Baling Hay - Pure Pan Kicker...

Here is a video I put up several days ago of us baling hay. I’ve got a GoPro like Camera, DJI OSMO Action Camera and rigged up a
magnetic mount so I could record from different spots around the equipment. In this video, the camera is mounted to the twine box. No voice talking,
just some intermittent text regarding the pan kicker and why we have/use it.

If you’ve never seen a John Deere Pan Kicker up close at work, this is the video...

Enjoy!
Pure Pan Kicker

We had one for the last few years I was on the farm,I thought it was a great machine! After I left dad switched to big round bales.

Very nice video!!
Fastest hydraulics in the West! or East! One way cylinder throwing and a spring to bring the pan back to home!
Roger Russ

That reminds me, when I was a teen, thought I should try & catch a straw bale lofted by one of those pan kickers. When the bale was lobbed out of the back, I did catch it..... & then the ground caught me. Damn near broke my nose! Think I've had brighter ideas.

Mike

I’m trying to remember - do/did you work for Deere where they make these balers and pan kickers? If so - do you see anything I need to adjust regarding the bale making its way to the pan?

Just curious as to your thoughts as to how the bale is landing on the pan and getting kicked.

Thanks for the comment and watching!

Bill

I always thought it was easier to unload pan kicked bales over belt thrower bales.

I used to hire college rowers in the summer to stack behind the kicker. I had 10x18' wagons. I think we got close to 200 bales on that way.

Is the throwing distance adjustable on the fly?

Yes, Bill, I did work for Deere and at the factory where the balers and ejector is/are made.

It looks like you are pretty well adjusted. The bales are not tumbling one way or the other excessively. It the trip is too late and the bale is way out on the pan to the rear they tumble instead of "fly" . The pan may have trouble coming back home quick enough to get under the next bale.

If tripped too early, the pan is not centered under the bale and they tumble the other way, and you are trying to throw before they are out of the bale case. They will not "fly" as far.

To answer a question above, yes you can control the distance on the move. Just adjust the relief valve either electrically or mechanically. Aiming you can see in the video. The aiming needs an orifice in the line so it is not quite so "violent" in the aim, but it is working.

Yes, you can adjust the distance on the "fly". You change the relief valve setting either mechanically by a lever or electrically via an electric motor/reduction drive.

“It looks like you are pretty well adjusted.”

Roger - thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!

Bill

Bill,

May I share some of my pan thrower and baling experience with you?

I have about 30 years experience with JD pan throwers, first one a #30 on a 24T baler, late 80's (IIRC). They are an incredible labor saver and provide more safety than one person riding a flatbed pulling bales off the chute and stacking. We have many hilly fields and odd shaped fields, mostly rented 300+ acres of hay.

When we cut, we create a pattern of 4 rounds around the perimeter of the field, and then all the rest is cut in straight rows. This is the easiest pattern to bale as it minimizes the bales being thrown on the turns. We consider it a bad day if we have more than 2 drops/ hundred bales, usually much fewer drops. When you are making a turn and you have the feeling that it might throw a bale, set your distance control down to "3", allowing the bales thrown on turns to go to the front of the wagon, and as soon as the baler and wagon are straight with each other go back to a higher throw distance number to fill the back and middle of the wagon. Most of your drops occur on turns.

I like the ingenuity shown by your home made bale wagon. But we learned a long time ago to build the wagon sides from steel (1.5" sq tubing verticals, 1" sq tubing horizontals) with a flair out at the top to aid in reducing dropped bales. This is fairly common in factory produced wagons. We modify our commercial built wagons with 3 rows of light chain across the front above the fold down front door. The pan thrower will fill the wagon front with about 20 more bales due to the chains keeping the bales from rolling out the front on down hills. The belt thrower on NH balers can't do this and can only fill with 20 to 30 less bales than our full loads.

A real safety advantage of the pan thrower system is that it can only throw when the baler flywheel is turning. There is no hydraulic pressure accumulator. The large hydraulic pump driven by the flywheel must be turning to create the necessary pressure to make the pan throw. So when you get out of the tractor, shut off the PTO first.

I bale with a 1979 Ford TW 10 because I like the ability to feather the hydraulic controls. I keep right hand on that hydraulic lever and gently feather it to right or left. My son's IH tractor has electric over hydraulic controls and it makes adjusting the turns quite jumpy. I won't drive that tractor.

We set up our distance controls to operate with electric motors, and the 3 position switch is very close to the hydraulic steering lever. If I were to redesign the control lever, it would have the switch mounted on the lever, so the right hand never has to leave the control lever.

