hay balers

hi Jac, The ground driven square baler has been demoed at the horse progress days for several years.

(GRABER, SAM – 6405N 775E, Montgomery IN 47558. (Local farmer).

Baler – Mr. Graber furnished a John Deere 328 square baler that had been converted to ground drive. The stock wheels had been replaced by large, heavy wheels with bolt-on rubber tractor tread. Just inside the left wheel was a large sprocket from which a heavy roller chain drove a smaller sprocket on the inside end of a short jack shaft. Another chain from a larger sprocket on the outside end of the jack shaft then drove a small sprocket on the baler’s flywheel. In the field the baler was pulled by four Belgians on a White Horse basic forecart.

I cut and pasted from the Rural Heritage site list for equipment at last years event. You can find a link in another thread here some where.

Their design all ways uses a JD baler as a base, because the flywheel is perpendicular to the pto shaft and inline with the direction of travel. I think they are pretty willing to talk about how to do it. The only real draw back I saw was needing more horses. I really don’t like dropping bales on the ground and going to pick them up later. Gotta go feed some horses. Donn

Hi Jac, there are a lot of variables that go into how many horses you would need. Some are; how many bales in a day? Flat ground or hills. How big are the horses and how much regular work they got. Just for starters.

Having said that, I believe four good horses would pull the baler (with out the wagon) on most flatish ground. I think they would be working pretty good and would tire before the day was done. Add at least two for the hay wagon, and there are losses in most multiple hitches. I feel eight would be an effective team for baling hay that way. Others might suggest less. I base all this only on seeing the machine operate at HPD a few years ago. I did talk to Mr. Graber once about how it works and prices. He was very friendly and helpful. He would sell a kit, but it was still expensive, and you put it on your baler. I have not seen a ground drive round baler. good luck. Donn

Jac: a few thoughts……

Check out the most recent Small farmers Journal. Some one in Europe took the pick up head off a round baler put it on a small wagon so to speak, or a basket if you will with a dump mechanism, to p.u. loose hay. I liked that but mya be impractical in a big field.

I have been told by some Amish that some of them are putting 24-30hp motors on roundbalers with good results. The motor runs the pto and the a hydraulic pump for the gate.

Ground drive square balers take a lot of yank and nice straight fields. A ground drive round baler? I’d like to see one. I’m sure it could be done.

N

Hi John,

Not sure if the SFJ picture is the same one, but there’s a pretty decent view of the drive wheel and gears (a bit harder to see) on the John Deere baler in Lynn Miller’s book, “Haying with Horses”. It sure seems like that baler is almost defying some laws of physics 🙂 but it seems to work.

I have a friend who’s tracking down an old stationary baler that he wants to rebuild. Have you seen those things? I think you haul loose hay to the baler which is powered by horses walking in a circle attached to something similar to a “hot walker” – you lay pieces of pre-cut wire into the bale chamber and then add the hay – horses’ action drives the plunger to compress the hay – twist the wires to tie off the bale. Repeat.

Good luck.

I’ve been looking at all these options as well. One thing I’ve noticed is that you don’t see ground drive balers eating up giant winrows of grass hay. I just don’t think they could handle it.
I agree with Donns’ point about the amount of horses it’ll take if you tow a hay wagon behind instead of picking bales off the ground.
The motorized forecart looks to be the best option for my situation at least. The other option is fixing up the old balers I find around here that have the Wisconsin 4 cyl gas motors mounted. We had one and just wore it out. They were nice because you could pull it with a small tractor or team and you didn’t have to work with that PTO driveline in my small, irregular meadows. In other words it was more manueverable.

Loose hay can also be put up using a side delivery rake to windrow it and then a loose hay loader (if you can find one) to load a wagon. Haul it to the barn and load away. So why not just unload at the baler?

With regard to feeding a stationary round baler, and I don’t have much experience with them, isn’t it pretty critical to have steady and even feeding of hay into the bale chamber or maybe that’s more of an issue with square bales.

Why is everyone caught up on pulling a wagon behind the baler? Has anyone tried using one of those old ground drive “popup” bale loaders with a teampulling a hay wagon? They’re usually used on trucks but why not bale and let the bales drop in the field then come back with your team and pick them up with the popup? The only reason I can see for baling directly into the wagon is getting out of the weather ASAP.

Anyway, if you’re really into hay stuff, check out “hay talk” online – mostly commercial guys but you can get some good technical info and equip reviews if you’re interested.

Geoff, I use a Ferris Wheel bale picker and it works fine on big, open meadows. Not the greatest thing in turns. Having a wagon trailing right behind is a little easier in that regard. Most of my place is irregular in size and shape down in the river bottom.
What we used to do was have a kid bucking bales behind the baler (not too hard a job) and a pair of guys stacking and running fresh wagons to the baler. With that system we could put up 1000 bales per day or better.
I have not tried the bale picker with a team, but if you have room for it I don’t see why that’s not a good option. I may try it this summer up on my open ground on the bench. I’ll probably want to experiment a little with where my hitch point is for a smaller wagon. Might be fun.