All Time Baling Record?

[WillysWoodPile]

--- I have asked my Uncle Lee this question a couple of times over the last 20 years so I am fairly certain it is accurate.
--- I asked him what was the most bales of hay he had ever baled in one day. He said that he and his buddies baled, and put up, about 10,000 bales in one day. He also said that they did not quit at the normal time (if there is such a thing) but continued [I assume] well into the night.
--- This would have been in the 60's or 70's.

--- Does anybody have a similar tale where you baled until you couldn't bale anymore?
--- I've yet to ask him how many guys he had baling with him to get an accurate picture of what I am describing. But I will tomorrow.

 

[Thomas]

10.000 bales..dang.
There must been more than couple tractors balers etc. and lots of water consume.

 

[SPYDERLK]

10.000 bales..dang.
There must been more than couple tractors balers etc. and lots of water consume.

Yeah! Thats an astounding #. I wonder what the particulars are.
My baler is not fast by todays standards, but itll do around 5/minute. That comes to at least 2 needed and a looong day with no downtime. Im guessing 2 hi capacity would give some breathing room.
larry

 

[WillysWoodPile]

10.000 bales..dang.
There must been more than couple tractors balers etc. and lots of water consume.

More like Miller, and PBR.

--- Usually granny would bring us lunch, and I would get juice or whatever in a Mason jar. I remember one time when I was about 12 that I ran out of stuff to drink and drank two Miller beers in a can. I ended up under a nearby irrigation system until I went home. And I didn't even like beer but man, was I thirsty. Baling does that to a kid.

--- I just talked to my uncle. He said two balers, and sometimes one.

 

[WillysWoodPile]

Yeah! Thats an astounding #. I wonder what the particulars are.
My baler is not fast by todays standards, but itll do around 5/minute. That comes to at least 2 needed and a looong day with no downtime. Im guessing 2 hi capacity would give some breathing room.
larry

--- I just talked to my uncle Lee and he said two balers, and sometimes one. He couldn't give me the actual stats right off the bat [as he usually could] because he had a mild stroke a few months ago. So I do not press him for details, only generalities.
--- I can't remember what type of balers we had. I do remember a New Holland rake.
--- A buddy of mine at his horse farm has a JD 14-T baler but I do not believe it puts out near what our old ones used to. The sound of a perfectly running baler could lull one to sleep.
--- My grandpa could sleep [standing up] while milking his cows.

 

[Willl]

Getting pretty deep here,,,:laughing:

 

[WillysWoodPile]

Getting pretty deep here,,,:laughing:

--- That's what knee-boots are for.

--- Seriously, I will get the real story out of him when I can catch him on a good day. Since his stroke he has not been feeling the best. He is usually very good with numbers, always keeping track of how many walleye we caught in Canada [in his head].
--- He knows what he wants to say but just can't get it to come out. I can see that it's very frustrating for him.


--- Stay tuned....if I can get exact figures then you guys compare those stats with those from your own experience. Please be patient with me.

 

[2458n]

Many times when baling hay I have found that it felt like 10,000 bales. Actual count varies.

 

[DANOCHEESE]

I can remmeebr a 1700 bale day. THis was with one baler and eleven wagons. Two kids on the wagon stacking, Two kids unloading onto the elevator and four kids stacking n the mow. Two tractors running wagons.

We never did over 1000 bales in a day again. THis about killed us. We still ahd to milk 125 cows that night and walk home up hill ( both ways )

 

[shade tree welder]

10,000 bales.... um I doubt it... A typical baler runs about 70 strokes a minute, and typical bale is 10-14 flakes. Let say an average of 12, if you have 12 strokes per bale. That works out to be 28.57 hours to make 10,000 bales with one baler, nonstop, no breaks, no malfuntions, no reloading twine.

2 balers will still make for 16-18 hour real days.

