Thinking of Going to Round Bales, Advice

I am thinking I should convert to making round bales of dry hay, I am making small squares now about 12-1500 yearly. The reason is I could do it without helpers, and probably less work overall. I will have to invest in a baler and larger tractor as my big tractor now is a Super M. I will also have to make access ports in my barn for loading and unloading to feed. I am feeding horses and goats mainly. I cant feed full bales in the heart of winter as the snow gets too deep and everybody stays in the barns for extended times (MN). This is one of the reasons small squares are handy for me. I figure I can section the round bales up with a chainsaw as needed. More work to feed but less to make the hay.
I have zero experience with running a round baler. What is a good model to look at? Smaller bales are better for my needs. Tips on handling ? HP required? I have bought many rounds when I had cattle and just used my tractor loader for moving, but this will be different. I will want to get them in my old dairy barns hay mow somehow. I am getting older and my help is scarce !
 
The extra work of modifying your barn, buying a bigger tractor to move and bale. Then using a chain saw to cut the rounds up to size for feeding sounds like more work and costs. If it was me, in your situation, I?d keep the small squares.
Another option is to down size your herd.
 
Look for something new enough to not have a table belt,but old enough to not have an onboard computer.
 
(quoted from post at 16:17:51 07/12/18) After you go to round bales you will be kicking yourself a long time afterwards about waiting so long to go to round bales.



Maybe have someone bale some rounds for you, and you can still bale some squares for the times when you can't feed a round bale.
 
Wise decision to quit squares and go to rounds.....did that years ago. Got tired of fighting the lack of help and fighting the weather.
 
My thoughts are in line with SD Tony.

The expense to upgrade equipment could instead be used to hire temporary help when needed. ....Of course, this depends on the availability of help in your area.
 
could make something like this
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MrsKuH5IGXA" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
The only way to get round bales into a barn loft is if it is a bank barn. If it is not your wasting time and money thinking your going to store round bales in a traditional barn loft. I guess you can build a ramp to drive up. Even with a bank barn your going to have to reinforce the floor. The older barns where designed for lose hay. So you had less weight spread of a large area. Small squares compacted that some but nothing like a tractor or skid steer loader moving a round bale. With a Skid steer loader hauling a round bale 75% or more of the weight of the entire machine PLUS the round bale is on the front two tires. You will need to check and see if the floor joist are heavy enough to handle the additional weight. If they are you will need to strengthen the floor boards. I know of fellows laying rough sawed two inch lumber cross ways over the original floor.

As for sectioning a round bale up to slowly feed it. My question is WHY????? I have hand feeding round bales for years. Stand it on end. Take the twine or mesh off. Take a four tine pitch fork and peal off how much hay your wanting to feed. Just work your way around the bale. You can easily carry 20-30 lbs. of hay in a single pitch fork full. A lot of loft barns have feeding chutes in the loft floor anyway.

If your currently making 1500 small square bales that would be around 40-50 round bales. Depending on the size. If there are any custom baler guys around you then you can hire that many bales made for $8-$10 a bale. So your talking about $400-500 for a man, tractor and baler. So mow rake and haul your hay. Hire it baled. A $1000 round baler is a total headache to make hay with. So unless you are retired and looking for work I would just hire the baling done.
 
Huge disconnect in the responders here. This man is in COLD climate country where animals are indoors for extended periods of time. I, like several responders am in WARM country. Here, large round/rectangular bales are a no-brainer, but we are not in COLD country.
 
Jessie,
I know a man with horses. He wants round bales for summer and square for
winter. He buys a round bale for $40 and $4 for square. If round bale weigh
800# and square 40#, rould is $.05/# and square $.10/#.

He says his 3 horses eat 150 square bales in the winter.

I know a man who feeds his cattle round bales year around.
 
They're easy to unroll if you have a few feet of open space to push them and a high density bale. We fed them in the stanchion barn for over 30 years.
 

