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Handling small square bales

M

modirt

Member
Find myself in a situation where small square bales can be sold for a decent profit. Hobby hay for the hobby horse crowd. So got the cutting, raking and baling issues resolved. What remains is the fourth and most critical aspect, which is how to get those bales up off the ground and into a barn in a timely manner.

I started out small and for the first two years, picked them up myself by hand. Like eating an elephant.....start with the first bite, keep chewing and you will eventually get it down. Health issues now prevents me from doing that as the long term plan. BTW, all told, for now, only talking about a few thousand bales. But if a guy did a good job, that could easily double. All within a half mile of my house.

So last year arranged to have some neighborhood kids who were picking up hay do it.......then they didn't show up. Waiting three days before I rounded up some fellow geezers and we did it ourselves. Nobody died, but not a plan for the future. And letting hay lay on the ground didn't help. It went up perfect, but didn't stay that way, picking up moisture from the ground. That will not be allowed to happen again.

Market is 50# bales of grass hay, which if packed right, will run 32 to 34 inches.

So a few methods I know of:

Pick em up by hand.....low tech but labor intensive and requires help actually show up. And can get expensive. Like $1 per bale. That is the plan for now, except to look for better help. Local FFA kids tell me they will haul hay, as will some Amish lads, but they are 1/2 hour away and I gotta go get em. And take em home when they are done.

Don't have a bale kicker or bale wagons and none in this area, plus still requires the labor to unload and stack em.

Pull wagons behind baler.....put maybe 75 to 100 bales on a 4 wheel wagon. Still got the labor (maybe 1 or 2 hands stacking), and unless you stop baling to go unload, you gotta have enough wagons to hold it all.

New Holland stackliner........have seen one, never ran one, know nothing about em. Gotta have a barn tall enough to stack in. Don't know if they will handle those short, 50# bales. Also don't know if they will unload the stack on pallets.

Accumulator and grapple.......would probably work, but for small scale like me, too expensive. For short hauls like line of sight, could stack on a wagon, then tow the wagon to the barn, unload, go back and reload. Otherwise, would need a skid loader or tractor on both ends. One to load, another to unload.

Last option, and one I'd like to explore, is finding a hay monster. Back before round bales came along, this was far and away the best solution ever devised for handling small squares. Problem was, they came along just about the same time as big round bales showed up and were instantly rendered obsolete. Deweze was the best of them, and there may not have been more than 100 made, and only a small number of those still in operation.

This one got away........

https://www.proxibid.com/Farm-Machi...square-bale-hay-wagon/lotInformation/43811680

About as fast and as versatile as anything ever devised. Crew of 3 could easily do 1,500 to 2,000 bales per day. Still requires labor however.

Anything I missed?
 
Hi we make anywhere from 1200-2000 small squares a year for our own use.
Larger than 50 pounds though. We pull a wagon behind our baler. We also
have 3 good size flat wagons smallest one holds 85 bales. Dad is 76 so he
drives, and my brother and I stack on the wagon and unload in the barn. We
bale at night and on the weekends because of our full time jobs. We too
tried to hire kids, and a couple of guys that were out of work. We were
willing to pay 12-15 dollars per hour. Nobody was interested. The extra
help would have been nice so we could get more done faster when the weather
was good. Seems like with investing in a bunch of equipment there would have
to be a long term to make it profitable. For us we do what we can in small
bales and do the rest in large rounds if we can't get to it quick enough.
I know this doesn't really answer your question, but we are kinda in the
same situation with not being able to find help willing to work. I guess
some of the people without jobs don't have a job for a reason !
 
what we used to do years ago is to stook the bales in 10 bale stooks. they are off the ground and also shed water . I was like 15 an 16 and used to go stook for the neighbour,and at home too, which is riding on the stoker which is pulled behind the baler. there was also a stook picker u attached in place of the bucket on the front end loader. could pick up the whole stook and drive to the loading wagon. I still have those items here.
 
300jk, I grew up on a farm picking up bales by hand off the ground and then later in high school my Dad bought a thrower after he stopped custom baling with a NH 77. I was trained as an Engineer and worked 37 years and helped the neighbor load wagons off the back of the baler when I had time. So I feel qualified to at least comment.

I have always thought the accumulator/grapple approach was interesting. Everyone seems to have a loader tractor or skid steer to handle the grapple. Use the 3pt to hitch and un-hitch the wagon or trailer so that tractor can be used at both ends, field and storage. There are YouTube videos showing people doing this.

The problem seems to be the accumulator. They are expensive and look like something Rube-Goldberg invented. What has occurred to me is the accumulators build a large pod of bales, with multiple rows. How about an accumulator that only makes one row of bales. The grapple has to travel the field anyway, how about the grapple builds a multiple row pod as the tractor/grapple travels the field. This seems like it could greatly simplify the accumulator.

The other thought is the accumulator that drags or pushes the bales. I think some of these are a combination accumulator/grapple. I think I have seen some of these on YouTube. What I don't know is how much does dragging or pushing the bale on the ground damage the bale or cause breakage.

Just some thoughts. I am going to look through YouTube a little.

Good Luck.

