Hi Susan, I made my own grapple just like yours last winter. After Eric gets familiar with it he will love it. This is just a suggestion. Maybe tighten up your balers tention a little more and your hay will stack better. Raking double rows works a lot better ...you get less banana bales.
With our twin star rakes,the windrows are side by side. That makes a more flater windrow for the baler to pick up. Really better for a round baler,than a windrow with a crown.there is less weaving by the tractor to make a good round bale
yes thanks for all those comments this City Boy did spend some time reading up on the History after i posted that Ironically. i did grow up in South Florida and a neighbor and good family freind of ours middle name is Deering because of his relation to John Deere Machinery and Implements who happened to be his Uncle
Back in the day 30 years ago or so we would put up a thousand or so small square bales a day for what felt like weeks. We did this all by hand of course our baler had what we called a kicker to toss the bales into a wagon with sides and a back. we then pulled bales off and put them on an elevator usually electric or PTO powered to run them into the barn. We always stacked our hay on the side so the strings where sideways vs flat with the strings up. Personally I think this makes for a much firmer surface to walk on as your walking plus there are no risk of catching your foot on a string. Of course staking them with the grapple you cant really do them sideways. Have you tried sideway stacking then crisscross each layer so the layers interlock giving them better integrity.
There are bale collectors that DO collect and stanck on edge like you did :) Ive never seen anyone here in MI do it so I'm a little nervous about how solid it would stack ;) The stacks ARE suppossed to be stacked crisscross, but it took Erik a bit to remember how he did that :( Take a bit of planning when loading the trailer on the field :)
As a rule of thumb I was taught to advise farmers to mow hay, haylage or silage not eralier than 10:30am and no later than 3:30pm. The reason being, the Sun is high enough in the sky by 10:30am to have got the sugars going up and into the grass. After 3:30pm the sugars are heading back down the grass stem. So mowing between thos times means you capture the sugar in the grass. Seed head maturity can affect the elements. So cutting the grass within and no later than four weeks from the formation of the seed head will improve quality, reduce dust and improve palatability. Having worked on farms and gone on to sell liquid feeds, silage additives, crimped grain additivves, powdered minerals, livestock mineral buckets and feed blocks I can say with confidence that the two most important processes for hay or silage is mowing and storage. Great video, very interesting to watch. Top regards from England, UK.
We used to move thousands a day but we had several working on it during the day and weren't a one (wo)man band until 5 plus we used a sledge on the back of the baler. So the one rowing up would start stacking the bales in blocks with the baler driver or a 3rd person if my brother was home would carry the bales in with the Ford 4600 pulling trailer that worked like Trevor Bales' retriever truck, if rain was likely he would carry between 2000-5000 in depending on distances and dump them side by side in the sheds before they were bound in stacks in the sheds for use over winter. One thing I have noticed though after seeing and picking up some little bales I think my dad would have bankrupted us if we had done it commercially and sold at the same price as others as he used to make them at least a foot and a half longer and tighter/denser so at least twice as heavy our straw bales I could not pick up with a pinky finger like the ones my sister was given maybe one handed but not by a little finger. So we would be doing ourselves out of half the bales.
Those grapples are good tools to have. We always ran those New Holland balers and liked them. You did a good job getting that figured out and going again. Cool video 👍👍👍❤️
I ran the 1960's version of that New Holland Baler. It's definitely a love/hate relationship keeping one working long enough to get through a whole season. There is invariably ALWAYS something going wrong with them (usually the knotter, or some jam up that snaps the flywheel key). The latter of the two, usually involved hours of digging out a blockage of hay that was just a little too moist to bale.😜
Kinda mixed results but compared to the headaches you've sufferred through the last few years, I would imagine you're pleased, hay looked good, and your buyers sure seemed to like it, all in all, more pluses than minuses, well done, Suzanne and Erik
Each season you get better. That's a win. :) You have always said you are learning. Keep it up, hold head high, love the family, embrace the struggle. BTW.. M Go Blue.
The more care and attention you put into raking, the better the baling will go. The whole job of raking should be done with baling in mind. The baler does better with a uniform windrow that is neither too small nor too large. Windrow size will determine your ground speed. Sometimes you need to double rake in order to make a better a windrow size for the baler. If your windrow gets a little light then increase your ground speed; if the windrow gets thick then reduce ground speed. This will give you nice, tight uniform bales/idiot blocks.
Your hay stacks in the barn will be more uniform and more sturdy if you stack them on edge rather than strings up. 'Tie' each layer together like putting bricks down as you go up a 'wall of hay': four north-south, next layer four east-west, next layer one east-west and three north-south, next layer two north-south one east-west two north-south, and so on.
To double rake your hay just rake it like you normally would and then go back and put two windrows together. It's really simple is make two or three windrows around the outside in your field first and then start going back and forth and don't worry about whether or not you cut the windrows on the end because when you get done with the back-and-forth you'll go back and do a couple windrows around the field again. I started working grandpa's hayfield when I was eight years old at the time I was 16 I can take a new Holland bailer apart and put it back together in my sleep. Grandpa would always buy a New Holland bailer that was about four or five years old. And he'd run that about 4 or 5 years. But every year before we start bailing we would pull the plunger out of the bailer replace every bearing there was. Pull the knives out and sharpen them, we built a jig for a 1-inch bench grinder where we could hollow grind the knives. Since we used wire tie if we needed to we would rebuild the knotters because the wire would have a tendency to wear a groove in them. When start bailing by the end of April till the first part of May and bail all the way to frost every single day six days a week. We bailed fields from southern Oklahoma clear up into Kansas then turn around and start all over again. Grandpa would not let us bail hay on Sundays he said it would just rot in the barn.