I can remmeebr a 1700 bale day. THis was with one baler and eleven wagons. Two kids on the wagon stacking, Two kids unloading onto the elevator and four kids stacking n the mow. Two tractors running wagons.

We never did over 1000 bales in a day again. THis about killed us. We still ahd to milk 125 cows that night and walk home up hill ( both ways )

Dano as a kid, one of the local farmers would hire a crew of 4 of us, we
would usually bale 1500-2000 bales a day for 1st and 2nd cuts, less on 3rd
cutting. 2 wagons, one on the baler one making the round trip and
unloading. Things working in our favor, the elevator into the loft could be
loaded up end to end with bales and would not even slow down. I think the
old man had a 2 HP 3 phase motor running it, in the loft he had a powered
conveyor running the length of the barn. So one kid would unload the wagon
and the other would be stacking off the conveyor in the loft. But with the
elevator and conveyor it was fairly easy work and the barns opened east to
west so there was almost always a breeze, it was a sweet set up. The
Farmer's wife would run us back and forth to the field with the old JD A, and
alway have iced tea or lemonade for us and fried chicken for lunch. The
round trip was short as the fields were near the barns. Also we did not have
to do milking or any other chores, the farmers hired man did that. All we did
was bale, 10-12 hour days, good pay thou, and we were selective on who
got on the crew.

 

[Duffster]

I am not buying the 10k thing.

I have seen 5k done with more modern equipment but still unloaded and stacked by hand. 2-3k a day was the norm. Sometimes 10 days in a row.

 

[DiverDarrell]

On the first lap around an 87 acre field and the kicker on the baler quit. :confused2: made for a really long day

 

[WillysWoodPile]

10,000 bales.... um I doubt it... A typical baler runs about 70 strokes a minute, and typical bale is 10-14 flakes. Let say an average of 12, if you have 12 strokes per bale. That works out to be 28.57 hours to make 10,000 bales with one baler, nonstop, no breaks, no malfuntions, no reloading twine.

2 balers will still make for 16-18 hour real days.



Dano as a kid, one of the local farmers would hire a crew of 4 of us, we
would usually bale 1500-2000 bales a day for 1st and 2nd cuts, less on 3rd
cutting. 2 wagons, one on the baler one making the round trip and
unloading. Things working in our favor, the elevator into the loft could be
loaded up end to end with bales and would not even slow down. I think the
old man had a 2 HP 3 phase motor running it, in the loft he had a powered
conveyor running the length of the barn. So one kid would unload the wagon
and the other would be stacking off the conveyor in the loft. But with the
elevator and conveyor it was fairly easy work and the barns opened east to
west so there was almost always a breeze, it was a sweet set up. The
Farmer's wife would run us back and forth to the field with the old JD A, and
alway have iced tea or lemonade for us and fried chicken for lunch. The
round trip was short as the fields were near the barns. Also we did not have
to do milking or any other chores, the farmers hired man did that. All we did
was bale, 10-12 hour days, good pay thou, and we were selective on who
got on the crew.

Like I stipulated before, my uncle had a mild stroke and he was not able to give me precise crew-sizes or numbers or facts. The point of the story was that it was an extraordinary high number of bales.
When I can catch him on a good day, then and only then will I get you more-precise figures.
So until then you will just have to be patient.
It seems obvious that they had two balers. My memory is not that great but I seem to remember that we had New Holland balers.
And I also remember that one of the reasons that the barn on our main farm blew down was because my uncles removed some supporting cables [that had recently been installed] so they could fit more bales in. That was around '74 because my grandfather had just sold his 40 head of cattle [a small farm dispersal], and we only lost a few pigs and such when the barn blew down. I think that [very large] barn was built in the late 1870's or early 1880's. There is a record of the wages paid to those who built it. I think the mason made the most. I think a dollar a day. I'll have to look for it at the farm. It's been 20 years since I looked at it.

