Plastic wrapping round bales...

I round bale with a New Holland BR740A baler, baler has twine and netwrap. The twine option has never been used....Read in the manual about using plastic wrap instead of using netwrap....anyone ever try this??? The dealer doesent know of anyone who has. I would like to try it as we store our bales outside, and this would save hay....Anyone ever try it? where do you get the plastic???

Around here the Coop's and fertilizer dealers all sell the wrap. Make sure you use a poly twine rather than sisal. I've never used netwrap but I don't see why it wouldn't work OK other than it would probably be hard to get off the bale when you want to feed it...

Rod

I can not really speak to your exact question. But experience from almost 20 years ago I bought a wrapper for applying solid plastic to round bales. It was a Vermeer turntable unit that only covered the surface. What we found as I am sure you know that most all hay goes through a sweat. If those bales weren't through the sweat process when wrapped they would seal and spoil. This is the reason that net wrapping has been mnore successful. It allows the bale to breath without trapping moisture as well as folding all stems down tight to weather and travel better. In short baler companies all ready tried what you want to do and found that it spoils more hay than it saves. good Luck

I would be interested to know how it works.

I have a HayWrap 3pt wrapper. It works by spinning the bale and applying 1 mil poly (4 passes for good protection). It doesn't wrap the ends, but lets you draw down about a foot of plastic under tension down off the end of the bales. Then I have to pack them together to make a seal. If I don't have a seal, the hay rots unless it was bone dry when baled.

If your baler allows you to wrap the ends like this, and specify poly thickness, it would be great. If not, I wouldn't bother with poly wrap unless you're baling very dry hay.

I've been having my h.m. bales net wrapped for the last 2 years... no problem geting the net off, even in January. Quicker than turn after turn of twine.
Never heard of a baler putting solid plastic on the bale. We use an H&S Linewrap.

Depends on how you pull it off... I've always cut the strings and pulled them off, but if you stand the bale on end that's a different matter. Net would be fine there to my thinking.

Rod

When I feed my net wrapped bales, I have to cut both sides at the bottom with a utility knife and then wait to get the bottom piece after they have eaten the bale. With string, I could cut one side and pull them all out. The net wrap tears before it will pull out. I don't feed them on end since they are still exposed to weather for the couple weeks it takes the horses to eat a bale.

Don't know if anyone else has a better plan for removing the net wrap?

bc
If one has a hay spear so the bale can be raised off ground net is easier to remove than twine. IF bale is on ground I agree it's harder to remove than twine. What I dislike about twine are the strings that one doesn't see(covered by hay) that get left on the bale.

I usually dump them in the feeder rings on end, but sometimes just set them down. Of course my cows go through 4 to 5 bales in two days - weather exposure isn't a consideration. I just take the net off while they're still on the forks (3-point or loader), no knife needed.

Before James & I started baling our own hay, I had a few bales wrapped with net, had the same problem you did. It was a pain because you couldn't get the net off the bottom. With strings, you can get all the twine off.

We don't use net wrap.

I can try leaving them up in the air next time but I'm just worried the bale would fall apart before I can get the feeder around it which has happened on occasion. A lot of it depends upon how old the bale is and how long it has sit in the mud.

We can usually pull up the old piece of netting on the ground unless there is too much wet stuff on top. We sometimes set new bales right on top of old bale remnants depending if we need to beat a storm or something and don't want to waste the hay still in the feeder. We try to move the bales over to a new spot every so often just keep the ground from being torn up too bad by constant feeding and the wasted hay from piling up too much in one spot.

A good thing about the netting is that it seems to dissolve in the wet ground over time after feeding but that is not good for a bale that sits a year or two in a mud hole waiting to be fed. It is less of a concern about getting caught up in a horse hoof. The rub on twine is that parts gets stuck in the ground and then a horse can catch a hoof in it, get it wrapped around, and lose circulation.

The net wrapping seems to hold good as long as a bale is still round. But when a bale has sit for a while in a place to where the bottom of the bale has flattened out, all bets are off regarding moving that bale without losing the bottom.

We have a new holland bailer with a wet kit, everything gets bailed wet (no dry-time) and wrapped with our wrapper into a very long tube. It ferments into "baylage" and makes a very good feed.

(quoted from post at 04:24:36 06/19/09) I can not really speak to your exact question. But experience from almost 20 years ago I bought a wrapper for applying solid plastic to round bales. It was a Vermeer turntable unit that only covered the surface. What we found as I am sure you know that most all hay goes through a sweat. If those bales weren't through the sweat process when wrapped they would seal and spoil. This is the reason that net wrapping has been mnore successful. It allows the bale to breath without trapping moisture as well as folding all stems down tight to weather and travel better. In short baler companies all ready tried what you want to do and found that it spoils more hay than it saves. good Luck

Click to expand...

That "spoiled" hay sells for more than hay in UK &Europe! It's called "haylage" (half way between silage & hay) & horse owners are the biggest customers. The rule of thumb is dry for one day less than you would for hay, then bale & wrap.
Most farmers here don't make hay any more (it's rare to get 5 fine days to make it in the west of UK) they bale up grass that has been cut & conditioned & wilted for just one day, then wrap it immediately. After a while you can see the bales inflate & the grass ferments to silage.