Our rake won't grab two raked rows . . . I tried it on the smaller field. Hydraulic adjustment would be good for that one! So what I found is I have to do a pass, then to get more I gather that raked row plus one more windrow. But this doesn't add a whole lot overall if the field is thin anyway. Currently the rake can (mostly) grab 3 rows. I guess the easiest thing is to just make sure the field grows nice and thick so I don't have to worry about thin rows ;D
Gord we finally figured out to bunch the hay in bundles of 10 then go back and pick up the bundles with the system put in the grapple mode. the trailer and barn stacks much tighter
@@gordbaker896 the area in the barn will hold 1200 bales stacked 8 high we could stack much higher but would have to hand stack. the loft holds 500-600.
several years ago a rancher about 30 miles from me had a new round baler with net wrap, he was having trouble with the net wrap system so he called dealer where he bought baler from and a rep was sent out with in a couple hours. Rep gets there tractor was running PTO was on machine was running.... no rancher.... he was in early 50s he must have been messing with pickup attatchment, it grabbed him and sucked him into baler.
Wes told me he got sucked into a square baler once . . . he was lucky to be alive but it chewed up his foot real good . . . (also why I run the equipment . . . I might be much slower but I'm also more cautious!)
Keep up the hard work video’s are awesome… glad to see you got rid of that cutting right away hopefully second cutting goes that fast and you don’t have any extra left👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻keep the great content coming.Stay safe and god bless
Awesome video Suzanne, I really enjoyed it very much, I'm glad that guy survived the grapple accident, I took a couple of days off from work, I needed it, I went combining with my landrenters today so that was kinda Fun, I'm sending you something pretty cool in the mail tomorrow, watch for it in your mailbox, it'll take a few days 🚜🇺🇸 Tomorrow is Friday the 13th!!! 😱😱😱😱😱
Should She ever decide to find out what Real raking is about I can give her a chance to use a rake like she uses staying a head of 2 nearly new JD 4x5 round balers....Got a video on my channel of my Son doing Just that......"In a hurry and I do know why"
Hello another great video. If you double or triple rake your hay gets a much more consistent swathes and you can bail at a slower ground speed and get a nice tight bail. 🍻🇨🇦
Since we usually only do 2 cuttings a year, it doesn't give me much time to learn new patterns :( Something like double raking while also on a new pattern just adds more confusion to my brain. lol! I did try a bit of double raking, lol, but takes a bit of time to plan my "how to" and sometimes I just don't ahve that extra 20 minutes :P
After seeing your video on the lack of moisture several videos ago, I am amazed you are gathering as much hay as you are. Nice to see. Happy subscriber 😀 Thanks for sharing.
i noticed your moisture seems low...we try to shot for 15% seems to help our quality.. we find our protein and sugar levels drop off if the hay is to dry..
That would make sense. Normally spring is tough to get it to dry. We honestly could have baled sooner. I'm guessing the ground is so dry it sucked whatever moisture that was in the grass, right out!
we do listen and we figured it out on 2nd cut remember she is like a month behind on videos. I just with the manufacture would show this way of using the machine it would save people lots of frusterations.
prophetic forethough, lol! We do try to listen to and apply comments, but as Erik said I'm 45 days late on videos right now (sinmply because I was farming my butt off all spring/summer, lol!) but Erik did think along the same way as you in figureing it out!
Just a friendly warning, be careful going downhill with that hay trailer attached to the 3 point. The weight can over center the hitch and shove it up. The rockshaft cylinder will then strike the housing and crack it. My advice is to attach a limiting chain from the hitch to the draw bar, preventing it from going up full stroke.
What I like to do when raking 2 windrows together if hay is cut north and south row 1 north and row 2 south raking them into each other leaving a wider windrows I prefer to rake hay into each other this way I can split them apart if there a moisture issue to get them dry Or you around rows 1 and 2 2 or 3 times until you have a bigger windrows
At 5:44 the "stop" your screw driver is on can be adjusted....Perhaps you can lower it so it doesn't get hung up. The stop has been superseded to a different configuration that eliminates that problem but costs over $40. The latch does not need to make that much engagement to work.
Had an oldtimer told me one time that the best time for cutting grass for hay is when the cows are grazing. When the cows quit grazing stop cutting. The cows graze when the grass taste the best.
Hey wt farm girl love watching your channel alot every day u are awesome TH-camr and the pretty one on your channel alot u put awesome content on your channel keep making awesome videos say safe and healthy with your family i hope this will get better soon so we can get back to normal life soon u my favorite TH-camr i love watching all of your videos 😀 mother and son time
Farming can be dangerous. Always be careful. I read earlier today, about 3 bothers, I think in Ohio, who were working on a manure pump & couldn't get out. They eventually were overcome by the fumes & died. All three were in there 30's.
You need what we call in the UK as a sledge, which puts it into 8. Then your you can just pick up your bales with your flat 8 bale grab what we call it over here in the UK.
Congrats on your first cutting under your belt and getting it sold that fast. That speak volumes! See no mistakes, lessons learned. Great job, great video. Can’t remember, did you put manure on all the fields?
Susan, How about road trip to Bales Hay Farm and Ranch and speak to Steven Bales. He is the man to speak to when it comes to HAY...... Plus a trip to Buckeye Arizona sounds fun!!!!
Just a question,,, if you stack the hay in the barn with the grapple why can't you reuse the grapple and put it in the truck. That U-Haul was a wide body so your grandpa should have fit inside of it. Once you get a stack of three or four high you use the next one to push the stack in further until it's to the front wall.
Excellent question! We COULD have, had the stacks been correct and tight. When they are falling over, it's impossible to re-grab them. But ideally, yes, we'd be able to do that ;)
After I sent that I got to look in a Little closer. And decided you guys did the right thing by tossing the hay in the truck and stacking it by hand. Eric looks like he needs some exercise...lol... Damn girl you've been feeding him all too well....J/K.... Now with that mentioned how's Eric's dad's German Shepherd doing. Do the people that have her now ever send you updates on her. I'd be interested in hearing an update on her and possibly even maybe see some pictures of her.