Your Super M will pull one of the smaller round balers that will make a 4x4 bale.
I rolled several bales with an older 4x5 baler and my 52 hp 4000 Ford, about the same pto hp as your Super M.
Not sure what the ratio would be on a 4x4 verses small square.
My 4x5 bales will equal to 13-15 small squares depending on how tight I make them.
For transporting them your going to need a loader if you don't have one.
Storing them in a barn loft will be a issue for you unless you have the old hay hook and trolley system in your barn, and then I'm not sure how big of a bale it could lift.
My 4x5 bales will weigh 750-900 lbs
I'm guessing a 4x4 will weigh 500-750 lbs
I used to unroll my bales by hand but that's getting harder to do as I've gotten older.
I store a few hundred squares in my old feed barn for bad days and weaning calfs but you have a lot more bad days than I do.

Getting the hay rolled and transported will be much easier, but for you storing and feeding round bales could turn into a lot more work.

Adding a hay shed may be the best storage option but you still need to figure out a feeding system.
 
My idea was to make 4 x 4 or 5 rounds and to make a sliding door access port in the side of my barn, not to drive in the loft so the floor strength shouldn't be an issue. Yes I can unroll them and have done that before but the saw may be easier ? quicker? I would set the bales in the loft through the access door and then roll them out of the way . Then drop them down through the floor with another access port in the floor and cut or roll them out or off the side in the alley and fork to each stall.
I have tried hiring guys to bale before and found that to be frustrating. They are either broke down, on vacation, doing their own hay , or drunk when needed. Hiring high school kids to help square bale is a joke, no one wants to work that hard even at $25 hour cash. I am hoping to be able to do all this independently without relying on help. That's the whole idea behind going to rounds at all. I can fix whatever needs doing on a round baler but there will surely be a learning curve. I see JD 510s go for very cheap, I take that to mean they are trouble? I would look for a New Holland or Hesston most likely... Thanks !
 

Find a brand that has close dealer support.
Some of the early JD's where temperamental, not sure which ones,
Hesston 5545 I had was that way and would not bale damp hay, when the due came up you where done.
Get a baler as new as you can afford, parts have been discontinued on some of the older models, I checked on rebelting and rebearing my old NH 640, with the price they quoted I decided to get a newer baler, I'm making 800-1000 rolls per year and need a pretty dependable machine.

Several balers will make a smaller bale so if you get one that will make a 5x4 roll you can adjust it down to make a 4x4 if you prefer that size. Check to make sure it has that option before you purchase it, open chamber balers only make one size bale
 
What about bale baskets or a bale accumulator? We do both round and small squares. 1 man most of the time. Believe it or not we square bale most of it. When you get a year like we had around us this yr in central MI small squares were bringing 8 dollars.. to much waiste for us in round bales. We round when the hay has been rained on. We have found the stand last longer and comes back between cuttings faster when we small square with bale baskets...
 
Wouldn't use a chainsaw in the hay mow. One spark and barn is gone! Don't know that it would work on cutting a hay bale anyway.
 
I always flip up on there end and then you can unwind em with a pitchfork works Easier than large square bales because once you feed part of them the ends fall off it make a giant accordion and it can?t be hard to dig the hay out with a pitchfork
 
(quoted from post at 06:09:18 07/13/18) Huge disconnect in the responders here. This man is in COLD climate country where animals are indoors for extended periods of time. I, like several responders am in WARM country. Here, large round/rectangular bales are a no-brainer, but we are not in COLD country.


The worst thing you can do for an animal is keep it inside in winter. Get them outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Keeping animals in is a recipe for pneumonia, especially with goats.
 


There is no "easy" way to get hay off a round bale unless it's been wrapped or stored inside and has never set on the ground. Chainsaw is a a waste of effort and fire hazard. If you really want to do this,flip it on the flat side and start shredding it off with a fork.
 
