fastest way to load round bales (cheap) and get out of field

fastline

Member
Looking harder at my figures for hay, one of my issues is TIME. I am not free and I need to find a better way to both get hay out of the field and load trucks.

Right now I am using my 1170 Case but without power shift and stupid slow hydros, it really sucks. I can reserve it for loading the top of a semi which is fine but things like getting the hay all move on the field to a central location would really help.

I am mostly flying solo and I know a lot of folks use hay wagons but I then get to load it all twice. I usually just line it all up in the field and let it sit.

Over larger acreage, I need something with reasonably fast road speed. I was considering a skid steer but but they are slow even compared to the tractor but could sure slam some bales on a trailer quickly.

I know several people use telescopic forks but they go for a premium. I was considering some way to load up the tractor more but not sure. I know there are special pickup wagons out there too. I was looking at just trying to get two spears on the FEL on the tractor but that might be tricky on this one. I guess in theory, that might double my speed though. That could help but not sure if picking just one bale could hurt the FEL? This case has the factory high loader system.

A powershift tractor would certainly help here!!

ADD: for reference, I load a semi in about an hour with this tractor. Not sure how much time I had in lining bales up but I usually group them in 10-15 and probably plan to make larger groups this year.
 
A couple of questions
-What is your budget? 5K or 50K.
-How far are you moving the bales?
-Do you currently have only 1 loader tractor?

Skidsteers can load fast, but you also need a way to unload. Nothing is more of a pain than loading in the field, taking the wagon to the barn, then going out to the field to bring the skidsteer in to unload. Talk about killing time.Skidsteers also tear up the fields some.

I would consider buying a late model tractor with a loader and reverser. Makes getting around a whole lot better. I would also buy a big bale wagon. Buy as big as the tractor can handle. Drive out to the field, drop the wagon. Run aroung the field with the tractor, grab the bales and fill the wagon. When the wagon is full, hookup and head to the barn. No wasted trips.
 
The fastest way I've found is with a skid loader.
In actual timing compared with a good loader
tractor with fast hydraulics using the machine
hour meters I move as much hay in 100 machine
hours on the skid steer as I can in 160 hours with
a tractor. I'm selling premium rounds, at a
premium price and one of the stipulations is they
cant get wet, or moldy, even on the surface.
Stacked tight in the barn, even dew moisture is
enough so they need to go in same day if possible.

For moving to a centralized location I got 2 mid
sized trucks, a Mack and a Freightliner both with
20 foot long dump flats. Less than 10,000 invested
in both of them and the Mack had new tires, new
batteries, and 300 gallons of fuel in it when I
bought it. Got both of craigslist from the same
contracting company.

This past year I also went with a sub contractor
to move a lot of hay for me. He came with 2 skid
loaders and 2 operators. Cost was modest, worked
out to about 5 bucks a roll plus the use of my
trucks. That let us have skid loaders in each
field plus one at the barn. Trucks could dump and
go, skid steer had them stacked in the barn in the
time it would have taken to unload.

Time was always my most limiting resource. Hence I
made the big gains early. Skid steer was the
biggest and it saved a fortune on clutches. My
first was an old 1845C Case on tires. Next big
time gain was the dump flat beds. They also get
double duty on deliveries. It seemed every year
I'd have to put a front end under the truck I
delivered hay with. Not worth tearing up my truck.
Now, with 2 wheel drive trucks that look like road
tractors people get it when I say I dont get off a
hard surface, dump, and go.

Lastly, when Id cut every second off I could find,
I ended up adding the contractors.
 
I use a 100hp fwa CaseIH for loading bales, can
pick two up at a time (brapple on bucket with
short tines)... If a machine like that is too much
$$ then how about using an add-on hydraulic pump
on your 1170 pto, that should speed up your
hydraulics, so loading is faster...

I've always grouped bales in multiples of my
trailer loads, and make my groups usually 4 or 6
bales wide by how ever long, the pull the trailer
parallel to the bales and load through a 90 degree
turn (so long as the loader can reach across the
trailer).

Absolute quickest way to move bales less than
about 8 miles is with a bale mover... it makes
things quick, unload time is very quick, and you
can load without stopping once you've got the hang
of it...
bale mover
 
An hour? How many bales are you putting on? I haul 12 on my gooseneck flatbed behind my dually. I load with my Oliver 1365 FWA. When I'm loading right where they sit after being baled I can load a load in a few minutes. I use a spear on the back so I can bring two up at once. I drop the back bale on the go,back up around it and stab it and load it.
Yesterday I was hauling in the snow out of a fencerow hauling the trailer behind the 2-135 White,going a little over a 2 miles round trip including the distance in the field. I could leave home,load up and be back here in the yard in just over 20 minutes.
 
A semi is about 40 bales. It could go a little faster but we move around a little to load since I only had 10 in a line.

