Sisal Twine beats Plastic in this instance

I'm following up on a post that I made last fall.

Late last summer, we picked up a NH273 baler with a thrower as a second baler.

Price was right, and, to be honest, I'm getting a little old to be walking fields all day picking up a few hundred bales put on the ground by our NH276.

With the wet weather we had, I only had one day to use the 273. It baled pretty well. Made great knots. BUT, the thrower belt was burning through the plastic twine and breaking about one bale out of every three or four.

Not acceptable. Anyway, I asked if sisal twine would be better than plastic here. I didn't really get an answer. I did get some suggestions to bale faster (which I already did) and to shorten the bales (which I didn't get to try, since we were rained out for the rest of the fall).

Anyway, it's a new season, and I pulled the 273 and 276 out of storage and put them to work last weekend. I didn't change any settings on the 273, but I bought a couple of bales of untreated 9000 foot, sisal twine.

500 bales, not a single instance of the twine getting burned through by the thrower belt.

It's going to cost more, since sisal is 59 bucks a bale, vs 30 for plastic... but no broken bales is a blessing.

And... I get tired of throwing all that plastic in the dumpster. I can at least burn untreated sisal in the wood stove (or bonfires... who doesn't like a bonfire?)

Anyway. For this particular issue Sisal > Plastic

I always prefer sisal to plastic for square bales. Even for round bales I HATE plastic, but it's a necessary evil I guess. But every winter when I'm fighting with a mess of it every day, I swear I'm going to switch to sisal.

Yeah, but them 'miserable meeces' just love sisal!

Plastic burns just like sisal does.

(quoted from post at 11:04:15 06/12/19) Yeah, but them 'miserable meeces' just love sisal!

Click to expand...

Aint that the truth. We keep three cats in the barn for just such an emergency...

I've stayed with the 9000 foot sisal and had no serious problems with mice or breakage. Around $42 last year where I buy it.

Mice may like Sisal but rabbits LOVE sharpening their teeth on plastic! Go in and clipped darn near every string.

we've found that if we stack the bales on the edge the mice don't eat through the strings as bad, also easier to take out as the strings are right in front of you, no digging thru loose hay to find the strings.

I found somwe plastic twine that had washed out of an old ditch the other day. Two strings, still knotted, still viable, the size of a square bale. It was red and white, Bought from Massey Ferguson and used by us 40+ years ago.

Last cowboy, I remember your post from last year and I remember my response. It was what stopped my baler from burning plastic. Did you try it?