Glad to see Eric is making progress with the grapple. Slow but better than doing it by hand. Hope your second cut is better. I always liked TYM tractors and planned on getting one in the future. Sadly the local dealer has dropped TYM from it's line. They added Branson! I don't understand. SMH!😕 I guess it will be a Kioti or a Mahindra in my future. Thanks for the video.
I'm not familiar with Branson, although I THINK they are made by TYM (funny enough). Mahindra has it's issues, and Kioti as well. We had been looking at Kiotis too . . . looked very solid! But I guess they have a lot of engine issues :( But I guess you have time now to research ;D
A guy from my hometown got speared years ago in the same way(tractor rolled back) . They say the only thing that saved him is that he weighed about 450 at the time, still very scary though.
Looks like ya are starting getting a handle on things was thinking the other day and not sure where you guys are but if you are anywhere near new holland rochester they used to have a guy there named Dave that kinda specializes in balers and I am pretty sure there’s nobody anywhere that knows as much as he does about balers I used to call him now and again when I would get stumped on something as always keep the head up and looking forward
Haha yeah add kicked in again and I completely spaced putting Indiana after Rochester according to google they are bout two hours drive south of big rapids I know they have no problem driving a couple hours each way for service call might be a bit spendy but I would bet you would definitely find it worth it now that’s kinda last shot kinda deal on the small square if ya keep having small problems with it.
I've seen a lot of people use the bale handler behind a bale accumulator They attach behind the baler and gather the bales into the pattern that your bale handler can work with Maybe something to consider
Your ride on the front of hay wagon is the same spot I rode on a home made truck chassis frame made into a cordwood trailer that hauled 1 cord of 4ft wood out of the woods
If the bottom layer of bales run length wise north to south. Second layer run length wise east west. Rotate each layer like this. In the shed the stack will not fall over. On the trailer they will haul better.
Erik noticed that too. I think on that clip he had run down to another field and directly collected one last stack and drove right up to set it in, lol
Going smoother! The trailer worked! Question: How much $ a bale difference is it if you sell it in the field of from the barn? Might be better to sell it before hauling it to your barn. Eric could have set the bales right into the back of that truck.
I have tried selling off the field, but don't get too many interested unless it's $3, lol. I tell my customers it's $1 to $1.50 cheaper off the field though, just in case! We can even stack on a flatbed!
@@This1LifeWeLive At the $1 to $1.50 if Eric can get 300 bales a day, that work is worth $300 to $450. Sounds like it might be worth doing. Best Wishes, Kevin
Hey WT Farm Girl!💪👋 Eric Should find out what's for supper or ckeck the grills for the rest of the tale is!😂 I know your behind on videos but did y'all ever figure out how to find the top of the barn/shed? I would say do 1000 or more bales to get it done with even thought it hot outside or maybe your having some set backs, but whatever works!! Be safe, Stay cool, and Be blessed! O yea Eric may also. Watch to ckeck th freezer!!! 😂❤👍
God has blessed us with great weather the rest of the year (so far). Normally the grass turns brown in summer, but nothing to be seen all summer this year . . . plenty of rain and cooler temps . . . the BIGGER issue, was planting my Teff field! That's coming up next, and another major expense that seemed like maybe it might have been a total fail . . .
Bonjour je suis vos vidéos depuis longtemps pour avoir ume fermentation correct du foin , il faut empiler les bottes sur le coté ou apparait la coupe du foin Albert le Suisse
if you go to use machines to do everything is better making bigger bales or ballons (what ever you called it) i never imagine 7:50 se mething like that... we have a arm wihth hidraulic and one person put the bale and the arm goes vertical elevating the bale, and other person recolocates in the trailer. if the tractor pull the arm to fast, trow up the bale in the air, jajaja
I believe the original knotted was designed for grain binders by McCormick Deering back around 1930. Called the Deering Head, it was a standard for balers in the 1960’s. The baler frame mounted on wheels came about in the 1940’s. My Dad owned Case hand tie machine. There were two extra workers to feed wires through needles positioned between the bales as they came through the bale case. I was given the tying task sitting on the right side behind the pickup. Every time the plunger came back I was covered by a cloud of chaff and dust. It was probably one of the most dirty jobs I ever had. Luckily, the engine threw a rod and my Dad traded for a new JD 140 twine tie in 1955. BTW, the John Deere had a Deering head.
Really like the labor savings of that system. We are used to having 3 or more people & so handling each bale is quicker. Must more tiring & dirty nonetheless
It's a bit more of a relief not having to worry if your help will show up :) Plus I'm already pretty exhasuted most days, and Erik as well, so saves on the burnout ;D
It is interesting to see what your results are. I can't help but think, that the horses don't eat just the orchard grass out of the bale, so the results of your test would be inaccurate. Just from my lay observation, mind you.🤓
Correct! For my 2nd cut it's 95% orchard (little to no weeds) so it doesn't really have a big impact anyway. But I'm curious as to what environmental factors come into play with the orchard grass sugar :) It's more of a science less than anything ;D
Five high is the highest I ever stacked with my grapple. Any higher and they start falling. Four high was ideal. I see the Pit Vipers made an appearance.
In the hay barn. If I went six high then a whole side would eventually succumb to gravity. One way around that is to stack more like a pyramid, with the lower layers placed slightly wider than the higher layers.
@@joelcowdreyiii6745 now that we are grouping the bales then coming back and grabbing them with just the grapple it makes for alot tighter stacks can go 8 high without any problems you will see as soon as she gets cought up on videos.
