Dump Hay Rake

C. Amick

Well-known Member
My dad's old dump hay rake has a tongue installed on it so you can pull it with a tractor. We have started using it to rake up hay for litter and nest boxes in the chicken house. Any one else still us these old rakes for anything besides lawn ornaments? I assume these were built in the 1930's?
 
I have seen guys use them to round up "wild hay" after baling especially when there was a wind. A little unhandy as someone has to ride on the rake to lift it. I saw one that had been converted to 3 point. I imagine with a little work you could put a hydraulic cylinder on it to lift. Mine is a yard ornament
 
Dad had a horse drawn dump rake. At the time, it was the most dangerous piece of farm equipment. If the team had a "runaway", the operator could fall down into the rake and get seriously injured or killed by tumbling in front of the tines.

Just recently there was a post on YT of someone falling into the rake when it was pulled by a tractor and was seriously hurt. You would be much better off to turn it into a yard ornament or send it to the scrap yard, then go buy a safer rake.
 
I rigged up a trip rope on a IH one my uncle has many years ago, all you had to do was trip it just like you did with your foot if someone was riding it,, I pulled it with a Cub Farmall
 
"<font color="#6699ff">[b:654c4848f0][i:654c4848f0]Any one else still us these old rakes for anything besides lawn ornaments?[/i:654c4848f0][/b:654c4848f0]</font>"

Yes.

Back in 2010 we used our <a href="https://youtu.be/osvyzXyy0p8">McCormick-Deering dump rake</a> on the hay field to remove some old hay.

Folks that we bought it from were <a href="https://youtu.be/SOKFDbRTlZQ">using it as yard art</a>.

<a href="https://youtu.be/lCuZWL9hbts">Still use it on occasion</a> to gather old hay.

We have also <a href="https://youtu.be/WQmn6KuQxTI">used it in a few "tight" places</a> among some pine trees.

It is now on "display" at the front of our property with a McCormick-Deering No. 7 sickle mower.

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(quoted from post at 07:03:26 03/07/17) Dad had a horse drawn dump rake. At the time, it was the most dangerous piece of farm equipment. If the team had a "runaway", the operator could fall down into the rake and get seriously injured or killed by tumbling in front of the tines.

Just recently there was a post on YT of someone falling into the rake when it was pulled by a tractor and was seriously hurt. You would be much better off to turn it into a yard ornament or send it to the scrap yard, then go buy a safer rake.

In a runaway situation with a horsedrawn dump rake, there's just as much, if not more, chance of the driver going backwards off the seat and falling clear of everything than that of him falling froward onto the tongue and then into the tines. Some one falling off a tractor in front of ANY rake is going to take a beating.
 
LOT of stories here about them having a runaway and going forward when the horses slowed or went through a dip,, NOT a place I ever want to be lol
 
Verry little chance of you getting thrown off forward on any horse machinery. Biggest chance is backward and most of that is from placement of seat being toward the back of the implement. Same as the tractors that had the seat mounted out back.
 

I don't know, anytime I had anything close to a runaway I was leaning back on the lines for all I was worth. I'm sure you could get thrown forward hitting a dip or something, but going off backwards seems more likely to me.
 
Anyone falling off of a dump rake was either drunk, OR when they hitched it to a tractor, they hitched it DIRECT rather than build a 16/18in drop hitch for it so that the tongue that was left would be in the same place if it had been extended for horses. Having a drop hitch ALSO makes the rake pick up hay better as, with a straight hitch the rake is pitched more forward than it was ment to be thereby making the teeth not make contact with the ground as well as a rake with a drop hitch on the tongue.
 
Hello my neighbor pulled one behind his new holland 256 rake a few years ago to pick up fine hay ( it was a drought year)the other rake had missed hard to believe a dump rake would pick up what the other rake missed and knowing him the 256 had all of the teeth in it. it looked strange to see windrows going cross ways from each other. I see a lot of 30ft and larger for sale in the Dakotas they must still use them there . Bryan
 
We used to use one of them for our haying when I was growing up. We always pulled it with a tractor, never had an accident with it. Raking into rows was usually a one man job with a rope tied to the handle, but raking into piles was a 2 man job. This rake was last used in the 90s to rake up tree branches at our neighbors when a plow wind went through here.
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I have two. I use the big one every-once-in-a-while. When I first tried them I rolled too big a batch of hay and broke the sheer pin on the baler. Got to watch and not roll too tight.
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See the pic of the rake above. It has around a 2 or 3in drop hitch. Not NEAR enough to make it set right as if it was being pulled with horses.
Today, I reset the tongue on mine as I had it long, and had to cut 3ft of it off when I moved to where I am now. I sat the rake side of the tongue above the 3ft I cut off then took 4 square head bolts and nuts and bolted it together.
 


Somewhere in my collection of reference material I have the lengths and heights for poles on horsedrawn implements. IIRC, a nominally 11 foot long pole has an end height of 31". That is going to vary depending on pole length, the size of your team, implement type and probably brand, harness style and probably a lot of other things I've forgotten. I believe in the end, the operator is going to have to experiment a bit to find the best height to run any previously horsedrawn implement at.
 
The tongue in mine is made of 3-inch steel pipe which has a drop bend in it. The hitch end of the pipe is flatted with a hole drilled in it. The operator seat sets pretty level when hooked to the tractor.
 

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