For raking, we have modified a commercial 10 wheel rake to rake 2 rows simultaneously and keeping them separate to allow faster dry down. Our cutter has a 13 ft cutting bar, so the windrows are plenty big. We do have another wheel rake that can merge 2 rows into one, if the crop is thin.

Right now we have 2 348 balers and 2 328 balers. We can put all 4 on the field at the same time. We own 18 throw wagons and occasionally borrow a few more. Our highest production day was 3500+ bales, all under roofs before quitting time (midnight). I really like the 348 baler, it has tremendous capacity, but if you feed it too fast it will bale faster than the thrower can get them tossed. Our biggest problem has been the inconsistent thickness of the twine. We use 7200 twine because the bales can put up with more abuse than with the thinner 9000 twine. All of our hay goes to horse stables.

In reviewing your video, it looks like you are allowing tractor and wagon wheels to ride on top of a windrow. We really avoid this as the driven on windrow is compressed onto possibly damp ground making for damp bales when you bale that row. We also use moisture meters in out balers with readouts in the cabs. 14% moisture is a very good number as it allows the hay to be compressed and yet will not become dusty from mold even if stacked immediately in the barn. Less moisture means the hay gets too "springy", lighter weight bales that are not adequately compacted. Over 18% moisture means risk of mold developing when the hay is in the customer's barn. Over 25% risks the bales heating up and producing methane, possibly setting a barn on fire. These numbers are for our hay which is a combination of alfalfa and orchard grass. The grass dries down sooner and helps the alfalfa get rid of some stem moisture when it is in the bale.

Thanks for your video, I wish I had the intelligence to make and post a video as good as yours.

Best Wishes for a good crop, rain free!


Paul in MN


P.S. When I refer to "we", that means myself (age 75), my son (an ag engineer), his son (age 16), his wife, and 2 daughters. All 3 of his kids work in the family hay business, and all 3 are in high school. They know how to work and I am proud of them! They are also very good students.

I have a JD 346 with a thrower, i just use the rod to adjust the throw distance, i turn it down to 2 or 3 on turns. A lot of guys around here use i think it was a motor from a car power locks or the wiper motor i cant remember, to electrically control the throw distance, they had cab tractors!

Nice video!

Jay,

We used auto window lift motors to turn the dial. It is the easiest motor to convert to this use.


Paul in MN

Paul, one thing you can do to help the capacity is to put the two short angle irons on the rear bottom of the balecase that angle slightly upwards. They were on the 40, if I remember. They raise the end of the bale coming out of the balecase so the pan can get back home without interference with the outcoming bale.

Great video, looks like you could run a rake over what you baled, a lot of grass left in the field.

Paul,

Thanks for the reply. We are pretty close on how we go about baling.

We do make a perimeter of windrows around the field and then long straight runs inside of that. Some of our fields don’t lend themselves very well to that however, but we do the best we can.

One of these days we will have some nice steel racks on our kickers, for now, wood racks are cheap to build so that’s what we have - for now...

The hydraulic tilt, on my JD 5055d, the tilt is very controlled and smooth. On the MF 1105, it can be jerky. I think that is a flow control issue and I can adjust it. It’s on my round-2-it list...

Twine... we use to use 7200 sisal, but found it to be inconsistent and prone to breakage. We have since move to 9600/210 twine plastic twine and have zero broken bales - except occasionally at twine ball change over due to my lame knots!

Sometimes the way we divide our fields to bale, we will run over a windrow. It’s either that or waste a pile of time traveling the headlands.

We have a moisture meter in our baler for reference as we bale. It is an Agtronics BH2 meter dressed up in JD colors. We also have a hay preservative applicator with buffered propionic acid we use as a last resort, if necessary.

As Roger mentioned, you can put angles on the bottom sides of the bale chamber where the bale exists that hold up the bale so the pan can get back under the bale without interference. You can see that in my video. BTW, our kicker is a #42 and we’d have electric distance control, but hydraulic tilt. You can get both electric distance and tilt. Deere has a joy stick that goes in the cab that controls both at the same time, so you would not have to take your hand off the controls like you mentioned.

Videos aren’t to bad to take and upload.

Thanks again!
Bill

Roger,

I'll check that this afternoon. Going out to the field in a few minutes. I know my other balers have them, I thought the 348 also has them (???).

Paul in MN

Right you are, I remember now! Go to the junk yard and get a power window motor out of a junk car!

Roger,

Both of our 348 balers have the angle iron corners that lift the front of the bale above the leading edge of the pan.
Thanks for encouraging me to check for them.

Paul in MN

Back in the late 70's we got a new #30 thrower on a 24-T and we used pairs of wagons hooked together for distant fields. Noticed a few broken bales in back wagons and found 18 year old operator was loading both hooked together by adjusting throwing distance from tractor.