What you need on that tractor is a self leveling Loader........Sampling indivual grasses will not give you an accurate reading on what is in the bale......A boring tool is what we use;;;;;....Was told by an old dairyman that nitrogen is what controls the protein level .......Our Coastal Bermuda test from 12 to 15%.... Some of our Customers have informed us that they seldom have to supplement their horses ration with grain .....
I think buying another tractor and a grapple was a waste of time in my opinion for what you spent for that tractor and grapple you could have got a good used Hay wagon and just picked them up right out of the field and backed up and dumped the stacks right in your shed seems like you're doing twice as much work as you need to using a graple and allot more fuel. That's how I do it anyway and I'm doing over 300 acres and in two days I remove all the bales and have them stacked and I'm done.
Are you stacking all those bales by yourself?? 300 acres of hay stacked by myself would KILL ME. We make more money off puppies than hay, so I'd be better off putting my energy there 😂. Here in MI it's impossible to find anyone willing to work. Sometimes we get family out, but they work fulltime jobs and can't take more than one day to help, so if equipment goes down, our help is gone. Last year we rented a bobcat for $100 a day. Cheaper than buying a tractor for sure. But we'd like to grow our hay operation and a tractor would be a great asset for that. Otherwsie, we could have added a thrid function to our New Holland and bought a ground driven accumulator pulled by a truck, and gone back and collected with the NH later. We used to have bale carts that collected about 100 bales and would dump them at the barn. Then had to be hand stacked. If a bale missed a knot, it made a big mess!
@@This1LifeWeLive yes I do pretty much all of it by myself another guy sometimes fills in when I go home and drives out and picks up a few loads. Each load on the hay wagon is four tons and that's with my old 1048 super the newer ones in stack even more but they're very expensive so most people around here where I live run the older 1048's from the seventies lol. But the one I'm running right now picked up for only $5,000 it wasn't field ready it took some work to get it field ready but now it's running like new.
I can look at that stack and tell you if u were to climb on it someone would of been on there ass ... bales goes opposite of each other . One row goes one way the second one goes the other way .. Not trying to tell you what to do just try to help .. love ur content keep it up
Great video Suzanne and Erik
Thanks!
That grappler is slick. Definitely beats how we did it in the '60's and '70's! Thanks for sharing this, it brought back many memories.
Girl, you are getting pretty good at what you are doing. I'm impressed.
Thankyou!
Hi Susan,
I made my own grapple just like yours last winter.
After Eric gets familiar with it he will love it.
This is just a suggestion.
Maybe tighten up your balers tention a little more and your hay will stack better.
Raking double rows works a lot better ...you get less banana bales.
I love that you made your own! Had been thinking of making my wn accumulator ;D
With our twin star rakes,the windrows are side by side. That makes a more flater windrow for the baler to pick up. Really better for a round baler,than a windrow with a crown.there is less weaving by the tractor to make a good round bale
yes thanks for all those comments this City Boy did spend some time reading up on the History after i posted that Ironically. i did grow up in South Florida and a neighbor and good family freind of ours middle name is Deering because of his relation to John Deere Machinery and Implements who happened to be his Uncle
God, that is the best hay wagon ever!
its perfect for the price we had into it. would love a 32-40ft gooseneck
@@ruralridez6165 well, it seems to me, you could tow that with pretty much anything. Gotta love flexibility!
It will work for exactly what we need :D
Fun on the farm... and this summer heat... storms... and the poles moving
Nice looking hay bales Suzanne
Thanks!
Back in the day 30 years ago or so we would put up a thousand or so small square bales a day for what felt like weeks. We did this all by hand of course our baler had what we called a kicker to toss the bales into a wagon with sides and a back. we then pulled bales off and put them on an elevator usually electric or PTO powered to run them into the barn. We always stacked our hay on the side so the strings where sideways vs flat with the strings up. Personally I think this makes for a much firmer surface to walk on as your walking plus there are no risk of catching your foot on a string. Of course staking them with the grapple you cant really do them sideways. Have you tried sideway stacking then crisscross each layer so the layers interlock giving them better integrity.
plus they breath better if a little tuff no sweat other than your self
There are bale collectors that DO collect and stanck on edge like you did :) Ive never seen anyone here in MI do it so I'm a little nervous about how solid it would stack ;) The stacks ARE suppossed to be stacked crisscross, but it took Erik a bit to remember how he did that :( Take a bit of planning when loading the trailer on the field :)
@@This1LifeWeLive Both the Baron and Bandit bundle sideways,,,,,,
Same here, kicker wagons, elevator to the hay mow, stack on side cut-side up to walk on. That was back in the 70s and 80s, I miss them days.
As a rule of thumb I was taught to advise farmers to mow hay, haylage or silage not eralier than 10:30am and no later than 3:30pm.
The reason being, the Sun is high enough in the sky by 10:30am to have got the sugars going up and into the grass.
After 3:30pm the sugars are heading back down the grass stem. So mowing between thos times means you capture the sugar in the grass.
Seed head maturity can affect the elements. So cutting the grass within and no later than four weeks from the formation of the seed head will improve quality, reduce dust and improve palatability.
Having worked on farms and gone on to sell liquid feeds, silage additives, crimped grain additivves, powdered minerals, livestock mineral buckets and feed blocks I can say with confidence that the two most important processes for hay or silage is mowing and storage.
Great video, very interesting to watch.
Top regards from England, UK.
We used to move thousands a day but we had several working on it during the day and weren't a one (wo)man band until 5 plus we used a sledge on the back of the baler. So the one rowing up would start stacking the bales in blocks with the baler driver or a 3rd person if my brother was home would carry the bales in with the Ford 4600 pulling trailer that worked like Trevor Bales' retriever truck, if rain was likely he would carry between 2000-5000 in depending on distances and dump them side by side in the sheds before they were bound in stacks in the sheds for use over winter. One thing I have noticed though after seeing and picking up some little bales I think my dad would have bankrupted us if we had done it commercially and sold at the same price as others as he used to make them at least a foot and a half longer and tighter/denser so at least twice as heavy our straw bales I could not pick up with a pinky finger like the ones my sister was given maybe one handed but not by a little finger. So we would be doing ourselves out of half the bales.
