then it was just Dad driving the tractor and me throwing them up on the wagon and stacking, I hated it. Dad had about 50 black Angus cows so we needed lots of hay, we would have two or three cuttings and that's literally all you would do all summer. If big round bales had come along back then I might still be on the farm today. Dad's herd of cattle was the world to him, and me not so much.

 

[Jeepnik]

We didn't have enough help to have two stackers on the wagon behind the baler. In 68, I had no help and baled 4-5 letting them slide off the chute onto the wagon, then stop and stack those, back to the tractor, repeat until not enough room left on wagon, go unload those, and repeat. That went on for days until I finished.

IN '68 you were 57 years younger too.

 

[krw]

Can't make money off hay in SW Ark this year. Hay everywhere. People want horse quality hay for Longhorn quality price. Done cleaned up, serviced up Equip and put it away.
Lots good topend balers. But hard for most Farmer's to justify the expense of new topend baler. You can have a LOT of money in hay in a hurry
We spray it, chicken litter it, then mid summer Ammonia Nitrate and Potash. Make plenty good hay for Cattle. I aint chasing Horse quality hay

 

[Mobuck]

"Can't make money off hay in SW Ark this year."
Can't make money off hay ANYWHERE at this time. I didn't get my 2024 hay sold and not much interest in the 2025. I just talked to my Cousin about his charges to mow/rake/bale large round bales. He didn't know of anyone charging less than $35 per bale. Not sure of the economics of paying $35 to have someone bale your own hay when you can buy already baled hay for $50. Save your grass for fall pasture and buy hay is a much better option.

 

[JiminMaine]

This discussion brings back memories. I worked on my grandfathers farm, an uncles farm and for a few other local farmers in western Mass. My uncle had an old case with hand brakes on the fenders. We baled square bales and he had a sled behind the baler that would catch them as the dropped and after about a dozen were in the sled he would release the load and we would load it on the truck, stacked seven high and then drive to the barn.

The other farm I worked on didn't have the sled so bales were just dropped where the came out of the baler. After the second time I passed out from the heat loading bales on the truck they let me do the driving.

All these farms were dairy farms but also raised corn for silage, and cucumbers, potatoes and a few acres of tobacco.

Working on those farms while I was in high school convinced me that I didn't want to be a farmer.

 

[Ale-8(1)]

In 68, I had no help and baled 4-5 letting them slide off the chute onto the wagon, then stop and stack those, back to the tractor, repeat until not enough room left on wagon, go unload those, and repeat.

The hassle with that was the situation when a bale fell off the chute just as you turned around to change directions and it landed on the ground, occasionally just where the wagon's front wheel would run over it and . . .

 

[wproct]

The hassle with that was the situation when a bale fell off the chute just as you turned around to change directions and it landed on the ground, occasionally just where the wagon's front wheel would run over it and . . .

This one reminded me of a funny story. My older brother wasn't doing anything so he decided to go help our neighbors put of hay. He didn't really like the Dad, but he liked the two boys, Roger and Sam. They had just finished a load of square bales and was headed to the barn with them. Since they had plenty of help they stacked the load high. The Dad was riding on top of the load and Sam was driving the tractor. It was a hot day and Sam was taking his time driving the tractor. Finally the Dad yelled, "we ain't got all day Sammy, put her down in old high gear". Well, Sammy obliged him, he put her down in old high and up front there was a big tree and Sammy headed straight for the tree that had a low branch and knocked the Dad right off the load. I didn't get to personally see it but it makes me laugh every time I tell about it.