Hay stacking

DakotaBob

New User
Does anybody on here make "farmhand stacks" instead of baling hay? I have an idea that the old method could be about as fast as making round bales, use less costly equipment, and make better quality hay because the alfalfa leaves don't get broken off as much. Does anybody have experience with putting up hay in loose stacks?
 
There were several Hesstons around here. I had some stacked one time before I bought a round baler. They don't like wind. The top will blow off of them. You have to be pretty careful with transporting them too. I don't know about being as fast as round baling. You have to keep stopping to pack them down,then unless you want to be out there retrieving them and moving them to a storage area or the edge of the field,it's best to drive to a central area where you want to leave them.
 
We did that in the 50's and 60's with a super M and a F 10. Round baler is easier. WE hired a
stack mover to move the things home. This was way before the Hesston stackers. From SD
 
I was always intreged with those bread loaf makers, but I noticed they might not even make them any more, or at least I don't see many new
ones ever, while round balers became very popular and I suppose there is a reason for that.

Paul
 
My non-professional, non-knowledgeable WAG on the subject is that it would take several stacks to equal one 1600# 5x6 round bale. While on the
subject my guess is that loose hay in the loft of a popular sized barn, stuffed in there by hand with a hay fork, may have amounted to 50 (if that)properly
prepared 65# squares.

I bale hay and continually I get spoofed by what I think it'll make and what it actually makes.
 
I see stacks in Western Nebraska on
I80 when I go to Iowa. Looks like it's
one large ranch doing them. I tried to
Google it but couldn't find anything
on them.
 
Last time I remember seeing that done was back when I was around 12 years old and I lived in Leigh NE. My brother worked for a farmer and he helps do hay and I went along a lot of the time due to his son being a friend of mine. He had this cage sort of thing that the bake would open and he would pull it off the stack once he had filled the cage up with hay and let it sit a day or 2 before pulling the cage off. Always looked funny after the cows had eaten part of the hay stack and the stack would sort of look like a big mushroom
 
A local guy had a Hesston stacker here in the 70's. He used it to harvest cornstalks for his cattle before round bales. He switched to rounds
when they came out.
 
did many a stacks that way. we used what was called a "stack Frame" Dad would dump the hay into with the loader and hay buck. Brothers and I would spread it around and keep it level and pack it in. would get up the as high as the loader would go and using the push off rack. last load, we would finish the dome and climb on the bucked and dad would lower us down. We would get 2 or 3 done on a good day. We had dairy barn and that was what the hay was for. Miserable job when it got in the 90's with high humidity.
 
Only problem is moving them. Seen a guy in
the late fall cut and made huge windrows
everyone wondered when he was going to bale
but in the winter he simply feed one windrow
at a time using a hot wire cows had no
problem digging them out of the snow and he
didn't have to start a tractor to feed and
the manure was hauled and spread.
 
Heston and John Deere both made stackers and sold stack movers, I have a small Heston, they are dirt cheap at auctions, best to feed them
under a barn because winter winds will blow the stacks away.
 

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