Bird
Rest in Peace
This has been an interesting discussion. Redlevel mentions the damage the feral hogs do and it sounding "heartless" to kill them. We lived across the road from Navarro Mills Lake and there were enough feral hogs in the area that the Corps of Engineers hired an outfit out of Ft. Worth to thin them out. For 3 days in a row, two guys in a little bitty helicopter flew around at low altitude shooting all the hogs they could find with a 12 gauge shotgun. But first they sent a letter to most folks in the area to invite them to a meeting and asked how many of them would want, or at least not object, to have the helicopter get over their land, as well as the Corps land, and kill hogs there, also. I don't think anyone objected. I heard that they killed 120 and most folks in the area said that wouldn't even make a dent in the population.
A great deal of my hay work was on Corps land around the lake. My rancher buddy leased 1100 acres of it for 4 years. Incidentally, this past week was kind of sad because he died of cancer last Saturday; was 74 years old. But he and I had a lot of fun together for a few years.
Russ, I'll agree with the idea of having more than one tractor, so I'd say keep the old tractor you have now and then buy a new (or just another old, larger) one. My buddy only had a little over 80 acres of his own, but also used 50+ adjoining acres belonging to a former brother-in-law, in addition to the leased land. When I first met him, his wife had talked him into getting rid of his haying equipment a couple of years earlier (square baler) because of some health problems, particularly with his knees. He'd had knee replacement surgery and had been down for nearly a year with a massive infection. But he still had his Farmall Super H (gas) and a Farmall Super M (diesel). They were old, but they ran.
So, when he got the lease on the Corps land, he bought a 30 year old 85 hp Oliver diesel tractor with 5k hours on the clock, and a new Gehl hay mower/conditioner and a new Gehl round baler. We both did hay cutting, but that Gehl baler had the digital controls and he didn't want to spend much time learning about it so he raked with one of the old Farmalls and I baled with that Gehl. (One day the Farmall he was using broke down, so he spent the day raking with my little B7100. I told him that little tractor would beat him to death on that rough ground and I'd rake and let him bale, but he declined, so I kept baling. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif) That Gehl made bales 5' wide and could be set, in 6" increments, to make bales from 3' to 6' diameter. Now I've seen someone recommend buying the biggest bales you can get. Now that's OK if you can handle them. We learned very quickly that 6' bales are heavy so we made 5' x 5' bales. However, we did custom baling for other people so we made some 6' bales if that's what the customer wanted; not many did.
Remember, we didn't have a front end loader; originally moved bales with a "carry-all' on the 3-point that he had made himself from pretty heavy pipe so it was plenty strong. He later bought a Hay King spear to use on the 3-point; much better because you could raise and lower the 3-point and tilt the spear up or down hydraulically. I also moved a lot of bales with that carry-all on the back of another neighbor's 50 hp White tractor; really nice old tractor.
We also had another neighbor who ran a pretty good herd of Angus, but his main business was hay. He had 3 air-conditioned John Deeres, used both a Hay King spear on the back, and a bale spear on the front end loader. And he made nothing but 4' x 5' bales with wrap instead of twine; primarily because he had his own flat bed 18-wheeler to deliver hay (34 bales per load) and didn't want it hanging out over the sides.
Ahh, I'm rambling, so I'll quit. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
A great deal of my hay work was on Corps land around the lake. My rancher buddy leased 1100 acres of it for 4 years. Incidentally, this past week was kind of sad because he died of cancer last Saturday; was 74 years old. But he and I had a lot of fun together for a few years.
Russ, I'll agree with the idea of having more than one tractor, so I'd say keep the old tractor you have now and then buy a new (or just another old, larger) one. My buddy only had a little over 80 acres of his own, but also used 50+ adjoining acres belonging to a former brother-in-law, in addition to the leased land. When I first met him, his wife had talked him into getting rid of his haying equipment a couple of years earlier (square baler) because of some health problems, particularly with his knees. He'd had knee replacement surgery and had been down for nearly a year with a massive infection. But he still had his Farmall Super H (gas) and a Farmall Super M (diesel). They were old, but they ran.
So, when he got the lease on the Corps land, he bought a 30 year old 85 hp Oliver diesel tractor with 5k hours on the clock, and a new Gehl hay mower/conditioner and a new Gehl round baler. We both did hay cutting, but that Gehl baler had the digital controls and he didn't want to spend much time learning about it so he raked with one of the old Farmalls and I baled with that Gehl. (One day the Farmall he was using broke down, so he spent the day raking with my little B7100. I told him that little tractor would beat him to death on that rough ground and I'd rake and let him bale, but he declined, so I kept baling. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif) That Gehl made bales 5' wide and could be set, in 6" increments, to make bales from 3' to 6' diameter. Now I've seen someone recommend buying the biggest bales you can get. Now that's OK if you can handle them. We learned very quickly that 6' bales are heavy so we made 5' x 5' bales. However, we did custom baling for other people so we made some 6' bales if that's what the customer wanted; not many did.
Remember, we didn't have a front end loader; originally moved bales with a "carry-all' on the 3-point that he had made himself from pretty heavy pipe so it was plenty strong. He later bought a Hay King spear to use on the 3-point; much better because you could raise and lower the 3-point and tilt the spear up or down hydraulically. I also moved a lot of bales with that carry-all on the back of another neighbor's 50 hp White tractor; really nice old tractor.
We also had another neighbor who ran a pretty good herd of Angus, but his main business was hay. He had 3 air-conditioned John Deeres, used both a Hay King spear on the back, and a bale spear on the front end loader. And he made nothing but 4' x 5' bales with wrap instead of twine; primarily because he had his own flat bed 18-wheeler to deliver hay (34 bales per load) and didn't want it hanging out over the sides.
Ahh, I'm rambling, so I'll quit. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