Great job baling Suzanne
Thanks Kevin!
Good Friday afternoon to you all from Wellington Somerset in the UK
Those grapples are good tools to have. We always ran those New Holland balers and liked them. You did a good job getting that figured out and going again. Cool video 👍👍👍❤️
I ran the 1960's version of that New Holland Baler. It's definitely a love/hate relationship keeping one working long enough to get through a whole season. There is invariably ALWAYS something going wrong with them (usually the knotter, or some jam up that snaps the flywheel key). The latter of the two, usually involved hours of digging out a blockage of hay that was just a little too moist to bale.😜
Kinda mixed results but compared to the headaches you've sufferred through the last few years, I would imagine you're pleased, hay looked good, and your buyers sure seemed to like it, all in all, more pluses than minuses, well done, Suzanne and Erik
I was sad at the amount, but glad it tested out ok :)
Yes, I'm sure, but at least, nature is to blame, tough to overcome rotten growing weather
Could the falling in the barn be helped by making tighter bales?
Negative . . the stacks were loose. In the second cutting video you'll see the difference :) Erik comes up with a better way to make tighter stacks :)
Each season you get better. That's a win. :) You have always said you are learning. Keep it up, hold head high, love the family, embrace the struggle. BTW.. M Go Blue.
The more care and attention you put into raking, the better the baling will go. The whole job of raking should be done with baling in mind. The baler does better with a uniform windrow that is neither too small nor too large. Windrow size will determine your ground speed. Sometimes you need to double rake in order to make a better a windrow size for the baler. If your windrow gets a little light then increase your ground speed; if the windrow gets thick then reduce ground speed. This will give you nice, tight uniform bales/idiot blocks.
Your hay stacks in the barn will be more uniform and more sturdy if you stack them on edge rather than strings up. 'Tie' each layer together like putting bricks down as you go up a 'wall of hay': four north-south, next layer four east-west, next layer one east-west and three north-south, next layer two north-south one east-west two north-south, and so on.
Thanks for sharing your hay analysis report it's interesting to see what another farmers hay is compared to what I have here in ky.
To double rake your hay just rake it like you normally would and then go back and put two windrows together. It's really simple is make two or three windrows around the outside in your field first and then start going back and forth and don't worry about whether or not you cut the windrows on the end because when you get done with the back-and-forth you'll go back and do a couple windrows around the field again. I started working grandpa's hayfield when I was eight years old at the time I was 16 I can take a new Holland bailer apart and put it back together in my sleep. Grandpa would always buy a New Holland bailer that was about four or five years old. And he'd run that about 4 or 5 years. But every year before we start bailing we would pull the plunger out of the bailer replace every bearing there was. Pull the knives out and sharpen them, we built a jig for a 1-inch bench grinder where we could hollow grind the knives. Since we used wire tie if we needed to we would rebuild the knotters because the wire would have a tendency to wear a groove in them. When start bailing by the end of April till the first part of May and bail all the way to frost every single day six days a week. We bailed fields from southern Oklahoma clear up into Kansas then turn around and start all over again. Grandpa would not let us bail hay on Sundays he said it would just rot in the barn.
Our rake won't grab two raked rows . . . I tried it on the smaller field. Hydraulic adjustment would be good for that one! So what I found is I have to do a pass, then to get more I gather that raked row plus one more windrow. But this doesn't add a whole lot overall if the field is thin anyway. Currently the rake can (mostly) grab 3 rows. I guess the easiest thing is to just make sure the field grows nice and thick so I don't have to worry about thin rows ;D
Seems that you could use the Grapple to carefully push bales tighter on the wagon and in the barn.
Great day.
Gord we finally figured out to bunch the hay in bundles of 10 then go back and pick up the bundles with the system put in the grapple mode. the trailer and barn stacks much tighter
@@ruralridez6165 I saw that. Glad it worked. Too bad they didn't get it right off the trailer. Will it fit in the barn after clean up?
@@gordbaker896 the area in the barn will hold 1200 bales stacked 8 high we could stack much higher but would have to hand stack. the loft holds 500-600.
That grapple looks clumsy, but saves a lot of time compared to loading behind the baler or picking up off the ground by hand.
Eric will get a lot better after he runs it more. Guys that have been running the grapple for a long time get much better at it. It takes practice
Love that grapple for handling hay big big labor saver
several years ago a rancher about 30 miles from me had a new round baler with net wrap, he was having trouble with the net wrap system so he called dealer where he bought baler from and a rep was sent out with in a couple hours. Rep gets there tractor was running PTO was on machine was running.... no rancher.... he was in early 50s he must have been messing with pickup attatchment, it grabbed him and sucked him into baler.
Wes told me he got sucked into a square baler once . . . he was lucky to be alive but it chewed up his foot real good . . . (also why I run the equipment . . . I might be much slower but I'm also more cautious!)
Looking good be safe
That's why I like wire tie so much better than string tie,
Keep up the hard work video’s are awesome… glad to see you got rid of that cutting right away hopefully second cutting goes that fast and you don’t have any extra left👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻keep the great content coming.Stay safe and god bless
I ahven't started selling 2nd yet, lol, erik is on my case to get it sold but I gotta get the hay tested first ;)
Awesome video Suzanne, I really enjoyed it very much, I'm glad that guy survived the grapple accident, I took a couple of days off from work, I needed it, I went combining with my landrenters today so that was kinda Fun, I'm sending you something pretty cool in the mail tomorrow, watch for it in your mailbox, it'll take a few days 🚜🇺🇸 Tomorrow is Friday the 13th!!! 😱😱😱😱😱
I'm glad you got to jump in a combine! It's a lot of fun! Also glad you got some much needed time off ;D
Wish we would have that year's ago to get up hay with. We done it all by hand. Take care and have a blessed day and I'll see you on your next vidja.
