What is it? CL

[Leon Fisk]

There were small round bales a long time ago (~50's?) that only weighed ~60 lbs. They didn't stack well and thus weren't easy to wagon and move like similar square bales.

The farmer down the road from me doesn't even move these large round bales to feed them. They were place in rows about 8 feet equidistant with around 6 to a row. Large round gate type hoops* are placed over them (a row at a time) and a light electric fence is erected to prevent the cattle from getting to the remaining bales. Small x for bales, big X for bales with hoops. Little c are cattle.

Fence |

-------------------------------------- x x x x x x x | X c c c | c c c x x x x x x x | X | c c x x x x x x x | X | c c x x x x x x x | X c c

--------------------------------------

Use a fixed-pitch font for best display. Every few days they just reset the fence around new bales and move the hoops.

Of course with the wet winter we've been having the cattle are up to their knees in mud after a short time, but that is another story...

• The hoops used look similar to these:

[RAM³]

"Jerry Foster" wrote in news:rXzlh.56568$ [e-mail]:

In this area [Texas Gulf Coast] the round bales predominate - I haven't seen many trucks hauling square ones but LOTS of trucks hauling round ones

- but I remember (well, if not fondly) walking beside trucks and heaving 3- tie square bales for a nickle a bale.

Good exercise, I was told.

The first round balers in this area were New Hollands that produced the large size currently in use.

FWIW, baling twine (and baling wire, for that matter) are still stocked - and used for their original purpose - around here.

I DO get a kick out of the people on RV newsgroups who simply wouldn't believe their eyes when being passed by a 1-ton dually pulling a goose-neck flatbed trailer with 15-20 3/4-ton round bales on board. (It's a frequent sight around here.)

As far as I can see, the single biggest advantage to the round bales is in ease of distribution: unroll it and feed many cattle at once.

[RAM³]

Leon Fisk wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Be thankful for the moisture - Oklahoma and Texas have been fighting drought...

[Jerry Foster]

As I recall, the big New Holland round baler came out sometime in the mid '70s, about 30 years after the 1947 Allis Chalmers round baler...

Jerry

[Unknown]

The move to large bales sure spoiled a bunch of fun for the kids. When the crew was storing bales for the winter a few of us kids would stand around watching. As soon as the crew left for another load we went to work creating tunnels and secret caverns in the pile. A lookout warned us when the next load was returning and we quickly covered the exit hole and watched them add to the pile. This process was repeated and at the end of the day the pile of bales was a lot bigger than it should have been and we had a wonderful secret playground for the winter.

Those huge round bales ruined that activity.

[Barry]

I can certainly vouch for the handling of good old fashioned square bails. Long days for little pay. But, it was better than one dollar for picking one hundred pounds of cotton by hand.

[George E. Cawthon]

Not disappearing where I drive a lot (Idaho, Oregon, Nevada).. You see regular bales (60-80 pounds), big round ones(no plastic)(probably 600+ pounds) and the big square ones (probably 500+ pounds).

[Gunner]

Last time I picked up bales from the ground..I was driving a tractor hauling a bail loader. As long as the bale went into the chute...it would stack em nice and neat on the trailer. Most modern farms do that these days.

Gunner

Political Correctness

A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

[Doghouse]

I worked on a dairy farm in 1969. Two of us stacked bales in a wagon with eight-foot sides towed behind a baler. I'd grab the ejected bale and toss it to the guy who was stacking.

IIRC, the baler tossed bales over the front side of the wagon. Now I'm not sure about it. Bales tossed that high would probably have been erratic. One of them could have broken my neck if I didn't see it coming. A lot of them would probably have broken on impact.

Does anyone remember how balers tossed bales into towed wagons?

[Jim Behning]

In Georgia we buy squares of Bermuda about 50# for a tight bale. Round

4x6 are about 1,000#. Some folks still use 5x5 balers at about the same weight. Weight of course depends on how tight they roll same as the square weight. I think some went to the 4x6 rollers so they would not get hassled by the DOT for wide loads when hauling hay. I buy 4 rolls at a time. I store them in the barn and move one with my little tractor. The horses eat the roll with no waste or next to no waste. They sleep in the hay as they pull it apart but our horses do not waste it. It helps if all your summer grasses have gone dormant so if they want to eat they better not poop in the hay. When we ran a boarding bard some of the horses were a bit stupid in that regard. No hoops around the bales.

Small squares are $5 and the large rounds are $55. The rounds are cheaper per ton. Last summers drought, diesel prices, army worms, and increased fertilizer costs have driven up prices. Not long ago rounds were $40 and squares could be bought for less than $3. Plus my regular hay farmer has no spare rounds to sell.

