Unrolling round bales

I was wondering how difficult it is to unroll round bales and then bale them with a square baler. Are they hard to unroll? It has been so dry here the hay is short so we are thinking of getting rounds and making squares with a small baler. Any advice? TIA.

you will loose most of the leaves.

If you can get your hands on a super slicer, it's pretty easy. We do it just like the video on their site demonstrates. Not sure I'd want to just unroll one on the ground, and bale it up. Seems like it'd be a mess.

David
Super Slicer

Cut them with a sharp ax and roll them out.

It can be done but it would be a lot of extra work.

There was a thread about this a few months back. maybe you can find it searching the archives. Someone, I believe HoBo was building a machine for a customer at the time for unrolling them. A friend was doing it a few years back. His primary business was fabrication and he had built an unroller that mounted on his tractor's loader. Small squares are generally worth 25% more than rounds.

tried it several different times and ways. it simply was not worth the trouble extra string time etc.and you won't get any more in price. simply put if you want small squares do it right the first time bale it in small squares. i am no longer in that business, but still have square baler and accumulator setup that needs a new home if anyone out there needs a nice unit.

Here is a commercial bale unwinder. Cost is high but might get an idea off it.
unwinder

Its not too bad if you have a little slope and plenty of room. Just figure out the right way to unroll them and keep them going straight. If you do like some folks around here, buy round bales for $60 and make 20 squares which sell for $7 apiece, not bad profit.

I've just finished one for a large commercial farm that will take 4x4x8 square bales and break them down and fluff them before feeding them into a small square bailer. The reason I build this one is there is not one commercially available to do square bales, and even this one is a gamble since it's currently untested. Granted they had it semi running some years back and with the mods it out to work, but it's still mainly an untested, new machine. On the other hand the ones to do round bails are readily available that have been around for years and do a decent job at what they do. In fact my customer just bought a used one for about $12,000 from a very motivated seller. I say very motivated, because they told me that the cost of the unit new is around $75,000. Given the shape the power unit, etc all was in the asking price on the thing was a steal, as the engine and pump setup alone would run well over what they gave for it. Hopefully we'll have the both of them up and running within the next couple of weeks and I'll be able to post some pics, and maybe a video or two if I can figure out how to do it.

In this instance this is a huge commercial farm and they supply trailer loads of wheat straw, wholesale, to a large customer base. Due to the quantity of material moved they have acerage leased over a large area. Due to transportation costs they calculated they can move more material per day in the large square bales using just three people than they currently do in small bales using 30 people. Then there's the fact that a large majority of farms do round bailes also so they are 'a dime a dozen', so to speak. In the end, with the increase in price of the small bales over round or large square bales, the decrease in transportation and labor costs, etc they are looking to save alot of money using these two machines. Like another post stated, and like I said in the beginning, the costs of both machines are extreemly high, even used (((they just got lucky on the one for the round bales))) so unless you've got a way to justify, and offset, the cost involved it's going to be more trouble and alot more expensive, than it's worth.

Good luck and I hope this helps.

If have a good bale spear that goes though the bale most of the way then put bale on it raise off ground then feed into baler the baler feed should pull it off as it feed the square baler. Just keep an eye on things to help the round bale feed even .
Walt