I stacked some in the loft . . . believe me, so much better!
Great job raking Suzanne
Should She ever decide to find out what Real raking is about I can give her a chance to use a rake like she uses staying a head of 2 nearly new JD 4x5 round balers....Got a video on my channel of my Son doing Just that......"In a hurry and I do know why"
Hello another great video. If you double or triple rake your hay gets a much more consistent swathes and you can bail at a slower ground speed and get a nice tight bail. 🍻🇨🇦
Since we usually only do 2 cuttings a year, it doesn't give me much time to learn new patterns :( Something like double raking while also on a new pattern just adds more confusion to my brain. lol! I did try a bit of double raking, lol, but takes a bit of time to plan my "how to" and sometimes I just don't ahve that extra 20 minutes :P
WT Farm Girl Videos m
After seeing your video on the lack of moisture several videos ago, I am amazed you are gathering as much hay as you are. Nice to see.
Happy subscriber 😀 Thanks for sharing.
It was trying hard, lol!
Great video loved it thank you for taking time to show really enjoyed it please keep them coming
Thank you! Will do!
i noticed your moisture seems low...we try to shot for 15% seems to help our quality.. we find our protein and sugar levels drop off if the hay is to dry..
That would make sense. Normally spring is tough to get it to dry. We honestly could have baled sooner. I'm guessing the ground is so dry it sucked whatever moisture that was in the grass, right out!
Glad you listened to me or just figured the bale grapple out
we do listen and we figured it out on 2nd cut remember she is like a month behind on videos. I just with the manufacture would show this way of using the machine it would save people lots of frusterations.
prophetic forethough, lol! We do try to listen to and apply comments, but as Erik said I'm 45 days late on videos right now (sinmply because I was farming my butt off all spring/summer, lol!) but Erik did think along the same way as you in figureing it out!
Just a friendly warning, be careful going downhill with that hay trailer attached to the 3 point. The weight can over center the hitch and shove it up. The rockshaft cylinder will then strike the housing and crack it. My advice is to attach a limiting chain from the hitch to the draw bar, preventing it from going up full stroke.
What I like to do when raking 2 windrows together if hay is cut north and south row 1 north and row 2 south raking them into each other leaving a wider windrows
I prefer to rake hay into each other this way I can split them apart if there a moisture issue to get them dry
Or you around rows 1 and 2 2 or 3 times until you have a bigger windrows
Great job people, nice to be topping up the bank again:):)
Agreed!
At 5:44 the "stop" your screw driver is on can be adjusted....Perhaps you can lower it so it doesn't get hung up. The stop has been superseded to a different configuration that eliminates that problem but costs over $40. The latch does not need to make that much engagement to work.
This year here 5 round a round the feild to make one swath .I had to us hay mover because it was so poor hay crop this year
Did you get your a.c. fixed on the newholland this summer thanks for the videos
haha, yes! Turns out it was the cabin air filters! they were in need of replacing!
Had an oldtimer told me one time that the best time for cutting grass for hay is when the cows are grazing. When the cows quit grazing stop cutting. The cows graze when the grass taste the best.
Great channel we are struggling won't quit farmers
Farming by the numbers was pretty addition!
Hey wt farm girl love watching your channel alot every day u are awesome TH-camr and the pretty one on your channel alot u put awesome content on your channel keep making awesome videos say safe and healthy with your family i hope this will get better soon so we can get back to normal life soon u my favorite TH-camr i love watching all of your videos 😀 mother and son time
Thankyou! Have a good wekeend!
@@This1LifeWeLive u too wt farm girl u have a nice weekend also
Farming can be dangerous. Always be careful. I read earlier today, about 3 bothers, I think in Ohio, who were working on a manure pump & couldn't get out. They eventually were overcome by the fumes & died. All three were in there 30's.
😱 goodness, how awful! I've heard the same thing can happen in sileage bins!
You need what we call in the UK as a sledge, which puts it into 8. Then your you can just pick up your bales with your flat 8 bale grab what we call it over here in the UK.
You could use your grapple to set 10 bale blocks just inside the back door of that Uhaul
As kids we did all by hand , my brother and I would hand stack load and unload and stack about one thousand a day !
Congrats on your first cutting under your belt and getting it sold that fast. That speak volumes! See no mistakes, lessons learned. Great job, great video. Can’t remember, did you put manure on all the fields?
Yes, I did! and Nitrogen too! But with no rain neither had much effect :(
@@This1LifeWeLive was wondering if that had an effects your grass study.
Susan,
How about road trip to Bales Hay Farm and Ranch and speak to Steven Bales. He is the man to speak to when it comes to HAY...... Plus a trip to Buckeye Arizona sounds fun!!!!
Ha! I didn't know his last name was Bales!
Just a question,,, if you stack the hay in the barn with the grapple why can't you reuse the grapple and put it in the truck. That U-Haul was a wide body so your grandpa should have fit inside of it. Once you get a stack of three or four high you use the next one to push the stack in further until it's to the front wall.
Excellent question! We COULD have, had the stacks been correct and tight. When they are falling over, it's impossible to re-grab them. But ideally, yes, we'd be able to do that ;)
After I sent that I got to look in a Little closer. And decided you guys did the right thing by tossing the hay in the truck and stacking it by hand. Eric looks like he needs some exercise...lol... Damn girl you've been feeding him all too well....J/K.... Now with that mentioned how's Eric's dad's German Shepherd doing. Do the people that have her now ever send you updates on her. I'd be interested in hearing an update on her and possibly even maybe see some pictures of her.