The hay field si 40 acres and a perfect square. I keep them onsite so max move is maybe 1000ft.

There is also issue with this tractor that the neutral detents are next to GONE so finding gears can be a serious pain. I am getting pretty good with it but I still have to look down and far from a shift by feel sort of thing. it SUCKS

The hay business was not nice to me last year so cheap to free is about all I want to afford right now. Would love to "invest" but everytime I deal with a PITA hay buyer than wants cheaper and cheaper, I don't gen encouraged to spend much....


EDIT: regarding the clutch tractor, I think I looked into this concern last year and was mostly advised to not worry much about it for right now. The clutch did not have many hours when I bought it. I run at low rpm, low load, and try to fully engage/disengage whenever possible but inching up just requires slipping.

We have an old Ford 800 and even an older 641 that my grandfather bought brand new. We slip the pis out of them at times. Never replaced a clutch.... I hope the Case is nothing different. I hope to replace it in couple years.
 
I'd rather use the 4020 to load bales as the skid steer is a track machine and tears up a field when loading. It takes about 15 minutes to load the trailer and do it two as a time. I bring them in with one on the stinger and one on the back. The back bale can be set down without ever stopping and turn around is quick with the power shift. I assume you are close enough to home that you aren't tying them down? That's the biggest time waster for me. Some field have to be tied down. There's a good 30-45 minutes right there.

Maybe you should look at your loader controls. If they could be moved closer to you or switched to a joystick it may make it easier to move the loader on the go. A loader tractor can be very quick loading bales. It is the user friendliness that makes them inconvenient. You can't move the tractor controls but you can move the loader controls. I have been close several times to fabricating a mount for the controls on the left hand side. Use the right hand to shift gears and steer, never take the left off the loader controls. I've always had clutch loader tractors and never had an issue.
 
ONly have the one tractor. Use it to swath, rake, bale, and load trailers. As soon as baling is done, I drop the baler and go arrange bales in nice lines to make it easier to load. done..

All hay stays on the same piece of ground.
 
Ya. I've got a loader on the Oliver 1600 too. I can unload,stack them in the barn and on average make a round trip to and from a field from a half to a mile away in about 40-45 minutes,to the field,load,come home and unload.
 
OK, a couple of laser fast tractors out there BUT how many are you loading? Are you loading 2 high, are you precisely placing them for over the road or just throwing them on to get moved?

I am very certain I can work a whole lot faster but that tractor has me pinned. Clunky old trans, slow hydros, etc. The biggest question right now is how can I get more efficient? Adding a poker on the back really is not going to speed anything up since my bales are right by the trailer for loading.

I was just thinking of a small accumulator to ride with the baler. That might be a BIG difference in that my current baler requires that I back up on each bale.

I was thinking of twin bales spears BUT does anyone do that? Does it work well? I could see a few issues if one does not load quite right. Actually just a longer spear to hit two would be great but at that reach, I might not have enough curl to do that.
 
A double spear scares me for my old machinery. I'm really picky about loads. The bales are lined up exact and are at the edge of the trailer on the crown side so there's no leaning.

Do you have enough reach or power to load from only one side? I load from one only. It makes the load more stable as they lock together when you push one bale across with another. Mine are stacked two high everywhere but on the headache rack.

If your hydraulics are that slow you need to look into changing a filter or something. Send that baby in for a priority at the dealership. The 4020 is no jackrabbit. In fact, the loader on it is just as fast as the one on the Farmall M and that's a 60 year old tractor.

If your pump is worn out enough to be that slow put a PTO pump on it. You will be glad you did. There's lots if us using a gear trans for a loader. That's what we have so that's what we use.
 
I load four on a side down,then three in the middle on top with one up on the tongue. I usually load from both sides,but if I have more bales accessable from one side,or if I'm loading out of a fencerow I'll load from one side. I don't go out ahead of time and line anything up beforehand when I'm hauling right from where they lay out of the baler. My Dad or my Uncle used to go out and line a few up now and then if they were bored and wanted something to do,but it didn't save me any fuel for darned sure,just a little bit of time,but not much.

I did see an accumulator in a magazine just yesterday pulled behind a Vermeer. Just a square tube frame trailer that the bales rolled on to,then they all got dumped at once,but I know my Gehl sits too low for anything like that. The bales would have to roll up hill.
 
