Discussion Board - suggestions for haying equipment

Small area (20+ acres) in northwest Oregon, mostly flat, Ford 841 tractor, lots of determination. We want small 60-70 pound bales.

Question: What is your suggestion for equipment? Brands, sizes, and any helpful input? We would be quite happy with used equipment so any information would be greatly appreciated. Worst case scenario is we screw up a year's worth of hay and best case is we actually get to keep more than a third of what gets baled!!!

Thanks in advance.

Addy

The disc mower will allow you to start cutting sooner if there is some moisture still on the grass.And you won't need several sickles.Just touch the knives up with angle grinder. sickle mowers do not like any moisture, will ball up worse.and need 2-3 extra sickles to rotate out for sharpening.

My .02 is check everthing out real good. look for welds,repair,bent metal,missing teeth,tines. On sickle mowers check the rock guards and holddowns for wear.Also the bottom edge of the bar for wear. if you run your hand on the bottom of the bar and it feels like a washboard it has seen quite a bit of use. usually it will wear between the bolts on the back edge.

Not sure about other balers but mine you can trip the measureing arm and rotate the wheel and check the tying timeing.personally i prefer wire over twine. mice do not eat the wire off.

My equipment is JD 224 baler ,Nh 55 rake. NH 451 sickle mower.Still need small round baler. I have 80-100 acres to bale. And i do not want to square bale it all.I was getting it baled on the 1/2's but never when it needed cut,always to late to get 2 cuttings.

Around here (TN) you can't get people to do hay for the 2/3-1/3 anymore. I suggest trying to find late model equipment, There is no bigger pain in the a$$ than having hay windrowed and a broken baler. Most of my equipment came from estate auctions. Some came from the dealer.

Good luck in what ever you choose.