Paul
 
NewHolland stackwagons are common here(western Colorado).Seems like everyone has one.there are several different models/sizes. two wide,or 3 wide.Most pull type stack 7 tiers high (7x18",plus the diagonal while you tilt back/unload-do the math)For your short bales a threewide is what you need. A 1033,or 1037(105 bales) will serve you well.I run a 1032(two wide,70 bales).The two wide likes longer bales-38 to 40" min.I've picked 36",but you get a loose stack. No problem running them,however there is a learning curve.A 50 horse tractor will handle a 1036/7..I've stacked a lot with an M,even used an H once.These days I use a 706,or 826 Hydro.I keep one tractor on the baler,the other on the stackwagon.For a one man operation,stackwagon is the only way to go.
 

I will do about 2,000 bales this year, with potential to double or triple that if things get out of hand. There is about 30 acres that joins me on 3 sides that is being cut for hay and none of the 3 owners are too happy about it, as they get virtually nothing for it. The guys doing the cutting are are cutting it for it (owners are all city folks living in the country.....so know very little about anything). One guy at least spreads fertilizer. The other hasn't done so in 3 years that I know of. What they got off it last year was less than 1/2 of mine and low quality to boot.

All 4 of the customers who bought from me this year were women. All but one married, but the ladies were the one's who kept the horses and are the one's taking care of them and doing the feeding. Widow down the road is in her 70's. 50# bales is all they can handle.

None of them seem to flexible enough to show up to pick it up themselves out of the field, so to maintain quality, I've got to put it in a barn myself and they will have to pay extra for that. Have rented an old idle pole barn across the road that can likely handle 10,000 bales, plus store my hay equipment in it the rest of the year.

So for now, I could probably buy a fleet of farm wagons, stack on them in the field and then pull them to the barn and park em stacked. Sell off the wagons or deliver close by hay off the wagons if the buyers can arrange to have help stack it when I get there.

And in this market, there is a premium to be earned for premium hay. To me, that means making hay when the sun shines......not on the clock. I'm self employed and can do the cutting, raking and baling myself, and if that is on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, that's when I'll do it. Depending on help that have daytime jobs is not my solution.

As for that Hay Monster, I'm not alone in this. There are others around these parts that do small runs and are looking for help putting it up. A crew of 3 could make a lot of money with that thing. It the hauls are local, it can do 150 bales an hour and at 20 cents a bale, that is $30 per hour cash money in their pocket. I think I can find help at that rate.

Where I am alone is my concern about quality. I've seen guys bale hay at least a month and sometimes 2 months after it should have been. Worthless in my opinion, but they do it, and want it hauled. A crew of 3 kids could work all summer and do pretty well at it.
 
Baling hay is hard dirty work, it takes $20 to $30 per hour to attract good help to stack hay bales when everyone else is baling hay too. If you put up 200 bales per hour or more (even a small JD 14-T baler can average 200/hour), that's only $0.10 to $0.15 per bale at most.

Hay is a very time critical crop, preventing hay from being rained on is far more important than trying to save a nickel a bale on labor.
 
Here's a YouTube video, there several like it in the same area of YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ8uANm7g9A

Paul
 
(quoted from post at 09:26:05 01/06/19) NewHolland stackwagons are common here(western Colorado).Seems like everyone has one.there are several different models/sizes. two wide,or 3 wide.Most pull type stack 7 tiers high (7x18",plus the diagonal while you tilt back/unload-do the math)For your short bales a threewide is what you need. A 1033,or 1037(105 bales) will serve you well.I run a 1032(two wide,70 bales).The two wide likes longer bales-38 to 40" min.I've picked 36",but you get a loose stack. No problem running them,however there is a learning curve.A 50 horse tractor will handle a 1036/7..I've stacked a lot with an M,even used an H once.These days I use a 706,or 826 Hydro.I keep one tractor on the baler,the other on the stackwagon.For a one man operation,stackwagon is the only way to go.
Click to expand...

How high of an eave does it require for the 1033 to offload the stack? And will they offload onto pallets?

If not, how do you guys using stack wagons keep the bales on the ground from going bad?

There might be a 1033 sitting on a used equipment lot nearby.
 
I would look for a New Holland bale wagon. Depending on the size can pick up and haul from 40- to 100
bales. Can be had with single bale unload which will drop a bale on an elevator by its self, allowing
1 person to stack.Speed of unload can be adjusted by how fast the tractor pulling it is running. The
smaller ones will dump a cube in a 12-15 high shed, the larger the wagon the higher the shed needs to
be to dump. The smaller ones with single bale unload can be had very reasonably usually under $3000.(
Stitzels has a 1005 with single bale unload only for $1500) Only thing needed is a dedicated tractor
to run it. They will pick up and stack the 34" bales. If you go this route clean any rust off the
tables and paint them so the bales slide freely. An operators manual is your friend to get it adjusted
and working properly for your sized bales.
 

A pop-up bale loader if you can find one. "Kneib" brand is what I am familiar with. It attached to the right side of a bale wagon and would pick the bales off the ground, elevate them up and dump into the wagon. Ground driven and simple.
 
Get a baler with a kicker and some kicker racks. Then get a good hay
elevator. The price of all that labor
will eat your profit. So will hay sitting
on the ground.
 
