Picking up sqaure hay

[Robert_in_NY]

I know what you mean about poor customers. I have been lucky to have a lot of good customers. They were referred to me when my friend stopped doing hay for others so I know I can trust them. I did have a situation where a lady wanted to inspect the hay before I baled it. Shows up an hour late and then wants me to bale it for her and leave it in the wagons till she can get to it that night. I told her I had other people interested and I needed the wagons to bale with and I never seen her again. I didn't miss her either. Sold the rest of the hay and didn't have to put any of it in the barn.

 

[slowzuki]

I would love to have enough racks to load them and sell it without going in the barn! What a setup that would be! We have 2 wagons, both with no sides and we share them with our neighbour farmer.

We are doubling our worked acres, getting married, building a shop/apartment and sawing all the lumber to build with so things should be busy this summer!

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Sounds like you have it planned out well. Good luck to you and hopefully you can get it all done. Congrats on the upcoming wedding as well.

Did you get your cutter figured out or are you going to keep trying the 489 with missing rubber?

As for wagons, it is nice to have enough, I have 2- 8x18 kickers, a 9x18 kicker and a 7x16 wood racked kicker. The 2-8x18's I got with my baler deal, I bought the 9x18 and put it on a borrowed running gear from my daughters grandparents and the wood rack I bought from my friend who quit doing hay for other people. He did not need as many wagons and I needed a fourth. Gave him $600 for it as he put a new deck on it and it has a great gear underneath. I am hoping to get one more running gear and adding another 9x18 this year. I know where there is a nice NH gear with an old silage box falling apart on it. The gear is still in great shape, tires are full of air and are good tires but the only problem is the drawbar is frozen up so that it never sets down onto the ground. It is a rather easy fix so hopefully I can pick it up for a couple hundred.

I am always looking for good running gears around here. I do see a lot of them sitting on old farms and for the most part all most of them need is some good tires. Do you have many running gears laying around your area? When you start cutting lumber it might be a great time to build up a rack on an old gear. Build it so you can add the kicker sides in the future and if you get the kicker working you will not be trying to rebuild everything.

 

[sweettractors]

<font color="blue"> We got stuck with 800 bales on the ground last year with only 3 people when the customer took 400 and left saying they wouldn't be back. </font>

Under the circumstances, I believe I would ask for the money upfront and If they left it in the field? It would be thier loss and worry, not yours. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif--Ken Sweet


Sweet Farm Equipment LLC *New Double Action Sickle Bar and Disc Mowers for your Hay*

 

[Robert_in_NY]

There is a couple schools of thought on that Ken, My school is that if someone asked me for money upfront I look at it as a trust issue. If they can't trust me then how can I trust them. When I am dealing with someone I ask if they would like some money up front. Most of the time the people will respond with a no. Some times it is an "its up to you" response. But I will never ask for money up front unless the person has burned me in the past. In which case his hay will be paid for before I let any of it leave. I have been fortunate that all my customers have been very good and so far I have not had any bad checks and every one pays in a timely fashion. It is a good way to deal with people as I am sure you know. Show people trust and they will trust you and hopefully we can build on that for years to come.

Of course if I had to do as much work as the other Ken then my school of thought might change a little bit but I still believe in trusting people until they prove to be untrustworthy. So far I have been taken advantage of a few times and I am sure I will be taken advantage of a lot more before I kick but I will not change. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

There is one other issue though, if he did take money up front and they left the hay in the field after they paid for it, what happens if it rains on it. Then he is out there trying to lift the wet, heavy bales up to get them out of the field for the next cutting. If he takes them in figuring the people aren't coming back and then they do, he just did a lot of work for nothing. I am glad I don't have these issues to deal with yet. /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif Have fun.

 

[sweettractors]

<font color="blue"> I am glad I don't have these issues to deal with yet. </font>

I am glad you are in that position. So far, we dont have a need to do that in our community. Dealing with farmers, as we do, we have had only 1 bad check for $350 in 30 years of the "Equipment" business. I think that speaks highly for people that work the soil. This string we have going, must break some sort of world record /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif. If a person was having a lot of trouble as stated earlier in this post, I suppose extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. Money up front and a signed 1 page agreement as to when the hay would be moved (picked up) or be subject to be destroyed or resold at the owners discretion /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif--Ken Sweet

Sweet Farm Equipment LLC *New and Used Sickle Bar Mowers and Refurbished Cultipackers in Stock*

 

[slowzuki]

I wouldn't be worried at all about the local farmers paying me, it is the horse people that are the problem /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif Funny as many are very rich and are better able to afford it.

