JD 530 ROUND BALER

The basic thing about round balers is it's necessary to weave if the windrow isn't sized for your pick up. This way you get a full dense bale each time. What you are doing is making sure the outsides of the bale are full. If the outsides of the bales are dense, it's automatic that the center is dense. So it isn't necessary to think about hay getting in the center of the bale. The only time that's a problem is if you rake two rows together and have a gap between them, say they are a foot apart. That gap will translate to the bale as having a soft spot all the way through in the middle and the bale will collapse inward like a rotting pumpkin after it sits for awhile.

I've not noticed that ground speed affects density, but maybe someone else could address that.

The only other advice I could mention is be sure to get enough string on the edges of the bale when you tie. Don't worry about the center as you are really only interested in making sure wind doesn't get under the edge and peel things back and get rain into the bale. Just take a bit of time when you tie to get enough twine on the outside edges and make sure you weave when you are working with narrow rows and you should be doing fine pretty fast. It only takes 20-30 bales to really get a good hang of it and every bale is coming out square shouldered and looking good.

JJL