Really cant unload on to pallets. Some guys make specialized pallets for that porpose. Best to stack into a shed. Have a good mat of old hay on the ground to eliminate/minimize spoilage.12-14 ft is needed. However not sure as I've never measured any of the (customers) sheds that I unload into. I don't have a sded of my own.You maNAGE YOUR TIME TO GET THE HAY PICKED THE SAME OR NEXT DAY. tHAT MAY MEAN SPREADING OUT CUTTING. I do that so I don't have more than a days worth of baleing on the ground.
 
In the late 60's dad got a new JD baler with a kicker on it, and we built 3 wagons that would hold about 100 bales each. It seemed pretty
efficient at the time. In N MN you very rarely could start baling before noon because of moisture, and we could still do a 1000 bales in a
good day. Good help was usually available for <$2 per hour, we had a long elevator, so the 1000 bales went right into a shed. After I left
home in 69 he bought a big round baler.
 
(quoted from post at 09:47:26 01/06/19) Get a baler with a kicker and some kicker racks. Then get a good hay
elevator. The price of all that labor
will eat your profit. So will hay sitting
on the ground.
Click to expand...

Fascinating to me how much hay handling differs by regions. In the midwest, and especially so in WI, it's hard to find a square baler east of the Mississippi that does not have a kicker. Few if any New Holland stack wagons to be found. Somewhere in the middle of Iowa, that reverses and stack wagons are all that are to be found. Perhaps it is the need and desire to stack hay in those big old dairy barns vs. in large pole sheds that makes the difference?

You would think there would be one right way and all would gravitate to it, but such is not the case.

For now, I've pretty much ruled out grapples and accumulators. I don't want or need that much expense for such few acres.

BTW, for my mower (NH haybine, rake....NH 56, and baler.....NH 315, plus an older used tractor to spin em, I have about $20k total invested so far. Two guys baling adjacent land have over $200k each in their equipment that does the exact same thing. They bale hay. They do it faster, but I do it cheaper.

Interesting that one guy next door told me he paid $20k for his USED JD 348........then lets it sit outside. I watched it get rained on 3 different times last summer....with 2 bales left in the chute.
 
(quoted from post at 10:08:18 01/06/19) When you figure out how to handle small square bales easily and cheaply get a patent on it right quick you'll never have to haul hay again.
Click to expand...

The Hay Monsters are the best I've seen to date, which is why I keep coming back to them.

It seems few folks have ever heard of them, let alone been around or used one. Found a guy in Kansas who has 3 and he won't part with any of them.

Back when, I might have done 1,000 to 1,200 bales most days and if the haul was short, kids who had one could easily keep up with me running the baler. Would run the snout up under the bale chute and raze me about getting a move on.

Not much good info on them.......here is one of the few youtubes.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhw1hDPKaAE

So one driver and two guys stacking on the truck. When you get to the barn, chain conveyors reverse and driver unloads and stackers move to the pile to stack there. Front snout will elevate and there is an bale elevator extension to shoot them into a barn loft or on top of a tall stack. Not much lifting required......stackers don't have to move bales more than a few feet.....more like rearranging them into place.

One guy I talked to said his boys could easily do 2,000 bales per day. They used a crew of 4, but were sometimes handling 80 pound bales, so having a 4th guy meant they could take turns resting so as to not wear down over the course of an afternoon. He said they would do over 100k bales a year with it.
 
The bale wagon is by far the best method of handling small
square bales. That Hay Monster from what I see still requires
additional guys manually stacking bales whereas the bale
wagon required one guy and doesn?t touch the bales. Look at
one of these. http://rockymountainbalesweep.com/ Neighbor
bought one and it works. All you need is the grapple.
 
I went thru this back in the late 80's . I was renting ground as a mean's of extra income as i called it my Christmas fund. Rented a farm off a close friend that had not been farmed in forty years . But the fields were clear of brush as they were all in cover and used as pasture for beef that her dad raised . Tree lines needed cut back fence rows needed pushed out lane needed serious work but nothing a week with a good size dozer would not handle . So with a borrowed 750 B dozer the tree lines were moved back , fence rows were whipped out lane was a boulevard diversion ditches repaired and seeded steep banks along the lane were layed back so one could mow then and blended into the field so you would not roll a tractor if ya got to close and it gave way . Once i had that all done i set out to lay out a game plan on crops and hay . I kept thirty acres in hay with a two year rotation . Got the corn planted after some of the toughest plowing i have ever done , then came the hay making , i had a tractor a plow a nice disc and a like new John Deere 1240 platless planter and a combine . BUT no hay equipment , So to cut the hay i borrowed a friends haybine for that job and i bought a old Oliver baler at a sale for 12 bucks yep 12 bucks did a little work on it ran some old barn hay thru it and it made idiot cubes as long as it was on the flats or the bale chamber was on the down hill side but miss ever bale it the bale chamber was on the up hill side , Frustrating at the least as we don't have much flat ground . Like you i tried to get help and offered good wages and due to it being a nice day not one showed up . Hays down and ready to bale and NO help . Lost over two hours running down to a buddy's place and getting his kid who called two more guys and his truck and went to baling . Worked our donkeys off and got it all done some stacked in the old barn and some stacked on pallets at the end of the big field and covered with tarps . The next year i had it all sold before i cut and this time i borrowed a almost new kicker baler and four wagons off my one friend in a swap deal where i planted all his corn in exchange for the baling equipment and also got four more wagons plus my other friend long bed straight truck and the three boys that helped me the year before . while i was making idiot cubes as fast as i could stuff tripple windrow row thru that baler , The kids were unloading wagons onto the truck and you can get a lot of bales on 28 foot stacked up to 13.6 , once the truck was loaded then they started hand stacking on 20 foot kicker wagons that the friend with the baler had and once again you can hand stack a lot of bales on them once the 20 footer were full they did the same with the 18 footer and when we got down to the last wagon two got on and were hand stacking behind the kicker . when it was full we went o a couple 18 footer flat racks and hand stacked them and finished up as the hay was starting to get tough . I did that one more year and decided that the new method of farming was better suited to me and went to the C B M farming .--------------- C B M farming stands for CRON , BEANS and Miami . Got the Corn and beans down but never really got that Miami thing down. But with the corn and beans i could do it all by my self . and pretty much at my leisure and around my work . I could harvest once again around my work . Kids today don't want to work as it is HARD , HOT , AND DIRTY . Not like when i was growing up , When the word went out so and so was getting ready to make hay and was going to need a few hands the race was on to be the first in line to get that .75 cents to a buck and hour plus the FOOD or there daughter .
 
