Hobby farm hay baler manual#

This is a high-quality implement that kicks out 40- to 60-pound round bales that are up to 21 inches in diameter by 23 inches long. Mechanized baling often allows you to get the hay in before that next storm system blows through, dropping an inch of rain along the way.Īt the micro end of the mechanized baling scale, you have the CAEB mini round hay baler that runs as an attachment on the BCS and Grillo two-wheeled tractors (8- to 11-PTO horsepower). Using powered hay-making tools will significantly increase the hay acreage you can easily handle - and it will allow you to make more hay faster, which can matter if you live in a region where it is difficult to get several good drying days in a row. Power balingĪssuming you already have a compact or subcompact tractor to help with the hay-making chores around your place, you can consider a mini mechanized baler since you already own the power unit. Many folks simply choose to purchase bales when their need is so small - I say if you have the land already, why not put it to good use and get in shape at the same time. However, if you have need for an acre or less of baled hay to see your sheep through the winter, this is a productive and satisfying way to get it done. And those tradeoffs limit the total hay acreage you can readily put up in a season.

The tradeoffs with this approach are time and physical labor.

Hobby farm hay baler manual#

You can scythe your standing forage, rake it by hand with a homemade wooden hay rake, and then bale it with your manual baler. These completely manual options will help you get the baling accomplished for very little investment in equipment - from virtually nothing to a few hundred dollars. Not too bad, if your entire year’s worth of hay amounts to 100 small square bales. If your hay is windrowed and ready, you might be able to make about eight or more 60-pound bales an hour with this tool. If you build it with a door, you can also more easily remove the bale.Īt the time of this writing, DR Power is in the prototype stage on a production model manual baler that is relatively light, easy to move around, and that allows you to lock the plunger in the compressed mode to facilitate tying a tight bale. Extending this model one step further would be to add a plunger to the box baler with a sufficiently long handle to help compress the hay, which would create a tighter, heavier and better-shaped bale that would stack more readily. This process will take several minutes per bale, so if you have hundreds to do, it might not be the best approach.

This will get you a fairly loose bale, but one that is stackable nonetheless.

You can simply position a pair of wires or twines lengthwise in the box, pitch hay into it, press it down with your hands and feet, and tie the bundles together with the twine or wire. One of the easiest ways to get into baling on a micro scale is to build yourself a stout wooden box, roughly the dimensions of the bales you desire. However, if you only need relatively few bales, you can get the job done with a small to midsized investment, depending on how many bales you will make in a year and how many acres of hay you intend to put up. If you have priced new hay balers recently, though, you might be stunned by the size of the investment. One solution to the issues associated with handling loose hay is to convert the hay into neat and tidy packages called bales. Save money by choosing the best hay baler for your acreage - whether it’s a used mini, power, compact, or standard baler.įolks who make hay on a small scale often simply stack the dried forage - usually out of the elements - but piles of loose hay take up a lot of space and are sometimes difficult to feed from without the help of a hay knife and some serious labor. A John Deere tractor makes hay with a small-square baler.