haying gear

[jdkid]

Hi ya's
well seeing a few people are thinking about geting hay gear how about good/bad points of the gear ya have or had ...i know some brands may not be in all areas or same numbers .also Hp to run them.any good links to 2nd hand gear will help to..
mowers i have used heaps from sicklebars to disc cutter bar moco's costs(buying and running)and Hp run the same way with disc cutter bar being higher end.also more moveing parts more things to go wrong i note looking at a lot of moco's in the USA are sickle bar they did not take of that well in NZ as alot of sticky cutting crops here disc mowers are main type used..
rakes ..alot of finger wheel rakes here and alot of tedder/rake PTO driven rakes too bar rakes there are a few but not many used now alot of rakes end up being pulled with 4X4's to free up tractors for loading trucks etc etc ..
balers...we have had both belt and roller round balers and for eaz of working rollers are better small square balers we had 2 and are now on our 3rd ...
the smallest tractor we ever used was a same 80 4X4 but run the moco's behind 95-100Hp 50%of the time it was hill so 4X4 was a must .run the round balers behind 160 Hp ,did not need that much but only free tractor as others mowing or raking but it was good for baling on hills..i'll have to look up the books and get full list of gear we have owned and put remarks with them
catch ya
JD Kid

 

[Bird]

JD, I really haven't had that much personal experience with hay; just worked a couple of years with a neighbor, using his equipment, and then have a friend/neighbor who's major business is hay. The only moco and baler I've used were brand new Gehls and I've forgotten the model numbers. The moco is a 9' model, sickle bar type cutter, and the baler is the belt type; makes bales 5' wide and any size from 3' diameter to 6' diameter in 6" increments (if you set the computer to run on automatic - of course manually, you could tie a bale anytime and anysize). And the tractor is a '72-74 85hp Oliver. His rake is a very old ground driven New Holland, and I did some of the raking and bale moving with a 50hp White, but he did most of the raking with either his old Super H or one of his Super Ms. We also tried pulling the rake a time or two with his Kawasaki Mule - worked OK in cool weather, but tended to run too hot in 90+ temperatures. And once when the tractor he was using broke down, he pulled the rake for two days with my B7100. He also pulled the rake a couple of days with his 1/2 ton Chev. pickup when he was feeling bad, just so he'd have that air-conditioned cab to ride in./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif None of his 5 tractors have a cab.

The neighbor who's main job is hay uses John Deere equipment; buys a new baler every two years, uses the plastic wrap instead of the twine. He bales only 4' wide bales, 5' diameter because the 4' width lets him haul 34 bales at a time on his 18-wheeler, without being too wide, to deliver hay. He has 3 John Deere tractors, and again, I've forgotten the model numbers but they're all in the 100-120hp range; all 2WD with air-conditioned cabs. He puts duals on the rear for plowing, takes them off for everything else. He's been using the mocos with the sickle bar type cutters, but two years ago bought two new disk cutters; supposedly better for the coastal fields, but unusable in hay grazer. The problem is that fire ant mounds tend to be very hard on the disk cutters, and he's trying to sell one of them. He has a hydraulically powered rake, and I don't know the details, but know he was surprised to find that it caused the tractor to run hotter; too hot occasionally. He also has a PTO powered tedder that is almost never used; only uses it if the windrows have to be scattered to dry quicker; usually only if it rains while he has cut hay on the ground that he hasn't baled yet.

I did use that Gehl baler one day just for a little while behind one of those Deeres; now that's the way to bale hay, in an air-conditioned tractor with a power shift transmission!/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[jdkid]

hi bird
that maybe why ya have more sickle bars there with the ant hills ,don't have that prob here ..kinda funny in a way 95%of gear is made in NZ OZ or europe not a lot now come from the USA the older stuff sickle bars ,bar (basket?)rakes and some early IH and NH gear was USA ...tractors on the other hand above 150 Hp are 50/50 europe/USA with smaller ones being manly built in europe ...we had a gehl baler and moco years ago baler did not like doing balage so we went to a claas the moco was good and i'd even say better than the claas we had after it for doing alfalfa as it had the rollers also ya could almost leave the crimped grass 7-7 1/2 foot row from 9foot cut or set it to just over 4 foot to bale a day after cutting when doing balage (baled silage )
catch ya
JD Kid