Compact Hay Equipment

[Ledgemere Farm]

I see lots of advertisements, Tractor Tools Direct, Yanmar, etc., but I’ve never actually seen a real review or met anyone who owns compact hay equipment. Any feedback on that? I totally understand people not wanting old abused machinery, or buy a big tractor, but again, never seen one and there’s a lot of small farmers around here. Thoughts?

 

[sea2summit]

Cheap chinese products will always bee cheap chinese products...I can't see them being reliable more than a few seasons and parts could be very difficult. I also can't understand the pricing on a lot of them, for the same price you can get an old sickle bar, rake, and baler (all capable of being used by a ~3k lbs tractor with 20+ PTO HP)...and have money left over to buy a quality used tractor if you need a bigger tractor. Not to mention you can get any parts you need at the local tractor supply, junkyard or Schoup parts.

 

[mo1]

I see lots of advertisements, Tractor Tools Direct, Yanmar, etc., but I’ve never actually seen a real review or met anyone who owns compact hay equipment. Any feedback on that? I totally understand people not wanting old abused machinery, or buy a big tractor, but again, never seen one and there’s a lot of small farmers around here. Thoughts?

I've not seen any of that kind of equipment either. I think people are using smaller regular equipment or just buying hay from somebody if they don't need a lot. I have also seen a bunch of old sickle cutters, side delivery and small 3 point wheel rakes, sickle Haybines, and some old small square balers and smaller 3 point disc mowers for sale. The real tell is I've seen all of that for sale new as well, which means at least some of it is selling.

 

[Jkrph]

I bought a compact drum mower several years ago and I wouldn’t give it up.

 

[Kiwibru]

We have been using Wolagri / Tonutti small bale haylage equipment since 2004. Tough stuff, parts easy to get from Italy and the US, and if you understand metrics easy to maintain. Hard part is getting stretch wrap as the manufacturers are all over the place with pricing and production due to the pandemic and the cost of oil. Some of it has come from Canada, some from China and most recently Finland!
Finding small farm equipment is easy if you look to the EU where farms are smaller and there are more of them so the evolution of the needed equipment is based upon those realities.

 

[HarryVanderpool]

I often wonder when seeing the ads for compact hay equipment, if people realize how little HP is required for standard light hay equipment.
Our John Deere 24T takes very little HP. On a challenge, we baled our entire front field with the 24T powered by a 23 HP Ford 2N.
Wasn't ideal and kind of a pain,but had plenty of HP for the baler.
We use 3 tractors to put up hay:
Ford 8N, 23 HP running a 4 wheel wheel rake we bought at an auction for $125.00 25 years ago.
Ford 9N, 23 HP Running a John Deere Model 350 cycle bar mower that I was given for free.
MF 1540, 40 HP running JD 24T baler we bought for $1000.00 many years ago.

I am posting this just to suggest that you do not have to throw handfulls of money at hay equipment.
It is laying around all over the place.
Prior to the JD 24T baler, we used a Mccormick Model 45 for 10 years that we paid $250.00 for. It missed a knot here and there but otherwise worked just fine.
Until it crashed!

 

[Hay Dude]

Heck you can bale hay with zero PTO HP. You can get small square balers powered with a self contained engine, Rakes with ground drive. There may be a ground drive sickle bar for mowing, but even a small tractor can cut hay with a sickle or drum mower.

Best thing to do is watch the Amish make hay, or any farming for that matter. They can do anything.

If you are hobby haying on a budget, it can be done. It’s when it becomes something you do for a living when it becomes a much different story.

 

[super55]

I've used compact hay equipment for a few years now and have a mini round baler but it used primarily as a back up baler now.

The drum mowers are incredible at cutting. You can go through some thick stuff and it just eats it up and spits it out. Downfall is that it cuts shorts and doesn't condition the hay. As for hay rakes there's a million styles out there. Large scale farmers like wheel rakes but I prefer the smaller bar rake. Easier to control windrow size for a lower HP tractor running a baler.

As for the mini round baler, In certain instances it shines and in others it is a slow and tedious process. If you are working small irregular shaped parcels having 3 point equipment is a huge time saver. You spend much more time working and less time turning around. If you have a short second cutting it works pretty good as well. When the cutting is thin and you end up with hay loss from raking, You can just let dry in place and rake or do a quick flip with the rake then bale it up.

In a heavy cut it is slow, the pickup width is narrow 30", the pickup throat is narrow so it is no means a high capacity. Plus compact tractors have low clearance. It can be done just have to be careful and plan on spending more time with the baler running twine then actually picking up hay.

As for dependability there really is not a lot on them to go wrong. There's no knotters and no timing to set. Biggest issue is if you overload the bale chamber and shear a bolt or plug up the bale chamber which is slip clutched. Old small square balers work great when they work great but are maintenance intensive to keep that way along with a mechanical mindset. These mini round balers have considerably less maintenance and a lot more forgiving to someone wanting to try their hand at balling for the first time.

 

[mo1]

I often wonder when seeing the ads for compact hay equipment, if people realize how little HP is required for standard light hay equipment.
Our John Deere 24T takes very little HP. On a challenge, we baled our entire front field with the 24T powered by a 23 HP Ford 2N.
Wasn't ideal and kind of a pain,but had plenty of HP for the baler.
We use 3 tractors to put up hay:
Ford 8N, 23 HP running a 4 wheel wheel rake we bought at an auction for $125.00 25 years ago.
Ford 9N, 23 HP Running a John Deere Model 350 cycle bar mower that I was given for free.
MF 1540, 40 HP running JD 24T baler we bought for $1000.00 many years ago.