Glad to see Eric is making progress with the grapple. Slow but better than doing it by hand. Hope your second cut is better. I always liked TYM tractors and planned on getting one in the future. Sadly the local dealer has dropped TYM from it's line. They added Branson! I don't understand. SMH!😕 I guess it will be a Kioti or a Mahindra in my future. Thanks for the video.
I'm not familiar with Branson, although I THINK they are made by TYM (funny enough). Mahindra has it's issues, and Kioti as well. We had been looking at Kiotis too . . . looked very solid! But I guess they have a lot of engine issues :( But I guess you have time now to research ;D
A guy from my hometown got speared years ago in the same way(tractor rolled back) . They say the only thing that saved him is that he weighed about 450 at the time, still very scary though.
Looks like ya are starting getting a handle on things was thinking the other day and not sure where you guys are but if you are anywhere near new holland rochester they used to have a guy there named Dave that kinda specializes in balers and I am pretty sure there’s nobody anywhere that knows as much as he does about balers I used to call him now and again when I would get stumped on something as always keep the head up and looking forward
I'm not familiar with that area, we have Big Rapids and Coopersville for our nearby locations :)
Haha yeah add kicked in again and I completely spaced putting Indiana after Rochester according to google they are bout two hours drive south of big rapids I know they have no problem driving a couple hours each way for service call might be a bit spendy but I would bet you would definitely find it worth it now that’s kinda last shot kinda deal on the small square if ya keep having small problems with it.
I've seen a lot of people use the bale handler behind a bale accumulator
They attach behind the baler and gather the bales into the pattern that your bale handler can work with
Maybe something to consider
0.01: LOL @ blurring something!
Your ride on the front of hay wagon is the same spot I rode on a home made truck chassis frame made into a cordwood trailer that hauled 1 cord of 4ft wood out of the woods
would not want that to fall on my head, lol!
@@This1LifeWeLive heck that’s probably the spot on you that it wouldn’t hurt you, you’re so darn hardheaded, ( sometimes )
If the bottom layer of bales run length wise north to south. Second layer run length wise east west. Rotate each layer like this. In the shed the stack will not fall over. On the trailer they will haul better.
Why did you put the dividers back on when stacking in the barn?
Erik noticed that too. I think on that clip he had run down to another field and directly collected one last stack and drove right up to set it in, lol
@@This1LifeWeLive oh alrighty i appreciate the videos i was going to order one of these grapples aswell, now not so sure
Enjoyed your video. Have a fabulous day. Lisa @moneypit homestead
Thankyou! Have fun with your pups!
Another great vid!
Thankyou!
Good one on Eric lol.stay safe
Why did you cut through the wind row
To re-line up the baler to collect another row or pickup a partial row
Going smoother! The trailer worked!
Question: How much $ a bale difference is it if you sell it in the field of from the barn? Might be better to sell it before hauling it to your barn. Eric could have set the bales right into the back of that truck.
I have tried selling off the field, but don't get too many interested unless it's $3, lol. I tell my customers it's $1 to $1.50 cheaper off the field though, just in case! We can even stack on a flatbed!
@@This1LifeWeLive At the $1 to $1.50 if Eric can get 300 bales a day, that work is worth $300 to $450. Sounds like it might be worth doing. Best Wishes, Kevin
Get a NH Stacker. My 1012 will dump a loaf of 56 or self unload onto a waiting buyer's trailer.
Hi Suzanne. Safety Tip.....Kill the engine on Big Blue before you go next or near your baler.....Otherwise you may never play the piano again.😁😁😁
Hey WT Farm Girl!💪👋 Eric Should find out what's for supper or ckeck the grills for the rest of the tale is!😂 I know your behind on videos but did y'all ever figure out how to find the top of the barn/shed? I would say do 1000 or more bales to get it done with even thought it hot outside or maybe your having some set backs, but whatever works!! Be safe, Stay cool, and Be blessed! O yea Eric may also. Watch to ckeck th freezer!!! 😂❤👍
God has blessed us with great weather the rest of the year (so far). Normally the grass turns brown in summer, but nothing to be seen all summer this year . . . plenty of rain and cooler temps . . . the BIGGER issue, was planting my Teff field! That's coming up next, and another major expense that seemed like maybe it might have been a total fail . . .
Sell the bale wagons and get a 10 bale accumulater to pull behind the baler
thats a good idea I think there worth $2500/piece. Definetly dont want to go back to using them.
Bonjour je suis vos vidéos depuis longtemps pour avoir ume fermentation correct du foin , il faut empiler les bottes sur le coté ou apparait la coupe du foin Albert le Suisse
Suzanne, you are nuts 🤣, but I love you
Well Erik has the nuts . . . 😂😂
Hay Suz. You're gonna have to start a WTFG gun show segment with those biceps. Glad you're first cutting turned out okay and you got it sold.😎
wait till you see 2nd cut videos cant say how it turns out.
😂😂
You should’ve used the grapple to load 10 bales at a time inside the truck. Assuming it would have fit width wise…
Damn those jeans 😍
if you go to use machines to do everything is better making bigger bales or ballons (what ever you called it)
i never imagine 7:50 se mething like that... we have a arm wihth hidraulic and one person put the bale and the arm goes vertical elevating the bale, and other person recolocates in the trailer.
if the tractor pull the arm to fast, trow up the bale in the air, jajaja
Wow, bucking hay a single bail at a time is a whole heap of work... been there, done that.
Nice video. The suspense is killing if you end up with a third cutting.
lol what about 2nd cut
@@ruralridez6165 The Lord provides.
Yes, Robert, he does indeed! 💕💕
Should just have your customers bring over trailers you can just load trailers have them pick them up.
