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Shane: Now that I can call you by name, I will respond. To start with in 1962 a New Holland S-69 was not an antique baler. In fact my dad had tried out 2 NH models, S-69 and another I've forgotten the model number of but do remember it was more money. Neither was the Farmall 300 an antique tractor in 1962. Secondly you fail to realize that if one bales 4,500 - 45 lb. bales, he need only bale 3,375 - 60 lb. bales to tie up the same amount of hay. I make it right around the 100 ton mark either way. Yes I have tried making heavier bales, but those first old throwers just wouldn't handle 60 lb. bales. We never did put a man on the wagon, this machine was bought to reduce labour not kill them off. Those 20'x 8' x 8' wagons would hold 150 - 45lb. bales just thrown in and very few ever missed the wagon. Yes I have on many ocasions seen 3-4 loads per hour coming to the barn, thus we always had to be unloading in two locations at the same time. I forget the exact plunger speed of the S-69 but like most balers it was around 65 strokes per min. On ocasion I have noticed the S-69 tieing every 3rd stroke of the plunger but more often than not it would tie every 4th stroke. New Holland balers are very capable of this if you keep the plunger adjusted so the knife shears like sissors, and keep the kinfe sharp as well. We use to sharpen that knife daily. Now, as I see it a bale every 4th stroke as 16.25 bales per min. or 975 per hour. Now one has to realize time must come out for changing wagons, adding twine and minor adjustments. I don't remember the exact time per day on 4,500 bales, but I'm thinking most of those days we were baling by 11am and all done by 7 or 8 pm. I have done 4,500 bales per day on many ocasions, only once did I ever do it on two consecutive days, and labor was the limiting factor. When I suggested I could find you 20 or more farmers that had done this, you chose to make fun of the fact. I can take you to many farms where 4,000 to 5,000 bales per day was considered a good days work, some where between 3,000 and 4,000 was considered average, anything less than 3,000 was poor. I know very little about some of these new square balers as I went to round bales in 1975. I've had New Holland dealers tell me as late as 1990 that the S-69 was the best all around baler they ever built. The S-69 had fewer warrenty claims than any baler New Holland built. I even had one dealer, in business since the 1950s, tell me that New Holland never built a more productive baler than the S-69. He said, "The model numbers may have gotten larger but by 1985 the actual baler had gone down hill."
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