Great video of operations. 1968-1971 my Dad did custom alfalfa operation for a ranch in Basin City Washington. It was owned by two boys from Texas. We put up 1000 acres of Alfalfa four cuttings a year. My sister ran an 880 John Deere swather. Mom , brother and Dad ran three new John Deere 214 Wire tie balers and I ran the Haro Bed. On a good night they could run out 3000 bales. I hired a friend of mine and we stacked up to 4000 bales a day. Big sprinkler irrigated fields up to a mile long. Good running conditions. We stacked at the end of the fields and truckers came and loaded out and took hay to dairy's in British Columbia. Big ol KW's cab overs with 300" wheel base pulling 26 foot 4 wheel trailers. 535 bales at 125 pounds each. This brought back great memories. I was 17 yrs old back then and got paid 3 cents a bale to run the machine. Big pay for a kid in 1968 doing 3 to 4000 bales a day.
Love seeing other people who use old tractors! Baling hay is a lot of work - but I love it! Those little bales are so pretty. That bale wagon would be a little easier than us picking up the bales! But not for our 3 acre field. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for sharing. I remember working on a custom hay cutting crew during the summers back in Kansas in the 80's. I weighed 125 lbs. and could hoist a bale that was my body weight, like lots of of other kids my age could. I don't miss it, but do have fond memories of it. God Bless from Phoenix. Russ
THAT'S a LOT of HAY....WOW. How beautiful is that field with all the bales. That is very hard work. Lucky he has a GREAT BOSS. Thanks for sharing. Love watching the ranch production and the bulls at play. 🍃🌎🕊
Yes the front rake is home made from parts off of a different rake. It is separately hydraulicly controllable on which side is up or down or both etc. It does well if you follow the same direction as the swather. It allows you to flip all the rows one direction so that the issue of two rows ending up close together when it isnt wanted is solved. Thanks for watching.
That was freaking amazing !! Have worked on a farm in New Zealand for over 20 years an have seen nothing like this.. We do half ton round bales now, but back in the day for us it was pick up these conventional bales by hand haha... What an awesum awesum vid loved it. Cheers for this , made my day....
@classharvester Thanks for the question. We have about a thousand acres of grass hay that we cut once and then re irrigate and use the regrowth as pasture in the fall.
@aarontong1 Thanks for viewing...Approximately 50,000 bales each year. 100+ pounds each bale. We use small bales for several reasons. Primary reason being that It costs a small fortune to switch to mid-size or larger bale size setup. Our winter feed ground is in several locations across our valley here in Eastern Oregon. Our feedlot setup for calves, breeding heifers, herd bulls, sale bulls, etc. requires many lots of small head count. Thanks for the question
Thanks for posting Duane, great video. I never saw those bale stackers in operation. When I was a kid in the mid to late 70's, my Aunts, Uncles and cousins would all get together and hand stack a field like that on 2 flat trailers pulled with john deere G's. We would race to see which team could get to 200 bales first. We baled all day, and hauled all night cause it was cooler. Those were some good times.
sure would have been great to have one of those hay wagons around when I was young back in the 50's every thing was mostly done with muscle power tractors and wagons.
We keep our calves through the winter and feed our cows from as early as December 1 and we usually are on full feed until May. This consumes most of our hay. If we can see that there will be hay left over then we sell some. So in answer to your question...It takes all the hay we produce to keep the cows and feedlot cattle fed throughout the year
New Holland 1037 best way to go. 103 bales at a time. Makes really nice stacks and hauls alot more. Also love the Hesston balers. We have a 4570 Hesston baler. Makes the best bales money can buy. The only thing is our bale wagon is a tow behind. But still makes amazing stacks.
That brings back some great memories for me. I can smell that sweet hay from here heh, heh. We were doin' it on a considerably smaller scale and we did not have a rig that did what that bale gatherin' rig did. Our baler would shoot 'em onto a wagon and one of us stacked and sometimes (when they sat on the field) we had to pick 'em up and throw 'em to the stacker guy on the wagon. I loved it but the best part of the day was the end and gettin' down to the river for a refreshing swim and wash the itchy stuff off. Eat big, sleep hard and do 'er again the next day...a wonderful life. .....................................PEACE!!
I just read a buncha comments after I posted mine and was surprised by how many of us had very similar lives growin' up. We're scattered all over but have so much in common. It's just kinda amazing to me......and cool. Heh, heh. ....................PEACE!!
When I was teen back in the sixties I would work hailing hay a good day we would get 800 to a 1000 Bale's a day one man driving and two loading I made 2 cents a bale. Hardest job I ever had. At the time I was about 135 pounds and 6ft 2 inches tall all muscle.
In the 70’s My best friend family had a dairy farm and I helped bail hay and later stack them up in the barn. We had fun shooting rats near the corn bin at night.
