Stacking loose hay???

   / Stacking loose hay??? #21  
Here is the Haybuster brand of stackhand.
 
   / Stacking loose hay??? #22  
Here is the Haybuster brand of stackhand.
That’s different for sure!!

One of the farms I work had a “pop up” hay elevator/stacker. It would pull up next to the bale and lift it up to the height of the wagon to reduce the job to 2 men. Very ingenious and effective way for 2 guys to collect hay on a budget.
I have pictures of it somewhere. Sold it to a collector from Maine. He really wanted it for his “old school hay equipment” collection.
It could still work very well today.
 
   / Stacking loose hay??? #23  
I've seen it done out West a lot, stacking hay in big piles after cut & i'm guessing raked. Does anyone here do this or have any idea how they do it?
In my area, you can't get anyone to cut on good years & bad years they call out of the blue wanting it on shares.

I've been thinking about this for several years, can't justify the cost of equipment for 100 bales or so a year for the horses & hate mowing down good mixed grass hay.

Any thought's or ideas appreciated.

Ronnie

Can't leave loose hay outside here as it's too wet. The only hay bales you can leave outside are round bales that are net wrapped or plastic wrapped. Everything else has to be put in a barn or it spoils. People used to put up loose hay in barns as that's all there was. No reason somebody couldn't continue to do that as long as you have enough space in a barn to store the hay. 100 small square bales of hay is only about 2 1/2 tons or so of hay so it's not a ridiculous amount to deal with.

It is a lot drier out West and maybe they can get away with things we can't in areas where we get four feet of rain per year, such as leaving loose hay stacked outside. I'd guess they use a grapple to do it today but in the old days, stacking was done by hand with forks.
 
   / Stacking loose hay??? #24  
Just to be clear for those who are not used to it. This is a typical setup we used for loose hay before the loaf makers from Deere or Hesston. https://www.google.com/search?clien...+loaderwith+a+hay+basket#imgrc=JPsgEdqH7S0yQM

The F10 was very common because it of it's range and float and because it cold be powered with a small tractor but it was important to have a live PTO as the hydraulics of the loader ran off of the PTO. We used a IH 300 row crop on one of ours but I saw people use a IH 560 up to a JD 4020 on these.

The hay basket was about 14' wide and had steel tines that were 9' effective length, i.e the hay basket was 9' by 14' which would hold a sizable amount of hay. We would 'buck' the windrows with this hay head to leave a set of piles alll in a row across the field that we would then come back and stack.
The long arms of the loader allowed it to go up to about 14' so with the angle of the hay basket on the front with the pushoff the peak of the stack would be nearly 18' when we were done. Of course they settled significantly over time and after 6 months the peak was at about 15'.

This photo shows a farmer getting close to teh top of the stack. https://www.google.com/search?q=Far...BAQ&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#imgrc=7v5tpOUxN_hQkM
 
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   / Stacking loose hay??? #25  
Can't leave loose hay outside here as it's too wet. The only hay bales you can leave outside are round bales that are net wrapped or plastic wrapped. Everything else has to be put in a barn or it spoils. People used to put up loose hay in barns as that's all there was. No reason somebody couldn't continue to do that as long as you have enough space in a barn to store the hay. 100 small square bales of hay is only about 2 1/2 tons or so of hay so it's not a ridiculous amount to deal with.

It is a lot drier out West and maybe they can get away with things we can't in areas where we get four feet of rain per year, such as leaving loose hay stacked outside. I'd guess they use a grapple to do it today but in the old days, stacking was done by hand with forks.
Where I grew up in North Central SD we normally got 13-14" of annual precipitation. Having dry ground to set you hay on was as important as not having the rain coming down from the sky in terms of spoilage. That is why we usually put our stacks near the top of hills and certainly not in places where a heavy rain would cause water to run through where the stack was because dry hay is a "quicker picker upper" in paper towel terms and a stack was also very good at noot drying out once it got wet.
 
   / Stacking loose hay??? #27  
This almost identical to our setup.
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