Mike, My neighbor feeds round bales in his dairy barn. He can set them up with a skid steer or with his winch. You can unroll them with a pitch fork. Last picture is the bale hanging from the winch.
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There are a number of smaller balers you can operate behind your Super M so that's not a issue.
But after studying on this I think hay storage is going to be the big issue, your going to need around 120 4x5 rolls to equal 1500 small squares, since you'll be rolling them in you hay mow it'll need to be big enough to store them one bale high as you can not stack them by hand, or at lease I can't.
Your barn needs to be 40x80 min to hold that many bales one bale high.
Not sure how many 4x4 bales you'll need but they will take up as much area or more unstacked.
On the other side of the coin your going to get real tired of rolling 500-750 lb bales around up there in the hay mow.

I fully agree on switching over to round bales while still keeping a number of small squares but I fell you need to rethink how your going to store and feed them.
 
My barn is actually 40x80 so should hold enough single stacked. I think they roll ok on a clean floor so am not afraid of that part.
 
I would be using it down below on the concrete slab alley, so not as dangerous as in the mow. I have done it before, chainsaw cuts them up pretty nicely but will clog the drive sprocket occasionally.
 
All this talk of the Super M running a round baler may be true in terms of enough hp to do it but the no live PTO will make that suggestion not so practical as you need to be able to stop forward motion to tie and dump a round bale for each and every bale while maintaining PTO power to do this. No way to do that on a Super M short of kicking it out of gear with your foot. No live PTO is much less of a problem when sticking with square bales.

So when you factor in buying a different tractor, buying a different piece of equipment in a round baler, lots of modifications to your barn to store them, a tee total hassle of trying to unroll them by hand in your case...all of this would be a deal breaker for me on a size operation that only uses 1200 or so square bales as it is.


I woud instead invest in whatever small square bale technology exists to improve my efficiency for a 1 man operation. (accumlator, grapple, ez-bale wagons, etc.) Whatever gave me the most bang for my buck.
 
It sounds like you are unconditionally locked into storing hay in a loft and hand feeding the hay to livestock. I would be concerned about the heavy strain to your body and the safety of rolling 800 pound round bales by hand after they have flattened on one side for six months. Might want to try rolling a few flattened bales for 40 feet at a time before committing to that long term.

Would staying with small square bales and adding several kicker wagons or E-Z Trail Bale Baskets fit into your operation better? The cost might be about the same as adding a dependable round baler. If you can get enough wagon capacity to put up your biggest cutting of hay (first cutting, 600 bales?), you could keep on baling when conditions are best. You could then unload the wagons and stack the bales in the barn at your convenience. If you don't have enough shed capacity to get all the wagons under roof, inexpensive fiberglass tarps can keep rain off for a few days.

Do the horses generate any income? If not, this could be a good excuse to get rid of some of the biggest hay burners, LOL, and sell any excess hay out of the field for cash.
 

A person could get or build something like a pallet jack to make moving the bales around easier, maybe even power it with a DC electric motor and a couple of car batteries.
Or fab up a overhead trolly system for moving the rolls.

The Super M not having some type of ind pto is a inconvenience but not a deal breaker. Stop, take it out of gear, wrap the bale, dump the bale, put it back in gear and start again.
It would take time and would be a little aggravating but you could make some bales and see if it would work for you before investing in another tractor.

Lots of good recommendations on accumulators, hay baskets and such for getting the hay off the field but I'd hate the thought of having to stack 1500 squares in the hay mow by myself.
Getting it off the field is only half the job.
 
I make both rounds and squares all for horses and all stored inside. I have both a MF65 and MF50 but I don't think either would come close to running a big round baler. I bale round horse hay with an OMC595..huge round bales, soft core, behind a JD 5420 (65PTO HP). I understand why you want to go to round bales but unless you have the tractor to run the baler and move the bales it is not a picnic either. Round bales will work but you will discover new complications. Set on end they are fairly easy to unroll for feed or bedding. The old OMC or Gehl drum bales are not liked because they are unusual and soft core. Therefore they sell cheap but require a lot of HP to operate. These drum balers seem to be most plentiful in the Mn and Wi area. They made a 4ft model too ( Gehl 1310 or OMC 590) A bale basket is something to consider. Feeding small squares is so much easier and more precise than big rounds.
 