I have seen a lot of the big 4x4x8 square bales driving west to Colorado. I have never seen the big squares in Georgia. They may use it somewhere but I have never seen them advertised for sale in the Market Bulletin.

None of the half dozen farmers I have bought hay from bale in plastic wraps. I suspect in humid Georgia you risk a lot of mold and maybe fires wrapping in plastic. But I am not a hay farmer.

[Barbara Bailey]

At abouut the same time, in northern Illinois, the hay wagons on my uncles' farms, and other farms nearby, didn't have a front side. They had slat-sides on the side-sides and at the rear, but nothing between the baler and the catcher. The bales came out low, maybe a foot, a foot and a half, above the bed of the wagon.

[Jerry Foster]

Bales came out of the baler via a simple chute that was suspended at the proper angle to clear the front of the wagon by a pair of chains. A man riding the wagon stacked them as the baler shoved them out. In most cases, a bale wagon had only a back, no sides or front.

Then, I believe it was John Deere that first came out with the idea of the bale thrower. The bales were about half the length of a regular bale and were commonly called "biscuit bales." (A full sized bale would break...) The thrower was a pair of arms with barbs at the ends that would engage the bale and the chute out of the baler was an appropriate segment of a circle. When the bale had emerged to the proper point, the mechanism was tripped and the arms swung about 75 degrees, lobbing the bale back into the wagon which had a high back and sides.

International Harvester responded with a bale thrower of its own. It consisted of a contrivance that had a pair of conveyor belts, top and bottom, about four feet long and powered by a separate gas engine. It was mounted on a pivot at the end of the bale box and a pair of ropes strung forward to the tractor allowed the operator to swing it from side to side to more uniformly load the wagon.

Jerry

[Doghouse]

That sounds right. I guess I was using what I could remember to reconstruct what I couldn't remember. The part about throwing the bales up would have been me throwing them up to the stacker.

I remember one incident very well. I was on my motorcycle one morning, riding out to bring in 120 cows. The sun was in my face my faceplate was scratchy. By the time I saw the three strands of barbed wire across the road, it was too late to stop.

They were the kind of barbs that dug in instead of merely scratching. To get loose I had to take the time to remove the barbs one by one from my flesh. I became aware that I was standing in a mud puddle and the fence was electrified, but one can't be rushed in performing surgery like that.

[Barbara Bailey]

Oooh. Ouch.

I lookied through an old photo album, and I have to take back part of what I said. Most of my uncles' hay wagons didn't have sides. Only slat-built backs.

[Gunner]

etc

Find a need..they will invent.....

Gunner

Political Correctness

A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

[CBFalconer]

... snip ...

What sort of idiot put barbed wire across a road. I would have taken him apart.

[RAM³]

"Jerry Foster" wrote in news:9BBlh.56589$ [e-mail]:

The local tractor dealer didn't sell AC - only Ford and New Holland - and the local farmers/ranchers were already debating the relative merits of square vs. round in the '50s.

[George E. Cawthon]

I really don't know what the big bales weigh. Looking back on my comment I should probably revise my estimate of weight quite a ways upward. And I don't know the actual size of the bales, the big square one are probably close to 4x4x8 foot and the big round ones are probably 5 to 7 foot in diameter and 8-10 foot long.

I can't imagine anyone wrapping a bale in plastic for normal over the year storage. The quality of the hay depends on the water content when bailed. Too much water and it molds and starts fires, too little water and the food value decreases. Outside hay stacks are often covered with tarps to keep the rain/snow from injecting too much moisture but the sides are also usually open to aid air circulation.

It is possible that bales could be wrapped in plastic for short term storage, transportation, or use.

[Mark & Juanita]

My dad uses a smaller version of one of the following:

These were developed in the late 60's and make the use of smaller bales remain attractive to smaller farmers. I was lucky, my granddad was getting to where he couldn't help stack hay and I being a young sprout of about 10 years old was not deemed sufficiently "robust" to be able to help stack all of the hay. So Dad invested in a New Holland bale wagon. Remarkably clever design yet almost dead stupid in the relatively small number of moving parts required to make this miracle of mechanical and hydraulic engineering work.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Doghouse]

I didn't blame him. It was a one-lane dirt road for access to his pastures. I hadn't been to that pasture before. He did not anticipate anyone going so fast. The wire was conspicuous. I did not anticipate the effect of the low sun on my scratchy visor.