Don't matter what you come up with you
aren't doing small bales without help and
plenty of it. You need youngsters any way
you can get them there.
 
Like others have said New holland bale wagon the only way to go for a one man operation.

Paul
 
Curious about the labor rates quoted here. Last year people on this forum were saying they paid $10 and hour when I was paying $15. $20-30 per hour and/or $1 per bale as quoted here seems pretty high.
 
This looks no different than pulling a wagon behind the baler and stacking. Maybe worse because you need a driver. For the cost of one of those you could buy/build a lot of flat racks. Just my opinion. Paul
 
High school kids don't want to work any more, apparently in most of the country. I'll second the New Holland bale wagon.
 
Here is a cheap accumulator set up. Just an attachment you would put in a skid steer. So this would get them bunched up. Then you put the grapple on and pick them up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5M8zmMDlus


The guys talking about the NH bale wagons are forgetting the cheap ones can be a nightmare to keep working when they are worn out. Lots of linkages and stuff to keep working.
Loader style accumulator and grapple
 
(quoted from post at 11:31:21 01/06/19) This looks no different than pulling a wagon behind the baler and stacking. Maybe worse because you need a driver. For the cost of one of those you could buy/build a lot of flat racks. Just my opinion. Paul
Click to expand...

For the first half of it....stacking on the bed, it is. But once it's loaded, it is off to the barn at 30 to 40 mph, and when you get there, the same set of drag chains that picked it up go into reverse. The long snout that picked up off the ground elevates so there is no pitching up or lifting required. The 3 1/2 of us last summer, trying to stack bales 6 and 7 high to fill the vertical space were huffing and puffing and winded before we were done. A hay monster becomes an elevator just by raising the snout, so shoots them up there with zero effort. They literally fall into place. 2 guys could easily do what it was taking 3 or 4 of us to do in half the time and less than half the effort.

It also means one machine vs. a whole fleet of flat bed wagons, which are not going to travel well down the road when fully loaded. I could deliver to customers at the rate of 150 bales per load (enough for 1 to 3 horses....which is what most have) and stack directly into their barns, whatever the size or shape. As long as I can get the snout in the door.

Believe me, I've stacked on wagons and and a hay monster runs rings around any other alternative I've seen to date.

New Holland stack wagon being the best alternative I've seen to date, if you have the barn for it. Not a good alternative to deliver hay if the customers on the receiving end are not setup for it and/or several miles away. None of my customers are setup for such a beast. I'd have to sell out of the barn......but I'm doing that now and that requires it to be handled by somebody one more time. Far better in my mind to take them from the field and place them in their final resting place the first time.

Also curious how those with stack wagons deal with the mold issue. As discussed in this concurrent thread.....



https://forums.yesterdaystractors.c...&amp;postdays=0&amp;postorder=asc&amp;start=0
 
modirt, I'm in about the same situation you are, 14-1800 per year. I cut, ted and rake. Wife drives and I stack the wagons. We have a bank barn so we hand unload. My best bet would be hiring help. When FIL was farming he could always find kids to help but these days, with the way parents are so protective, I'm afraid of the liability if someone's precious child were to have an accident. That's if they were willing to do it in the first place. I have four wagons now so I can get it all on and I can put two in the barn and two in a breezeway adjacent to the shed. Then unload mornings and evenings. But we both hit 70 this year and I don't know if I can stack 350 to 400 like I used to. I'd love to find a way to mechanize my operation, too.
 
I also put up square bales. I use a baler with a thrower and have 4 decent kicker racks and one so so
rack for backup. Baling on the ground is the least efficient way to go. Whether you pick up bales by hand
( most labor as you know) or use a NH stack wagon you have to make 2 trips over the field to get your
hay. I would either buy or build enough flat racks to hold a days worth of baling (and bale with a wagon
and a person on the wagon) or do the same with kicker racks and go to a kicker baler. Most of the NH
stack wagons are getting pretty old now and in the North east bring good money if they are in good
shape. You also need a real high clearance building to tip them to unload.Same thing with newer
accumulator and grapple set ups , you need 1 or ideally 2 good sized loader tractors or skid steers to
pickup and unload and stack the hay. One other option is the old ground driven bale loader that would
elevate the bales up to a flat rack - still needs stackers and still 2 trips with the additional time and fuel.
 