I am sure that a custom hay operation in Klamath Falls would do well once you are known by the people in that area. I don't know many of the people in that area but I know that there is lots of hay produced there. I hope this helps. Take care
@YouCLTube I help them get caught up with the bales and I have run every phase of the haying for at least a couple full seasons. My main job is herd health in the summertime and anytime for that matter. It usually keeps me very busy with 550 spring calving cows and their calves through the summer and the bulls with those cows to get them bred. I also artificially inseminate approx. 75 to 100 cows yearly. Thanks for the question...D
Sounds like your family are a bunch of hard working people. That's great. We also have quite a selection of John Deere tractors that still run from the past like the 520 in this video. We have 3 of them and two A models and one B model. We don't use them much anymore but it is still cool that a 1937 hand starter is functioning. All it takes is maintenance and good operators. lol
@dcpro1970 thanks for baleing square bales i like seeing them baled i hate seeing everyone going to round bales i am going to put up 30 acres of ladino clover and alfalfa all square bales i am going to use a haybasket though
Nice video and that sure is a lot of hay. Just curious but why make a temporary stack? Couldn't the bale wagon just bring it to the final stack location?
wow... You've not got a clue what your talking about comparing USA to UK in this instance. You can't not take pride in what you are doing when making hay. As getting it wrong and you've lost (all or part of) your feed for your animals for the winter months. Having worked on farms in the past, I know the effort put into this by all farmers and their staff I do find this comment slightly insulting towards them. They work so hard and yet are so undervalued by the public.
duane - this is a beautiful operation. f #@ k the haters and suggestions. your family obviously knows what needs doing. a 1000 acres is a book - but real life is much more. 550 pairs plus the haying? fuggedaboutit. sweet vid. fair winds bro
Is that front mounted rake on the Deere something you guys built? Does it work well? I'd like to do something similar, but would dare try it on a narrow front end as we are on steep slopes, but it seems like it would be a nice way to rake.
This amount of hay will last you for how long? (you have 550 cow-calves pairs, right?) Do you use it all up in one season? To sum up my two questions (:P), for how long do you feed hay?
I'm curious, the truck picks up a load of hay and then the collector places another load of hay in its spot, have you ever considered having the hay collector drop it off on the other end of the stack? Even if both machines were their at the same time they would not hinder each other.
Nice video and i am a big John Deere fan and how many acres was that in the video and I was wondering if you could make a living off of hay farming and how good are those inline balers
Sometimes the old ones are the best. If they work then don't change it. Are these 3 pieces of equipment for the American market. Ive never seen them being used over her in UK. Job well done 🌳☺☺☺🌳
Yes the hay haulers are made by New Holland/Ford. The balers and tractors are AGCO, and John Deere. The truck with the hay hauler is something we made, but copied from a previous design.
you must have pretty stable weather to put that many bales on the ground at once. If i did that here in Central Alabama I would just be asking for a late afternoon thundershower to ruin half of it while I was getting it in.
Yes we could make a living off of hay, but our cowherd consumes all of it in the winter here. Our growing season is short. We have 1100 acres in grass hay and it produces 2500 ton on average.
Duane Chandler Why do you make small bales ? I heard that some people prefer them because of the better handling. The German Company Krone built a Special Hay and Straw baler that binds little bales in to one big one and the bale handling stays the same. The big bales are more effective in Transportation ! i don´t know why you do it this way. I would be glad if you could explain it to me.
Thanks for asking Brian. We prefer to use the small bales because we feed cattle in several locations in the valley here and our winters get quite cold. With large bales if a piece of equipment wont start then it is extremely hard to feed the cows. Little bales can always be loaded by hand if all else fails. We also have a market to sell horse hay with the little bales when we have a surplus.
Wouldn't it be better if the collector truck were to deposit it's load very close to the final storage destination so the other truck didn't have to drive so far? I once helped bail 8000 bales of hay the hard way, with manual labor on a hay wagon behind a bailer. The bails weighed more than I did at the time but I could swing them over my head.
Nice to see this. After studying only the theory on hay production is today I just saw how it's produced. I will like to work with this live hay production. Can I have that opportunity?
Do you have employees that just do this, or do you all partake in this event? We used to move 2 semi truck loads of alfalfa and Timothy hay into our barn, that was something we never looked forward to. This is something you have to do, what two times a year? Second cuttings? Is this grass? So impressed with stacking process!
We raise grass hay and cut it once. We use the regrowth after hay time for fall/winter pasture until it is covered up by snow. We hire extra employees for summer during haying time. We have 3 full time employees, and we add 2 more for summer. We all participate in the hay production, but I bounce from taking care of the cattle to helping get caught up hauling the baled hay. Summer is a busy time.
