What happened to those "loaf" balers?

About the time I was "giving up farming for good" (LOL) the rage
seemed to be hay balers (stackers?) that made a bale that looked
like a huge loaf of bread.
I tried to find a picture of them on the net but didn't see any.
Anyone else remember those? What happened to them?
Too hard to feed? Too much rot?

Do you mean like a stackhand or those early low density big square
balers that made like a tied stack? There was round balers that
rolled on the ground too.

They were Heston hay stackers. Never used one but
they didn't work good if you lived where it was wet,
too much waste. You see a few out west where it's
dry.

hesston and owatonna made some but they kinda went out of style.
They didn't tie and you needed a special tansporter to move them easily. And you couldn't really stack them to save space.
For a small guy they weren't a bad deal but I think they didn't fit into larger operations well.

I still have two of them that will get used if we get enough rain to raise a crop. I have the feeder that trims them off and puts the feed in a windrow for the cows to eat. I like using them, no string to cope with, all mechanized, it just makes it simple for me to feed.

You are thinking of Hesston stackers.They faded away for the most part when big sqaures came along for ease of handling.Once in awhile you see a few corn fodder stacks.Years ago there was a place not far from me that would make hay stacks with one,then they haul them in and make alfalfa pellets and sell them.It was a neat sight to see 4 wheel drive Olivers running stackers.But the fella retired and passed away twenty or so years ago.Most of the land parceled off,buildings and pelletizer equipment all gone.Scott

Yea,there were several around here. The Hesston StackHand 30 was the big one,the StackHand 10 was the small one. I had some corn stalks stacked one year with a 10. Trouble was they blew apart in the wind and slid apart if you weren't careful moving them.

Yep, those are the stacks I was remembering!
I remember a JD version too and did find some pics of the stackers.
I figured there had to be some reason they disappeared real fast.
I mean, shoot, that was just what? Late 70's early 80's? LOL
Here's a Hesston 30 brochure shot now that I know what to search for.
Thanks!

Do the cows ever complain about the feed?

I bought the Stakhand line from Hesston Corp in the late 80's. We made 25 to 30 units per year mostly Stakhand 60's and some 30's no 10's.They are still used in the drier western areas.At that time it was the fastest way to put up hay. Some operators were picking up at 12 mph making 6 ton stacks.

Jim

Ken you are right thing was called a HAWK=BUILT I think . It was worse than the stackhand.

We used to have those stacks custom made for us. We had mostly corn stalk stacks but we had a few hay stacks too. They weathered pretty well as long as we used them up before the next summer and we did have to store them in a place that was sheltered from the wind. It was a little tough getting the mover under the stack after it had sat awhile especially if the tractor was on frozen ground or snow. Seemed like the tractor (1070 Case and then 1086 IH) didn't have enough traction sometimes to push it back under the stack. The chain would start pulling the stack apart and we still couldn't get backed under it. Hesston did have that crawler track assist under the back that helped a bit but some times the tracks would stall the hydraulics. Toward the end we had a grapple claw on the loader so we could grab chunks of stack and take it to the cattle.
For corn fodder stacks I still think they're OK as long as the stacks can be stored in a sheltered area and a grapple claw of some sort can be used to feed them. I would think if the fodder or hay was tub ground these stacks would work OK if the tub grinder had a claw to grab chunks and feed them into the tub. Jim

One of the neighbors had one. Just a chopper feeding a hopper. Hay spoiled, some stacks blew down, scattered. Their carrier wagon didn"t do well in picking up or transporting. Hydraulic lid apparently didn"t compress the stacks enough to make them solid enough. He didn"t have that one long.

There were quite a few in this area but I don't remember seeing any hay stacks, only corn stalks.

Sounds like the JD cubers. Came out around the mid "70s and within 10 years were gone. We had several neighbors that bought them to sell cubed alfalfa to feedlots and dairies. Seemed to work well, but doubt there are any left running.

Stackers got replaced by high-capacity forage harvesters, trucks, and bunk silos.

My tractors would not do 12 mile per hour in the field, fact is road gear was not that fast. And no way could you even in smooth fields stay on the seat at that speed.

Art Behrnwald in Lakeview was a Hesston dealer when those things came out. He sold the heck out of those things around here.