One more option just came to me- a bale basket. They tow behind the baler and load via a long chute
with the bales being pushed up by the plunger and then falling into the bale basket. My suggestions
assume that you don't want to immediately upgrade your baler and not spend a lot of money while
trying to gain efficiency and save hiring as much help.
 
I have a hay master accumulator and grapple that I use to put up 3-4 thousand bales a year by myself. I have a 40 x 60 shed that has doors on both ends and i can put hay in coming from both directions. Part of the hay comes from my own property and I can just road it in 8 at a time, I also have a 4 wheel truck trailer that I can put 120 to 140 bales on and pull it to the shed with the loader tractor to unload. Usually can put up 7 to 8 hundred bales a day. Also put up over 600 round bales this year. Mostly done by myself. Have to have wife come and pick me up at field. Enjoy the heck out of it. Lets me get away from my rental properties....
 
If anyone on this forum needs NH 1033 bale wagons, I have two of these for sale. We retired from the diary this past summer, don't need anymore. They are in good working condition and priced at $3,500 each. If interested, pm me!!
 
(quoted from post at 12:15:55 01/06/19) I also put up square bales. I use a baler with a thrower and have 4 decent kicker racks and one so so
rack for backup. Baling on the ground is the least efficient way to go. Whether you pick up bales by hand
( most labor as you know) or use a NH stack wagon you have to make 2 trips over the field to get your
hay. I would either buy or build enough flat racks to hold a days worth of baling (and bale with a wagon
and a person on the wagon) or do the same with kicker racks and go to a kicker baler. Most of the NH
stack wagons are getting pretty old now and in the North east bring good money if they are in good
shape. You also need a real high clearance building to tip them to unload.Same thing with newer
accumulator and grapple set ups , you need 1 or ideally 2 good sized loader tractors or skid steers to
pickup and unload and stack the hay. One other option is the old ground driven bale loader that would
elevate the bales up to a flat rack - still needs stackers and still 2 trips with the additional time and fuel.
Click to expand...

It seems all options are a set of trade offs, with no one best solution......confirming what I already suspected, but was hoping somebody knew something I didn't. Technology, while possible, is also expensive to implement. If it isn't economically feasible, it won't fly. But when the alternative depends on hard to find, unreliable labor, that ain't good either.

Back in the good old days, even when there were 4 or 5 hay crews competing for business, if they showed up to find you had shotgunned the bales out the back and they were going to have to walk along picking bales up, you ran the risk of them refusing to do it and leaving.

So my lower jay nearly hit the ground two summers ago when the guy doing the adjacent land shotgunned about 2,000 square bales one day, then showed up with a pair of tractor trailer flatbeds, and about 6 Amish lads. Driver of the truck puts her in granny low, then with 3 on the ground, 3 stacking on the truck, they proceeded to load it up with about 800 to 1,000 bales, strapped it down and up the road they went.

Old school. Not much technology, but it worked. We have traveled a long way around to get back to where we started.
:roll:
 
(quoted from post at 12:53:07 01/06/19) If anyone on this forum needs NH 1033 bale wagons, I have two of these for sale. We retired from the diary this past summer, don't need anymore. They are in good working condition and priced at $3,500 each. If interested, pm me!!
Click to expand...

Where are you located?????????
 
Bale basket was my solution, cheap upgrade to existing baler nd operation, still need to unload by hand at the barn but can bale with one person.

I can still handle 2-3 loads a day and park one in the shed, so averaging 80-85 bales a basket (sometimes 70 fills it on a hill, if it?s the last load and I climb up and restock a bit can get 115 on....) that?s 250 or so one person a day.

I think the 4 or 8 bale accumulators and grapple are a good deal and resale well if you have flat storage shed you can work a loader inside to stack.

I don?t understand how the hay monster works better or compared to the NH loading wagons? I?ll have to look at what they are later. In the 80s everyone doing hay had a NH wagon here, then round balers came out..... you need uniform bales for the NH wagons to work well I hear.

Paul
 
Used to be a guy on here KY hayman. He sold hay had same problem. His solution was to bale hay with a roller and put in barn. If someone wanted squares
he had a square baler mounted in the barn with an electric motor to drive the baler and he made a unroller that went into the baler. He would just bale
up what the customer wanted and let them load the bales.
 
There is a video on YouTube of a guy putting 160 bales in on a New Holland 1069 bale wagon in 11 and a half
minutes. I have never tried to put a load on that fast. A New Holland bale wagon is the only way to haul small bales if
you can produce good even bales. No 50 lbs fluff balls. If you can not make good even bales or are not willing to
study and understand a NH bale wagon they will put you in the funny farm. We stack on a 6? thick concrete slab and
rarely have bad bales. If by chance we do they go to the cows. If you want some fun look at the Bale Band-it system.
 
No way around it, square bales are labor intensive.
My dad ran the baler and dropped bales on the
ground. One person had to make sure bales were lined
up in a row. We had a hay hiker mounted to side of
flat bed truck. The hiker would lift the bales about
3 high above bed of truck. I was small, so I got to
drive the truck and got yelled at if truck got jerky
in granny gear. I was lucky to see over the steering
wheel, touch the gas pedal and look out the window
to hit each bale squarely . Flat bed would haul over
200 bales. We used the truck when we had to haul hay
a very long distance.

