JD 375 round baler

I have a JD 375 round baler that I bought from the family of the original owner. It has not been used much and bales a good tight bale. My problem is getting hay even in both sides of the bale. The little yellow plastic pieces with the black line start out even then when I get a bale started pretty good both lines drop down out of sight leaving me guessing which side needs hay. I have read my owners manual and it don't address this issue. Any idea what I need to do? Thanks Lee

You need to rake a wider windrow. Your not getting much hay in the edges of the bale. Your raked windrow should look like two windrows laid side by side or a figure eight on its side. Should be at least 3-4 feet wide. Then you need to weave more to try and get the edges full too.


Also what tread width is your tractor tires??? IF they are too narrow then you compacting the windrow before your baler even gets the hay in.

My NH is not as sophisticated but makes a nice bale. Assuming your windrows are even, once bale is started got to one side of windrow and count to 7-10. Then turn immediately to other side, don?t meander, turn quickly and count on that side for 7-10. Repeat until it?s full a tie and eject.

Thanks kikinbull and J D Seller. My tires are not running over the windrow. I guess I need to modify my raking for this baler.

My current baler is such. Tx Jim put me onto the problems.

First of all if you have a navel on one side, start the bale with fast back and forth movements of the baler over the WW. Say first 50' of ww when starting the bale. The navel is the result of loading one side of the bale chamber initially.

Second is you are not feeding hay to the edges of the bale chamber. The sensors are on the outside belts. So, if you want them to register hay, there needs to be some at the edges. Practice around here was to zig zag across the WW as you bale, not as fast as initially, but back and forth keeping your eye on the black bars.

When low fill, when high go to the other side, when even, bale should be symmetrical.

On this 5' baler a smaller WW works better, unlike the 4' where you can get by having a fat ww without any zig zagging. Reason for the smaller ww is that you can move over to the side, like my tractor is setup with 6' max width on 16.9x28 rears meaning that if I want to fill the sides of a 5' bale chamber, the wheel will be right on top of the WW.

If you get into irregular terrain, or get into huge globs of hay, like in an irregular field where raking at the ends of the rows produces a big pile, stop for a minute and let the baler digest the wad and see where you markers are....then proceed as they indicate.

Any more questions ask.

Thanks Texasmark 1

Texasmark1
Congratulations your rd bale making skills have advanced tremendously from when you 1st got your present baler. As you found out it's very important to fill the outer edges of the bale & the center will be fine
Jim

Thanks, Jim. Wouldn't have done it without you. I would still be working on the baler trying to figure out what needs fixing to get the
desired result. Wink!

Mark
You're very welcome. I'm glad I could get your rd baler operation headed in the correct direction.
Jim