The old new holland chain balers are simple and cheap. An 846 or 847 i think would be the numbers you want for a 4x5 machine. I really think with any round baler you will need to upgrade tractors for more hydraulic capacity. I know my 851 needs 1500 psi to work the door and add another remote for hydraulic tie but there is also manual and electric tie out there.
 
Thanks for asking this question, Mike. I am in a similar boat- set up for small squares, tired of the organization of help to make them. I now have access to one retired gentleman who can drive for me while I stack. That works okay, and I installed a barn-length bale conveyor system to load them into the barn. I think you can see a nice one in the recent pictures of JonMn's new barn (maybe he wants to get rid of it?) I actually bought mine up in MN and hauled it back here to MI. IF a person was not as OCD as I am, you could just let them fall off the conveyor and pile up, no doubt you could get them all in your barn like that, my 40X60 mow holds right at 400 bales per layer. I force myself to stack them neatly, which is easier to unload, and allows me to store maximum hay.

I could lift round bales high enough to get them into the mow, but then how to move them? My floor is too slippery to push by hand, the old trolley system would only help to stack them in the middle of the barn. Any of the electric forklifts/pallet jacks weigh far too much for the flooring all by themselves. In the end, I just hate to stop using the mow, it has no other good use than to store hay. If it gets much worse, I'll try just letting the bales pile up inside and give that a shot for a year. Might have to adjust the numbers of the herd. The last two years, I have touched every single bale (23-2700), many of them I did all of it- drive, jump off and stack a dozen or so, fill the wagon, unload 30-40 into the barn and climb up and stack them. That gets real old, real fast.

It would help if I wasn't such a stubborn old pr1ck, but kinda late to change now :evil:
 
(quoted from post at 14:55:12 07/14/18)
(quoted from post at 06:09:18 07/13/18) Huge disconnect in the responders here. This man is in COLD climate country where animals are indoors for extended periods of time. I, like several responders am in WARM country. Here, large round/rectangular bales are a no-brainer, but we are not in COLD country.


The worst thing you can do for an animal is keep it inside in winter. Get them outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Keeping animals in is a recipe for pneumonia, especially with goats.
Maybe if you have no idea how to keep your buildings ventilated properly. Never had a problem keeping any sort of animal inside all winter.
 
(quoted from post at 09:11:07 07/15/18)
(quoted from post at 14:55:12 07/14/18)
(quoted from post at 06:09:18 07/13/18) Huge disconnect in the responders here. This man is in COLD climate country where animals are indoors for extended periods of time. I, like several responders am in WARM country. Here, large round/rectangular bales are a no-brainer, but we are not in COLD country.


The worst thing you can do for an animal is keep it inside in winter. Get them outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Keeping animals in is a recipe for pneumonia, especially with goats.
Maybe if you have no idea how to keep your buildings ventilated properly. Never had a problem keeping any sort of animal inside all winter.


You can only ventilate as much as the barn allows. With an old dairy barn the choice is open all the doors and have snow drifts from floor to ceiling, frozen water pipes, etc. or close them and get the livestock outside in daylight hours. We have winter here for about 6 months out of the year. Keeping livestock in for that long is ludicrous.
 
My hay loft is the best place for the hay, weather tight and close by. There is also some rodent control built in being up off the ground that high. One year I stored hay in another building on the ground level and the mice were all over it , chewed the strings and peed in it . The thing about down sizing the herd is the hay field would still be the same size and I would still have to harvest it and store it if I couldn't get someone to buy it off the field right away. The horses and goats are the wife and kids hobby, not mine ! Kid has work and school plus activities but helps me when she is around, wife has back issues so help is limited.
 
I bought a 4x4 baler and work it just fine behind my Ford 3000 , 3 cyl diesel . When it is time to feed I spear a bale and take it to the field then peel off how ever many layers I want to feed that day . On the 5' and 6' bales that I buy , I might feed 3 or 4 days depending on the weather for my small herd .

I can not afford to hire help and want to figure out a system that fits my budget that will hopefully be a low cost of operation once the initial purchase is made . I plan on building a scissor lift hay spear to hopefully stack them 2 high .

hopefully this scissor lift video works .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH0o8uJlxYo
 

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