No idea where dad bought the hay hiker. Never seen
another one. It was very handy. Dad could go faster
on baler. Seems my 2 brothers and I got the fun
work, picking up and hauling the hay.
 
I remember putting up square bales in high school for a local guy. It's been well over 20 years ago and I'm still waiting to get paid. That was the last time I handled a square bale.
 
(quoted from post at 15:54:59 01/06/19) I remember putting up square bales in high school for a local guy. It's been well over 20 years ago and I'm still waiting to get paid. That was the last time I handled a square bale.
Click to expand...

When the first guys showed up last year, when last bale was in the barn and shortly after the beer came out, I handed them a stack of crisp $100 bills thinking I would buy some good will.

Those are the same guys who never came back.
 
I use a 1033. They need right at 16 feet of clearance. I made pallets out of 2x4's. They are put on the empty wagon and the hay is loaded against them.
When you dump in the barn the pallet is on the bottom and holds the stack off the floor. Pallets also make pulling away from the stack much easier as you
don't need to use the wagon's push off pads.
cvphoto8641.jpg
 
Im still around on occasion ;)... We rebale, stack behind the baler, and run NH bale wagons. First cutting, everything goes into a roll. The alfalfa mix doesn't rebale well but it brings top dollar in the roll anyhow. If I had to pick one system, I'd run the NH (1034 stackliner, with a 15 bale grapple on a tracked skid loader. We use it to move the hay onto pallets and or onto trucks if I don't have help available. After the first cutting we try to square everything. Weather doesn't always cooperate so we can rebale or sell the inside stored rolls.

I don't have a good answer, the NH bale wagons are a learning curve, they're either old or way expensive. But, if you've got the over head clearance they are the cats meow. In timothy I could do 1500 a day by myself (I say could because now I mostly ride around and look important lol, my business partners and associates wont let me put in the long days anymore since I got all chewed up in an accident). 5000 bales will pay for one the first year if you're paying $1 a bale to get the hay up. Rebaling is great if you've got the right set up. I've tried several different systems, right now we're in the process of building 9600 square foot rebaling, compressing, and pelletizing facility. Still a lot of hand labor, way more than getting it with the bale wagon, but it's in a warehouse out of the weather. We try to keep more than a hundred but less than 200 baled up of each type for walk ins and a couple of semi trailers loaded for hook and go if we get a truck load order.
 
Everyone's situation is different. In our case, I have day job in the way and my kids are getting away from me, so I'm being reduced to a one man army. 2017 was especially labor intensive
with me doing most of the stacking on the wagon behind the baler. So for 2018 - we needed to make a change. I looked at NH bale wagons, but everything around me looked like a wore-
out breakdown ready to happen. Stacking on the wagon was a lot of labor, it would have killed me to have to go around and pick-up the bales off the ground by myself if the bale wagon
broke down. I really like the accumulator and grapple set-ups. Kuhn and Steffan were my pick had we gone that route. Problem for us was - with a day job, there are only so many hours in
the day and if I'm by myself, then I have to make another trip out to the field to retrieve the bales. These systems were expensive too and required a tractor with a loader or a skid steer -
neither of we have. When I retire and have more time, I'll likely go with the accumulator grapple set-up. I have a friend who makes square bales of bermuda grass in SC. He is a one man
army and does 9,000 bales of hay by himself - but he's got much more daylight time than I do. The solution for us was adding a pan kicker to our JD baler and retrofitting our existing hay
wagons with kicker racks. This allows me to bale the hay and get it off the field in one pass. We are putting up shelters tall enough to pull the wagons into for unloading later in the day or
next day or next week - bottom line, if rain or dark/dew is coming, I can get the hay baled by myself, off the field and under cover. The cost of the kicker (and used ones abound as they are
no longer the go-to hay tool) compared to an accumulator grapple set-up was much lower, so it pencils out better for us.

BTW - JD recommends a shorter bale for their kicker to help maintain bale shape. We reduced our bale length to 30-32 inches - nice and tight. The bales hold their shape good, they are
lighter weight - which our horse customers especially appreciate and we reduced the price accordingly.

YMMV

Good luck,
Bill
 
Neighbor and I put up a few bales as we can...yes, we're old geezers.....70's.
We try to do the hobby horse hay. We make less than 1000 bales.
This year we had trouble account of rain.
We both happen to have 7510 Kubota tractors with loaders. We devised a "hayfork" that
bolts to the loader bucket. With the loader we can then pick up one or two bales,
carry them to the stack, or load them in our dumpy trailer to haul across the field
to the stack. I tilt the trailer so the bales almost slide out. When I bump the trailer
the bales slide down, I pick them up and put them where I want them.
I got "pretty good" at stacking the bales with out getting off the tractor.
However I can only go 5-6 tiers high with my little loader.
Another thing that might help is a bale stooker that collects 6 bales in
a pyramid behind the baler. With that, the bales are sort of gathered.
Then you can pick them up with a Farmhand or other loader and carry them
to the stack. We all have our little tricks to make our lives easier!!
 
I would like to get one of those bale sweeps for my F-11 loader.
Used to see them all the time years ago, but haven't seen any used ones in the
last few years.
 
if you can't get in the barn with stack wagon. Make the stack outside. front end loader with home made 27 bale grab. 3 high3 wide 3 deep. 6 bale forks at the bottom [about 3 ft long.] grab on top to hold them on. i used to move thousands of bales like that. i could draw you a pic but dont have any of the real one.
 