The old fellow we got our land from always used to smile when talking about getting paid for hay. The neighbour up the road agreed to pay 2$ a bale, so 50 bales where loaded in the truck. Spring came and a 50$ bill showed up /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

The same people agreed to buy hay from us, they asked if we could store it into the fall. Fall came and we called them up, oh, sorry we bought elsewhere!

 

[slowzuki]

We also haven't found a cutter yet. The NH489 will likely be put in service with earlier cuts so the grass isn't so heavy.

I have a line on a NH479 or something like that which is basically a 7 ft 489. They want 1000$ for it and it has been stored outside. Have looked at some disc mowers over the winter but the prices are high.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

I know what you mean about prices. I bought mine in the fall and got a good deal on it. Still cost me $8100 though but it was a lot cheaper then what they were asking earlier that summer.

I wonder if you could find an old 489 with a good set of rollers. Might be cheaper to buy a second one and have a parts machine instead of just buying new rolls or a different machine.

 

[slowzuki]

We started looking at parts machines and they all had bad upper rollers like ours. We asked what trade in ours was worth, its in really good shape besides the rollers, it was about 1000$. The dealer had one in the same or worse shape selling for 4000$and it needed a roller too.

I would like to move to disc, being an engineer the whole haybine as a whole bothers me when something as simple as a disc or drum mower works. The 489 is especially bad with the floating header, extra driveshafts and u-joints everywhere just waiting to fail and suck up my time and money!

 

[Banjo]

Don't know if these got mentioned in the bale accumulator and handling department, but I just found this from Hoelscher Hay Systems .

Just FYI. Andrew

 

[Robert_in_NY]

We have discussed them before. It is a great system but to be efficient you need a lot of equipment (which brings in extra cost which off sets the efficiency). One tractor running the baler, one loader in the field loading wagons, a tractor shuttling wagons and another tractor with loader unloading the wagons at the barn. So to be real efficient with this setup you need 4 tractors with two having loaders and that means buying two sets of grabs to handle the hay. However, it removes the man work for loading trucks though and if you load semi trailers this is the way to go.

You can use grabs also with New Holland stack wagon stacks which will allow you to cut down on tractors and drivers. To load a truck you just start grabing hay from the top of the New Holland stack and load. You can use your loader tractor to run the NH stack wagon while baling with your other tractor so you only have to have two tractors (one with a loader). There are a couple farms north of me that sell hay around the country, they have two self propelled NH stack wagons and one loader tractor with a set of grabs to load trucks out of the barn. They actually have a ton of equipment and run 6 balers but the two stack wagons can easily keep up with the six balers and when loading a truck you only need one tractor with grabs.

Freeman also makes a stack wagon, I have never seen one in person but Freeman has a good reputation.

Freemans site

 

[Taylortractornut]

Ive seen and built a Hay stacker for a few folks by coppying the older ones made on the farm. Most had a frame notmuch wider than the bale and alink chain running down the center of it with a sproket on each end to macth the chain. THe chain had a spike welded every few feet and a tapered chute on the front to pick up the bales. It had an axle set on pillar block bearings that had a sprocket in the center of it that meshed into the back of the frame works chain. It attached to the frot or middl of the tractor and you lined up on a bale when it hit the skid it would either catch the bale on the spike or the next bale pushed it further up the frame onto the chain and spikes. as the tractor moved forward it conveyed them upto the top of the bale wagon and dropped themsome units had dupm wagons that when loaded where towed by truck to the barn and dumped for hand stacking. others had a fella standing in the back draging the bales into the back then starting a new layer without any lifting. THey had hay hooks to stand up and drag the bales to the back. when the floor got full you stepped up on that layer and repeated the process. THey work pretty good to not be made out of anything more than scrap iron.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

That isn't really a hay stacker, it is a different way to get the hay into the wagons and is a viable alternative if you don't have a thrower on your baler already. The problem is you still have to handle the hay once on the wagon, once to unload the wagon and once more to stack the hay after it is unloaded. Even using the basket where the hay drops in and you just dump it out you still have a lot of work handling the hay and stacking it. It is a good idea though and if you have any pics I would love to see them.