How do you bale your little square bales? Pro-Quality/EZ-Trail Hay Basket, Flat Rack Wagon, or anything else!

[Eric Baeten]

What do you like to use to bale hay? How do you like it? I use hay baskets on my farm and they work good for me. I also used flat rack wagons too and they are fine, but you need a lot more help to use them. Hay baskets, you don't need anyone stacking the wagon and it dumps out from the back and you can take off right away. People will put the hay in the barn while I go get another hay basket. They're fast, I think! How do you like your way to bale hay? I just want to know what people think on little square bales and how they bale!

[Thomas Spink]

We've got the baskets as well. I like them just a little different pulling them down the road then a regaler wagon. Used kicker wagons as well and liked them. Both are nice but the baskets are a real plus if using a older or newer baler with out a kicker.

[Eric Baeten]

They're all good I say, but I think the hay baskets are the fastest. We have 5 Pro-Quality Hay Baskets and 1 EZ-Trail. They work really good. It goes a lot faster with the baskets on our farm hear than anything else. We bale around 10,000 bales a year for 3 crops of cay a year. I used flat racks and kick racks, they were fine on my friends farms. They don't work the best for us though. When the hay baskets are empty, you can go 55 or 65 miles an hour on the roads with a pick up truck. You just need to lift up the front wheel on the Pro-Quality Hay Baskets to go that fast. Anyway they are all good!

[K2]

The best way we have found is to run a NH stackwagon. If you are not super big get a pull type. We have the option of setting the stacks off the back, tipping the deck back and using a hay grabber to stack tiers in a barn or to set on a semi, or even dumping backward next to an elevator. You can bale faster because you are not towing anything behind you. Its actually not that much more expensive than having a fleet of hay wagons or 2-3 baskets.
I worked for an outfit that would bale 30,000 hay and straw a year this way. Everything delivered retail.

JXK

[Josh Russell]

We run two JD 348 wire tie balers with Hoelscher accumulators and grabbers. Our system works fairly well but you need to have enough trailers to load all the hay on or have the barns close enough to be able to unload the trailers quickly. In the future we are looking to go to inline string tie balers and pulling two at once with a special toolbar and then running a stackwagon of some sort.

[scott]

Do the hay baskets and NH stackwagons work alright on side hills?

[MICROFARMER]

I run a parrish agriturf accumulator. Sure makes this one man operation run smoother!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022551&id=1501146831&;...

[COOK]

do you have really flat ground everywhere you bale? we have a farmhand accumulator that is off the ground. I think your set up would be rough if you had and hills or terraces like we do. Also how do you transport the accumulator? Is it high enough of the ground to run up and down the road?

[MICROFARMER]

You have to watch the ditches and washouts but most of the time its not an issue. It'll go through a bigger dip than you would think. It trailers just fine with the hitch on it. It rides about 4 or 5 inches off the ground.

[Kaiser Farms]

we run three 440 international little square balers that we pull with 1970's open air tractors like a 666 hydro and a hydro 70. behind the balers we have farmhand accumulators. that puts 8 bales next to each other 2x4. then we stack them using the same tractors and GB 900 himaster loaders with farm hand bale forks on them. It works really good. the only bad thing is that me with a new Holland 7090 RD baler can out bale the other two with two balers. but i guess that is why we get $200 a ton for our horse alfalfa.

[Adam]

Come on guys.. what happened to a little brute strength?.. Just messin with ya all. Would love to have a stackwagon or some kind of accumulator. We don't put but 1 cutting up in small squares, and it's usually $4.50/bale picked up out of the field, or 6.00 if we have to handle them. We have a couple of bobtail trucks we load with an old bale chute. Our NH 575 baler is a pretty good machine, but the women with horses around really liked our John Deere #10 high density. It made one compact 40# bale. The stacks you made out of those never fell either. I still don't mind buckin bales, but I sure like our Round baler better.

[dale a. Brandt]

Well in the good ole days i baled about 2000 acres east of st. louis.. mostly grass hay. i have had several different lines of machinery.. the best was the hesston inline balers with a hoelscher accumulator on the back... we also had a versatile bi-directional loader tractor to pick up the bales and stack them. we also had several flat bed semi trailers and multible donahue trailers. wow, life is good now without being in the hay business.... i now have a social life.

dale

[Glen Groth]

Small squares=idiot blocks

We used to make 10-12000 a year but went to big rounds and baleage. We still make about 2000 a year for calves and straw. We use a john deere baler and kicker racks.