 

[jimmyj]

Maybe he meant 1000. That's still a lot. The most I've ever done is about 400 or 500 and it was hot as hades and the bales were higher in moisture than they should have been. My back was screwed up for ages after that. I bet we sweated a gallon!

 

[WillysWoodPile]

Maybe he meant 1000. That's still a lot. The most I've ever done is about 400 or 500 and it was hot as hades and the bales were higher in moisture than they should have been. My back was screwed up for ages after that. I bet we sweated a gallon!

--)> Back then, those were the beer-drinking days. But I am sure it was 10,000. But I also seem to remember that he once said it was closer to 9,000, so maybe less than 9,500 bales.(?) Did I not also mention [in an earlier post] that they worked well into the night?

 

[seymojo536]

Man, my B.S. meter is off the scale on this one.
You can claim 10,000 all you want. The numbers just don't add up.
It would take a 100 acre field, multiple balers, a couple of dozen wagons and a crew of 30 working their rears off for 12 hours straight with no breakdowns to pull this off. Aint gonna happen and never did. At least not in that state up north.

Can I get a GO BUCKS! OH

 

[WillysWoodPile]

Man, my B.S. meter is off the scale on this one.
You can claim 10,000 all you want. The numbers just don't add up.
It would take a 100 acre field, multiple balers, a couple of dozen wagons and a crew of 30 working their rears off for 12 hours straight with no breakdowns to pull this off. Aint gonna happen and never did. At least not in that state up north.

Can I get a GO BUCKS! OH

We have 2,000 acres. And please, read my post above where I qualified my statement.
This is not a thread to argue, it's supposed to be a fun thread. If you can't crunch the numbers in your head then maybe it's not the thread for you. It happened! And as I stated before, When my uncle is in a state that's conducive to being questioned about the exact numbers for that day [He had a stroke], then I will do so; but until that day--you will just have to be patient. And if it turns out that I was wrong then I will eat crow; but if I am right, you naysayers will be mucking stalls for a long time.

 

[BoonvilleKid]

I'm sure that all of us "old timers" can think back now to those days back in the 1950's when we worked in the hay fields. Hot, dusty and physically exhausting days. As we think back now and remember all that work we probably feel that we surely produced 10,000 bales of hay in one day. But, it never happened to us nor did it ever happen to any other single crew. I was raised in the "Hay Capital" county of the United States; Woodson County, Kansas. Equipment available then was no where equal to the production obtained today, but the men who were working then could put out ten times what men can do today.

All of our bales were wired tied, never less than 70-pounds, and we always paid/charged at the rate of 30-bales per ton. If all the mowed hay on the ground was fully cured, if the weather was hot and dry, if the rake-man was far enough ahead, then using the old Case tractor-pulled baler a top notch crew might put out 40-tons in one day. That would be about 1,200 bales. That was not the norm. The norm was usually 600-700 bales. One didn't want too many bales on the ground and run the risk of getting them wet from a shower. We dropped bales singly behind we baler, we skidded bales behind the baler, we stacked some on wagons pulled behind the baler. Just depended on what we had to work with. But, it was all hand labor and the only mechanical help from standing prairie hay to the stacked bale in the barn was the tractor pulling a mower, tractor pulling a side-delivery rake, tractor pulling a baler, the Wisconsin engine on the baler and the truck to haul the hay to the barn. Every other job was performed by men. My Dad and I picked up bales spread singly over a 40-acre prairie field one day. We hand-stacked them onto a 1934 2-ton truck, hauled them to a tin-roofed barn, hand-bucked them up into the barn, dragged them to the back of the barn and hand-stacked them. At the end of that one, long day, we have placed a little over 1,000 bales. That was extremely unusual. And, now, 60-years later, I'm still tired from that day.

 

[WillysWoodPile]

Update. I just talked to both my uncles and it seems that they put up around 6,000 bales in one day with one baler. One person joined them later in the day.

 

[kubotakid USA]

WOW,..Thats hard to belive..