I am posting this just to suggest that you do not have to throw handfulls of money at hay equipment.
It is laying around all over the place.
Prior to the JD 24T baler, we used a Mccormick Model 45 for 10 years that we paid $250.00 for. It missed a knot here and there but otherwise worked just fine.
Until it crashed!

Rakes and sickle mowers take pretty much no power or tractor weight to run. About the only issue you might run into is the really small tractors don't have much ground clearance and they might not do very well wading through uncut hay when cutting, or going over the cut swath when raking.

The main issue with running a small square baler with a very small tractor is that the tractor won't weigh very much. The tractor needs enough traction to keep the baler from pushing it around, especially if there are any hills. A typical "newer" (mid-1960s and later) small square baler weighs between about 3000 and 4500 pounds, and in general it is recommended that the tractor needs to be heavier than the baler in order for the baler not to push it around. One might need even more weight if the tractor has tires that give it less traction than regular ag tires. And that weight recommendation is for if you just pull the baler behind the tractor and drop the bales on the ground. You would need even more weight to handle a bale wagon/bale basket/accumulator behind the baler. You also wouldn't want to run a baler with too light of a tractor even on flat ground as the baler would shake the tractor back and forth pretty uncomfortably as it packs bales.

Heck you can bale hay with zero PTO HP. You can get small square balers powered with a self contained engine, Rakes with ground drive. There may be a ground drive sickle bar for mowing, but even a small tractor can cut hay with a sickle or drum mower.

Best thing to do is watch the Amish make hay, or any farming for that matter. They can do anything.

If you are hobby haying on a budget, it can be done. It’s when it becomes something you do for a living when it becomes a much different story.

Putting up loose hay could be done with a minimum of equipment, back in the past it was done with at most a horse or two. Sickle cutters, rakes, and hay wagons take little power to pull. The real work came in forking the hay into the wagon and then getting it out of the wagon into the barn, and much of that was done by hand. That makes throwing small square bales look easy by comparison.

I've used compact hay equipment for a few years now and have a mini round baler but it used primarily as a back up baler now.

The drum mowers are incredible at cutting. You can go through some thick stuff and it just eats it up and spits it out. Downfall is that it cuts shorts and doesn't condition the hay. As for hay rakes there's a million styles out there. Large scale farmers like wheel rakes but I prefer the smaller bar rake. Easier to control windrow size for a lower HP tractor running a baler.

As for the mini round baler, In certain instances it shines and in others it is a slow and tedious process. If you are working small irregular shaped parcels having 3 point equipment is a huge time saver. You spend much more time working and less time turning around. If you have a short second cutting it works pretty good as well. When the cutting is thin and you end up with hay loss from raking, You can just let dry in place and rake or do a quick flip with the rake then bale it up.

In a heavy cut it is slow, the pickup width is narrow 30", the pickup throat is narrow so it is no means a high capacity. Plus compact tractors have low clearance. It can be done just have to be careful and plan on spending more time with the baler running twine then actually picking up hay.

As for dependability there really is not a lot on them to go wrong. There's no knotters and no timing to set. Biggest issue is if you overload the bale chamber and shear a bolt or plug up the bale chamber which is slip clutched. Old small square balers work great when they work great but are maintenance intensive to keep that way along with a mechanical mindset. These mini round balers have considerably less maintenance and a lot more forgiving to someone wanting to try their hand at balling for the first time.

I don't envy you trying to bale with a 30" baler pickup. You are not kidding about needing to control windrow size when raking if that's what you are needing to do. I would absolutely want no part of a wheel rake with trying to make a windrow that's less than 2 1/2' wide. I bet that it might be tricky to get it narrow enough even with a bar rake if you are in a good stand of hay. I do wholeheartedly agree that a good bar rake is much easier to use in a smaller and irregularly-shaped field than a wheel rake, and it is much easier to control windrow size and shape with one vs. a wheel rake- particularly a V wheel rake.

I would say a small square baler is easier to bale with than a large round baler, I have never used a little round baler. From what you describe, the mechanisms appear pretty similar between the large and small ones. With a small square baler, once you have set the baler set up, all you have to do to keep the windrow between the edges of the pickup and just keep driving until you are done. This compares to watching the bale shape on the monitor and weaving across the windrow to "fill in the low spot" in the bale if needed, watching the bale size closely so you can stop when it's at the correct size, stopping when the bale reaches the correct size, either having to activate the tie or wrap mechanism or have stopped just at the right time so the computer can activate it (and if you forget to stop on an auto-tie/auto-wrap baler, fixing the big mess you made by continuing to bale when it was trying to tie or wrap the bale), waiting for the bale to tie or wrap, ejecting the bale and making sure it doesn't roll somewhere it shouldn't when you eject it, and then resuming baling. The real hassle with small squares versus large rounds is in handling and storing the small square bales, not in baling them or maintaining the baler.

There are certainly a lot more zerks to grease on a small square baler than a round baler. However, round balers are every bit as needing of maintenance as it is much more critical that their bearings get greased well and the baler gets cleaned well compared to a small square baler. A bunch of debris rubbing the belts in a round baler or a bearing going bad can cause a fire that burns the baler to the ground. There is a reason that many new round balers are sold with a big 'ol fire extinguisher strapped to them, while small square balers are not. Knotters are the "fun to fix" part on a square baler, sensors and belts are the fun to fix parts on a round baler. My experience is that both types are quite reliable if maintained properly and stored inside.

 

[Tx Jim]

I can't envision the frustration a small rd hay baler operator would experience having to stop for wrapping every time a small bale is created. I get tired of stopping every time a 1000# bale needs wrapping/ejected from my rd baler