My skid steer accumulator was FAR less than that hay monster went for. I love those old monsters - the
guy that does custom square hauling for me when I sell squares has four of them. He has two high
school kids plus the driver for each. You are still going to struggle to get kids to help. He always has
really good ones but pays them dearly.

He?s also having to bodge them together frequently because they are older than dirt and since we are a
couple of hours from Harper (KS where they were made) he has to make the parts he needs in a jamb.
They always break on Saturday at 7 pm.

My neighbor has the same grapple I do and runs it on his loader tractor just fine. It?s all in what you are
used to using it on. I can pick up the field, stack it on hay wagons, and then take it off the wagons and
stack it in the shed by myself. In an air conditioned machine. There?s a lot of value in that (and my
cardiologist would agree).
 
All of us wrestle with the problem Of handling square bales. I cannot justify the cost of a an accumulator, Grapple, and front in loader for 3000 bales a year. And I can't find a Bale wagon that isn't totally worn out. I think the first solution is to design a building that is easy to work with. I ended up building a 10 Bay , drive through hay barn. Each Bay is 12 feet wide And The barn is 28 feet Deep, No walls (barn is 144x28) and in the edge of the hay field. With one decent helper, stacking wagons behind the baler, I can load 10 wagons With 100 plus bales per wagon And pull them straight into the barn. I have had good luck selling right off those wagons. My Wagons Are old And ratty looking, but they never leave the farm and seldom go more than 2 miles an hour behind the baler. Since it is horse hay, I don't want to get it wet So I seldom cut more than 500 bales at a time. I can bale that much hay in about 3 hours and PULL it straight into the barn. I hope to never have to restack it, If I can sell it straight off the wagon. I pay the stacker $20/hr including travel time. Comes out to about 20 cents a bale.


It is not ideal solution but it works.
 
My barn is 120 x28, end walls only, 12 ft high, can drive thru a wagon stacked 7 high, rain does not blow in or damage hay.
Most of my wagons are 20ft.

Stack wagon, bale buggies, or my system all require a barn of appropriate design.
 
(quoted from post at 20:28:28 01/06/19) [b:267cda77ab]My skid steer accumulator was FAR less than that hay monster went for. I love those old monsters - the
guy that does custom square hauling for me when I sell squares has four of them. He has two high
school kids plus the driver for each. You are still going to struggle to get kids to help. He always has
really good ones but pays them dearly. [/b:267cda77ab]

He?s also having to bodge them together frequently because they are older than dirt and since we are a
couple of hours from Harper (KS where they were made) he has to make the parts he needs in a jamb.
They always break on Saturday at 7 pm.

My neighbor has the same grapple I do and runs it on his loader tractor just fine. It?s all in what you are
used to using it on. I can pick up the field, stack it on hay wagons, and then take it off the wagons and
stack it in the shed by myself. In an air conditioned machine. There?s a lot of value in that (and my
cardiologist would agree).
Click to expand...

That hay monster sold for double what I thought it would, so I was not ready to pay that for it. But, there were some things the auction outfit left out that made a difference. It had a new engine, new tires, had been recently painted and was in top mechanical condition. I visited with the seller after the sale and he told me the buyer told him he would have paid 2X and possibly more, to get it. Sale was in OK City and it is believed the buyer hauled it to NW Kansas.

Seller also told me his boys had used it for several years to do custom hauling and for that, there was nothing better. The young man I found in SE KS that has 3 of them also does custom hauling. I know of two of them built years ago by farm kids to do custom hauling. Your custom baler guy uses them for custom hauling. When you look at it in that light, a pattern starts emerging.

But finding another good commercial built one in operating condition is not going to be easy. Seller of the good one also told me he had looked for 10 years before finding the one that sold. And it was a DewEze, which I'm told were far better than either the Kent or United Technology competitors. And again, these things emerged only a year or two before the advent of big round balers, which pulled the plug on what would have been a huge market for them. They were just getting started when the rug was pulled out from under them.

It is also possible that as many or more of these monsters were farm built as opposed to commercial units. Kids with a knack and a welder turned out some pretty good ones when given free rein. Once you understand the concept, there is not that much to them. That may be what it would take today to get a good one. Build it.
 

Anyone know what those Rocky Mountain accumulators and grapple cost.
I do mostly rounds, 1000+ per year but do put up 4-500 squares, never liked the idea of dragging bales all over the field so the RM accumulator looks appealing.
Finding help putting up hay is near impossible so it's the wife and I doing the bulk of the work with her driving and me doing the manual labor.
I'm thinking load hay on wagons, back them in the shed end to end and side by side, feed or sell off the wagons.
Hay will be off the ground and if I build slatted beds hay will get plenty of air on the bottom to help eliminate mold.
Pull a wagon out and unload with the grapple as one feeds or sells the hay.

Eliminating the bulk of the manual labor to preserve my help is worth a good amount to me.
 
Hmmmm.......called this guy this morning in the off chance they might still have it. They don't.......sold it some years back when they stopped baling squares.

https://www.farmshow.com/a_article.php?aid=11813

But his story is consistent with others. He said for custom hauling, it was far better than anything else they had tried, including a NH stack wagon. Super fast and easy on the help.