I use an industrial ford tractor with loader. Hydraulics are much faster than a farm tractor, and it has shuttle shift. They are fairly cheap to buy, many don't have pto. Spear on the loader, and spear on the 3 point. I use the loader and 3 point to get piles made the size of the truck. Then drive the truck to the pile and load up. Its pretty fast, and not real expensive.
Josh
 
Here's what i use to move hay out of the field. Had some time on my hands one day and threw this contraption together. My brother laughed and said that will never work. Well, that was probably 5 years ago. I have a 40 foot flatbed and an old Mack truck we used to move hay with, but I was looking for something a lil more user friendly. The one mistake I made was setting the axles to far back. The rear axle needs to be moved in front of now front axle to take some weight off the tongue. It's nothing more than a house trailer frame and axles. I cut the axles in half, cut out what I wanted for the width, welded a sleeve back on to hold them together. As you can see, the rails that the hay sits on was just whatever I could find laying around. Mostly pipe and odds and ends from a galvanized fence I took out at the school.
Thing with this is the same concept as using hay wagons. If I am working by myself, I can go to the field, unhook, load the trailer, rehook and take off. I have hauled 14 bales, but that is quite a load on the tongue. 10 4X5 bales with 2 more on top is plenty.
No more than I have invested in it, had to give it a shot. I was pretty skeptical as well that it would hold up. Granted, it's not something you want to pull up and down the highway, but it sure works good moving hay out of the field to the barn or hay stack.
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We move several hundred 5x6 a year out of 20+ small fields. I can only get the semi into one field. So we gather bales with a 10 bale trailer with front dolly wheels. Behind a tractor we can haul 14 bales at a time. Using a 4020 or 4450 with loaders. 4450 with powershift is much slower than the 4020. With no cab, a long handle shift lever and a joystick the 4020 is a really sweet loader tractorand operates on 35% of the fuel that the 4450 does. But when it is 95 degrees out I'll use the bigger horse. The time savings are in the visibility and quik steering. The other time saver is we use a self locking hitch to hook and unhook from that dolly trailer. Same as the guys with custom choppers. You can drop the trailer grab a few close bales and back into the hitch and go to the next. No messing around grouping bales. The only thing faster would be an inline bale trailer but then you need 2 people to make it efficient.
 
I load mine onto two wagons in tandem, 11 bales to
a wagon. I use a two prong spear on a 6400 JD, and
a three point mover on the rear at times. It's a
bit faster in a larger field- I can move three
bales at a time to the wagons, and load two at a
time onto them. You want plenty of weight to move
the wagons, though, and enough machine to stop
them. The two wagons can carry 22 bales at a time.
I also use a gooseneck trailer when I have some
help- I can get another 17 bales squeezed onto it.
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[quohttp://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/images/attach/jpg.gifte="fastline"](reply to post at 19:47:28 01/19/14) [/quote]

Sometimes I help my friend when he's round baling and I've seen him make a tight circle while he's rolling the twine on the bale(manual electric) and then drops the bale on the move and back into the windrow where he left off. I think the main reason is he doesn't want to shift gears.
 
Jim, believe it or not, it really doesn't get in
the way. But, I bought that old bucket kind of
busted up and have been using it for a couple of
years now. My original intent, and still is, is to
cut the bucket up and use it for it's mounts to
build it into a new hay spear. But, I have been
using that spear through two tractors now....
 
We have a 50 hp JD Cab hydro self leveling. 480E Case backhoe. and a WD45 Allis. The 480 is probably twice as fast as the WD. and the Compact JD is almost as fast as a skidsteer. I get a retired neighbor to drive the pickup and 25 ft gooseneck trailer. It will haul 14 4X5 bales. We usted to haul the bales to the middle, end, and etc. Is faster to just drive the truck out into the field and load it. I can haul 2 bales to the truck at a time. Then unload it with the backhoe. Backhoe's have a shuttle and torque convertor, and are cheap. 5000 to 10000.
 
My renter bought one of these last summer...

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NOT cheap, though!
Haukaas
 
I don't know where you are but it's dry here and we just use grapples. 4430 (s-quad) to load, 4450 (p-shift) at home to unload, and if we are running 2 trucks, we work together and I put the rear forks on the 4020 (synchro). I can set bales in line with the 4020 faster than the 4450 can set them off the trailer.

I'm with others here on the PTO pump. Then add a joystick or spool valve where you can make your shift while still running the loader. That's why I prefer a JD quad-trans over the powershift. You always hit the gear you are after, and you can reach across and shift it while your right hand is running the loader.

If you want to carry and set 2 bales at a time, get 4 long spikes across the front, evenly spaced. That way if you move one bale, you can grab it with the center 2 spikes. If you have slow hydraulics now you will definitely need to go to the PTO pump and stand-alone hydraulic system for the loader. Then, will your front axle take the weight?

Slow hydraulics and lousy shifting make for a lousy loader tractor. I doubt shifting a magnum would be any better than the JD. And let's face it, you don't need another gear every 1 mph when doing loader work.
 
As soon as the baler starts to tie, pull out of the windrow, circle while it is tying and do your best to group the bales. One stop, no riding the clutch. When baling straw, you are usually going fast enough, you will go 100 feet or more before stopping and the baler is tying all the time, makes a mess or if you hit the brakes, it's a hard fast stop and tough on the brakes. if bales are grouped, not so much running or moving your transport to next group.
 

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