Need older tractor recommendations for round baling.

Skagit · May 21, 2022

Hay Dude said:
If we’re talking old tractors, I’d get a 90’s Case-IH Maxxum.
They have decent cabs with AC and a legendary 5.9L Cummins that wont let you down. They also have power shifts making them easy to drive.
The Maxxums were great for round baling. A 5240 is a great Maxxum.

The Magnums were built for large square balers and have an 8.3L Cummins.
I have a Magnum 270.

Those are awesome tractors and the A/C will legitimately freeze you out. For haying work you really need to have a good cab with good A/C or no cab at all. For less than 100 acres I'd probably lean towards no cab.

I bought my MF 184-4 from a guy that was using it as a baler tractor, other than it's really hard to get parts for it's pretty well setup for baling. 62hp, mechanical 4wd, and a 12 spd transmission with all gears in the working range where you need them. A little underpowered for running a disc mower if it's very big though.

5030 · May 21, 2022

I'd never, never bail hay (or mow it) with an open station unit. In fact, my OS M9 only runs the rotary rake. Bailing with an open station will deposit all the bailing chaff on you as well as the bailer. makes me itch and clogs up my nose too.

Doughknob · May 21, 2022

My my my. How soft we get in our old age. Dad and us kids baled hay with an Oliver 88, New Holland square baler and 16’ hay racks. Hot and dusty, yes. Breathing the dust probably took a year off our lives. But it never seemed to bother us. LOL

newbury · May 21, 2022

Baling hay in the mid-1960's all we had were open station. Dust was a minor problem. the big square bales of oats were heavy as the dickens and all stacking was done by muscle, not machine.
Towards the end of my high school haying career one of the farmers got a new fangled machine that would kick the bale back into the trailer. Marvel of science.

LouNY · May 21, 2022

Doughknob said:
My my my. How soft we get in our old age. Dad and us kids baled hay with an Oliver 88, New Holland square baler and 16’ hay racks. Hot and dusty, yes. Breathing the dust probably took a year off our lives. But it never seemed to bother us. LOL

newbury said:
Baling hay in the mid-1960's all we had were open station. Dust was a minor problem. the big square bales of oats were heavy as the dickens and all stacking was done by muscle, not machine.
Towards the end of my high school haying career one of the farmers got a new fangled machine that would kick the bale back into the trailer. Marvel of science.

Which is exactly why I would recommend a cab tractor, been there, done that, even ridden in an old bagger combine bagging and tieing bags.
In absolutly no way would I recommend baleing without a cab and AC, can it be done. Yep, and you can crawl out of the seat after few hours feeling whipped or you can have a cab and AC and get out after the same time stretch, look around and say well heck we'll have to do more tomorrow this didn't get enough done I good for several more hours.

5030 · May 21, 2022

Doughknob said:
My my my. How soft we get in our old age. Dad and us kids baled hay with an Oliver 88, New Holland square baler and 16’ hay racks. Hot and dusty, yes. Breathing the dust probably took a year off our lives. But it never seemed to bother us. LOL

I did too, way back when but today there are much better alternatives to contracting asthma from hay dust. Nothing worse to inhale than hay chaff. Plugs your nose, causes sore throat, makes your eyes water and generally mixed with sweat, makes you stink.

Skagit · May 21, 2022

I worked for a hay farm up until like three years ago, it's only 90 acres you guys... He's not doing 1000 acres a season, open station is fine. A cab tractor with non functioning A/C is much worse than an open station tractor.

5030 · May 21, 2022

Skagit said:
I worked for a hay farm up until like three years ago, it's only 90 acres you guys... He's not doing 1000 acres a season, open station is fine. A cab tractor with non functioning A/C is much worse than an open station tractor.

I agree, nothing hotter than a cabin unit with no or poor ac. Keep mine charged and the cabin air filter cleaned as well as the underhood heat exchangers and the roofs come off every spring to clean out the evaporators and heater cores plus I have a water shut off valve on the heater line so in the summer, no coolant gets into the heater core. Every hearer valve I've seen leaks a bit.

I don't do big acres either. I do maybe 115 acres total but I do it all myself with no help, from the cut to the rake to the baling to the transportation to the barn if necessary and stack them all too. Not much comes to the barn as my big customer picks them up in the hayfield. He brings me a couple flat bed trailers. I load them on and his guys strap them hook up and off they go. Real turn key. I might wind up with a couple dozen for the barn but they don't last long. All it takes is an ad on Michigan Hay and they too vanish.

Been doing that for about 6 years now. He pays me promptly before the end of each year, usually in cash.

I played the small square bale game for years, bought a new Hew Holland 575 extra sweep square bailer and made idiot cubes for a long time and sold them. What a PITA. Never again. The only time it was not a PITA is when I ran contract wheat straw for the local road commission. I baled combined wheat fields they pre bought and all I had to do was bale and bale. They picked them all up and stored them in their buildings. Made big bucks doing that. My best day was almost 5000 bales at 50 cents per and I started at sunrise and finished at dark. All I had to do was keep the twine box full and stop to eat. You'd be amazed how fast you can blow through 6 balls of poly twine when you are spitting a bale every 10 feet. Only time idiot cubes were worth anything.

mo1 · May 22, 2022

FarmerRancher said:
I currently own a Kubota L2800, which obviously doesn't have enough horsepower for round baling. My partner in the round baling equipment has a JD 4640 that I can use to run the equipment that we own together. But, I just don't like borrowing and possibly breaking somebody else's stuff. So, I'm looking for a "new to me" tractor to handle the mowing, raking, baling and stacking. Budget is limited, so the best equipment I can get for the price is the objective with lowest used price and doing the job being my main prerequisites. Not really looking to buy a machine thats not running. I have enough to do with getting the baler completely refurbished and I'm a one man show.

I'll be running a disk mower, rake (no model number yet) and a Vermeer 605H round baler from around the 80's.

Might be opening a can of worms, but anyone know some good models for this job that I might be able to find used?

There are a bunch of options that would work depending on how much you want to spend. Your limiting factor is probably your Discbine, but they do vary in size and thus power requirements. Quite a few people around here do run older equipment like 4020s, 4230s, 4440s. The 4440s are quite expensive, if you want a 40 series rowcrop, the 4640s and 4840s are less expensive as they are larger than most people would use for haying around here, the 4240s and 4440s are very popular.

Skagit said:
I worked for a hay farm up until like three years ago, it's only 90 acres you guys... He's not doing 1000 acres a season, open station is fine. A cab tractor with non functioning A/C is much worse than an open station tractor.

A broken A/C on anything with a cab is far worse than an open station. You can open all of the doors and windows and it is still 20 degrees hotter than it is outside, plus it is even dustier inside of a cab with open doors than it is sitting in an open station because there's enough airflow to carry the dust in, but not enough to blow it out. Fixing the nearly certainly to be broken R-12 A/C system on an affordable 1970s or 1980s cabbed tractor isn't going to be cheap either. Besides, you will end up sweatier and dustier from having to unplug, grease, or fix the baler than you ever will in driving the tractor baling.

And if you think baling with a cab tractor with a broken A/C is bad, try combining winter wheat with a cabbed combine with a broken A/C, particularly one where the engine sits right next to the cab. A baler doesn't hold a candle to the giant dust cloud a combine makes.