He also had some good ideas on what to do if he were to build another. Easy enough to do out of a school bus chassis and used combine parts. Hmmmmm.
 
I also put up about 2K square bales of hay for my small beef herd, in 2017 I was the only person to touch any bale. I bale onto flat wagons, can load seven high for 140-190 bales per load. With a hay elevator up to and inside the barn, I can unload then stack at my own pace, and room for four loaded wagons inside a pole barn give me time to bale 600-800, then rest and unload as I have time/energy. All the labor i need is a driver, or if capable, a stacker. I paid a stacker $20/hour last summer, and a friend comes over and drives/stacks just for the exercise/memories. My own kids are not going to be available as of this season. I have fields that are around 5 acres each, and try to space the cutting out to keep this on schedule, 2018 did not cooperate, of course. Bad weather and drought can make consistent bale size really difficult to chase.

My barn is built to put hay in and feed it out, not unload for resale. For this reason, the idea of a large barn capable to load bales stacked on the wagon behind the baler then pulled out to unload is the best bet, for selling offsite. Cuts out two handlings (off the wagon and back onto the wagon), each valued at about $.25/bale. I have looked at the pipe/tarp buildings for this use and round bale storage.

Decent pulling wagons can be had for $650 to 1000 each. The guy I bought my mowing tractor from had a new accumulator system, i think he said it cost $16K, and you still need wagons and a loader.

The best advice is sell all $20K worth of equipment and rake in rent for corn/beans. IF you decide to pursue this hay option, be sure to buy a nice hockey helmet- it will soften the blows when you bang your head against the wall for deciding to ally yourself with a group of female horse owners in the first place.
 
I made a video about using pallets with a New Holland balewagon works really good put it on youtube also tell about using wire to hold the stack it keeps it from falling and yes a NH balewagon is the best way and quicker to put hay in the barn hands down,I started using those metal carports and they work good and are reasonable priced to put up you can see the inside on the videos
 
(quoted from post at 20:25:16 01/06/19) One more option just came to me- a bale basket. They tow behind the baler and load via a long chute with the bales being pushed up by the plunger and then falling into the bale basket. My suggestions assume that you don't want to immediately upgrade your baler and not spend a lot of money while
trying to gain efficiency and save hiring as much help.
Click to expand...

The guy I get hay from uses bale baskets. He has three of them but usually just uses two when bringing my hay. Has one basket loading behind the baler and one on the road to my place where it's dumped and goes right back to the field. Two or three helpers are at my place, one loading my bale elevator and one or two stacking. I'm getting to the point I can't help much due to some physical issues but pitch in occasionally. Usually don't have to touch it unti it is fed. If he needs to, he loads up all the baskets and pulls them into a big shed and brings them over later. Stil need 4-5 people but the real work is the stacking in my loft. He lives close so they can run a lot in one day, road time is minimal.
 
In the west country they used to have these small elevators that attached to the side of a flat bed single axle truck and they would pick the
bales up and elevate them up to the truck while someone stacked on the truck deck. Still see the odd one in a junk row here and there.
 
(quoted from post at 18:42:16 01/07/19) I made a video about using pallets with a New Holland balewagon works really good put it on youtube also tell about using wire to hold the stack it keeps it from falling and yes a NH balewagon is the best way and quicker to put hay in the barn hands down,I started using those metal carports and they work good and are reasonable priced to put up you can see the inside on the videos
Click to expand...

Is this your video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2DgpOFC_oI

If so, the pallet idea is one of the best I've see so far. And the wire makes sense to keep the stack from pulling apart. Might slow you down a little in the field, but not as much as the stack falling down when you pull out.

I checked and the barn I have to work with has 14' from ground to bottom of truss. If a 1033 requires 16', that would be a problem.

What models of NH stack wagons will do a good job with short, 50# bales and still stack under 14 feet?
 
(quoted from post at 21:51:35 01/07/19) In the west country they used to have these small elevators that attached to the side of a flat bed single axle truck and they would pick the
bales up and elevate them up to the truck while someone stacked on the truck deck. Still see the odd one in a junk row here and there.
Click to expand...

50 years ago, those pop up loaders were the first improvement over picking up bales from the ground. It meant 2 or 3 guys could do as much as 4 or 5...and load it faster. It does not help when you get to the barn.

Technically, not all that much different than loading straight from the baler, except if you only have one wagon, you can load and unload and keep going until you get it all in. With wagons behind the baler, you need as many wagons as you have hay, or else shut down the baler.

Here are two "modern era" iterations of these.....which I'm guessing are being used in Europe somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2DgpOFC_oI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkXY4QxIRZ4

In good hay, with only one man stacking on the wagon, that poor sap is going to be working his a$$ off. But that is also the case with one man stacking behind a baler.

But 50 years ago, with 2 guys stacking on a small truck, it was considered a godsend.

Then the hay monster showed up and the same 3 guys could do 2X as much in half the time and half the effort. The hay monster crew that did ours always ran out of hay before they ran out of effort. Our 1,200 to 1,500 bales was an easy day for them.
 
Modirt that is my video hope you enjoyed it it came out in 4 different parts if you can see in the video the barns are those metal car garages sides are 12 ft high
and we do stack 2 wide with the 1033 HTH
 
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