I've tried, lol!
pooping hay bales. awesome. good video. thanks dudette.
😂 just like the dogs!
Larger wind rows will help with better bales especially if the hay is short.
could you just imagine how wealthy the Bailing Patent made someone ? it’s such a incredible piece of Machinery used Worldwide too
I believe the original knotted was designed for grain binders by McCormick Deering back around 1930. Called the Deering Head, it was a standard for balers in the 1960’s. The baler frame mounted on wheels came about in the 1940’s. My Dad owned Case hand tie machine. There were two extra workers to feed wires through needles positioned between the bales as they came through the bale case. I was given the tying task sitting on the right side behind the pickup. Every time the plunger came back I was covered by a cloud of chaff and dust. It was probably one of the most dirty jobs I ever had. Luckily, the engine threw a rod and my Dad traded for a new JD 140 twine tie in 1955. BTW, the John Deere had a Deering head.
I know it!
Sure seems like the bail carts behind the bailer were way more efficient. And likely wouldn’t have had to buy another tractor.
You need to get yourself a bale sledge.
Really like the labor savings of that system. We are used to having 3 or more people & so handling each bale is quicker. Must more tiring & dirty nonetheless
once you get used to the grapple you hardly lift a bale
It's a bit more of a relief not having to worry if your help will show up :) Plus I'm already pretty exhasuted most days, and Erik as well, so saves on the burnout ;D
Buy a Kuhns tie grabber.Groups are tied together-no more fall apart.
It is interesting to see what your results are. I can't help but think, that the horses don't eat just the orchard grass out of the bale, so the results of your test would be inaccurate. Just from my lay observation, mind you.🤓
Correct! For my 2nd cut it's 95% orchard (little to no weeds) so it doesn't really have a big impact anyway. But I'm curious as to what environmental factors come into play with the orchard grass sugar :) It's more of a science less than anything ;D
One Lonely Farmer had trouble I believe getting payment from hobby horse people for his hay. I may be wrong on that.
None of my business but you should not hook trailer to the 3pth
The reason kayla and jason's stacks don't fall over is their grapple ties each layer together. Have a good!
Yes, that too! Ours were falling because they needed to be tightened, but you'll see in 2nd cutting ;)
Suzanne it is.too bad youvcan not stack so you keep the bales from falling
2nd cut we get a better handle on it :)
First from Yellowstone
Hope you saw some good sights out there!
Five high is the highest I ever stacked with my grapple. Any higher and they start falling. Four high was ideal.
I see the Pit Vipers made an appearance.
is that 5 high in barn or on trailer?
In the hay barn. If I went six high then a whole side would eventually succumb to gravity. One way around that is to stack more like a pyramid, with the lower layers placed slightly wider than the higher layers.
2nd cutting we didn't have sny issues as we stacked them much tighter on the field :)
@@joelcowdreyiii6745 now that we are grouping the bales then coming back and grabbing them with just the grapple it makes for alot tighter stacks can go 8 high without any problems you will see as soon as she gets cought up on videos.
I go eight high on a wagon and thirteen in the barn.
👍👍
What you need on that tractor is a self leveling Loader........Sampling indivual grasses will not give you an accurate reading on what is in the bale......A boring tool is what we use;;;;;....Was told by an old dairyman that nitrogen is what controls the protein level .......Our Coastal Bermuda test from 12 to 15%.... Some of our Customers have informed us that they seldom have to supplement their horses ration with grain .....
I agree self leveling would save alot of time.
That would make sense . . . with no rain all my fetilizer and manure wasn't able to do it's job :(
Yes the bales are to loose and raking the double rows save gas, time ,
money, wear ,and tear, on everything and the body's 😓😓😓
Did you see ware the3 brother got killed in the shit
??
Sorry they all died in a shit pit.
On a farm in Ohio
I think buying another tractor and a grapple was a waste of time in my opinion for what you spent for that tractor and grapple you could have got a good used Hay wagon and just picked them up right out of the field and backed up and dumped the stacks right in your shed seems like you're doing twice as much work as you need to using a graple and allot more fuel. That's how I do it anyway and I'm doing over 300 acres and in two days I remove all the bales and have them stacked and I'm done.
Are you stacking all those bales by yourself?? 300 acres of hay stacked by myself would KILL ME. We make more money off puppies than hay, so I'd be better off putting my energy there 😂. Here in MI it's impossible to find anyone willing to work. Sometimes we get family out, but they work fulltime jobs and can't take more than one day to help, so if equipment goes down, our help is gone. Last year we rented a bobcat for $100 a day. Cheaper than buying a tractor for sure. But we'd like to grow our hay operation and a tractor would be a great asset for that. Otherwsie, we could have added a thrid function to our New Holland and bought a ground driven accumulator pulled by a truck, and gone back and collected with the NH later. We used to have bale carts that collected about 100 bales and would dump them at the barn. Then had to be hand stacked. If a bale missed a knot, it made a big mess!
@@This1LifeWeLive yes I do pretty much all of it by myself another guy sometimes fills in when I go home and drives out and picks up a few loads. Each load on the hay wagon is four tons and that's with my old 1048 super the newer ones in stack even more but they're very expensive so most people around here where I live run the older 1048's from the seventies lol. But the one I'm running right now picked up for only $5,000 it wasn't field ready it took some work to get it field ready but now it's running like new.
Let's raise some money for the
I can look at that stack and tell you if u were to climb on it someone would of been on there ass ... bales goes opposite of each other . One row goes one way the second one goes the other way .. Not trying to tell you what to do just try to help .. love ur content keep it up
Yes! When Erik was putting them on the trailer he forgot which way he had stacked them and ended up doing it backwards ;)
@@This1LifeWeLive that can be understandable. Yal are getting it done . Keep it up