# finally took the leap and bought a new 3 tie baler



## haymaker1979 (Nov 20, 2011)

I went west and brought back a new bc5080 new holland baler this yr and its the best thing ive ever done. Any word of advice on best sizes to make these bales. Thanks alot


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

Interesting. I traded a bc5080 2 string baler for a krone rotary rake this year. It's not the best thing I've ever done but the rake is really nice.


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Never seen a 3 tie bc5080. Congrats on the new iron, new holland makes a great baler....enjoy!


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## jeff outwest (Sep 13, 2009)

Did you buy that baler at Garton Tractor or Renner Equipment? I heard they were the only two outfits selling that baler. New Holland went inline with 585 to compete with the Hesston 4690 that over took the 3 tie market. They might have a comeback chance, now that the EPA has made PTO balers the only option. Had straddle a 3 ton windrow with a 100hp tractor. How do the bales flake? Lots of horse women hate inline bales because they don't flake like a side charge bale. What tractor do you use to pull it? Enjoy and let us know.


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

jeff outwest said:


> How do the bales flake? Lots of horse women hate inline bales because they don't flake like a side charge bale.


Yes, life can be so cruel at times. I find that the bales I make with a 2 string inline are SLIGHTLY different but not enough to hate over......I sell here commercially and I have not heard that complaint from any of the accounts or customers. Maybe a regional thing?

Regards, Mike


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## haymaker1979 (Nov 20, 2011)

Yes it came from garton tractor I pull it with a 7200 john deere. It works great I have it set at 40 inch bales weighing 125 lbs. It flakes off great and my customers absolutely love them. I was loosing customers to 3 tie western hay and now I can try to compete with that market as well.


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

haymaker1979 said:


> Yes it came from garton tractor I pull it with a 7200 john deere. It works great I have it set at 40 inch bales weighing 125 lbs. It flakes off great and my customers absolutely love them. I was loosing customers to 3 tie western hay and now I can try to compete with that market as well.


Where are you located Haymaker1979 that customers like 3 string bales?


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## haymaker1979 (Nov 20, 2011)

Im located in Western ky and all of my customers are located in louisiana


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

haymaker1979 said:


> Im located in Western ky and all of my customers are located in louisiana


Fertile farmland in W KY. It would be a good thing if you put your general location in your profile haymaker....that way you can receive responses from folks that are in a similar climate/location as yours when your location can be readily viewed.

Regards, Mike


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## cornshucker (Aug 22, 2011)

jeff outwest said:


> . How do the bales flake? Lots of horse women hate inline bales because they don't flake like a side charge bale.


We have not had any complaints at all matter of fact one horse woman this week said these were the nicest bales she had ever got. Don't see what people talk about the flakes I think they flake as good or better than a sidepull baler. Matter of fact I fed about 3 bales to some calves we are weaning around lunch today after I had read this post and actually spent a little time looking at the flakes as good or maybe better than the old style side pulls.


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## haymaker1979 (Nov 20, 2011)

To be honest I just left my 575 new holland baler to start using the 3 tie and theres no comparison to the flakes in the 3 tie bales. These flakes fall off the bale in an exact number of flakes and no pulling them off. They seem to work the best if you feed your horses using hay nets.


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## jeff outwest (Sep 13, 2009)

Haymaker, We make 3 ties bales out here 46" long and get docked by the buyer if ewe go over 110 lbs. Bales 46" work best with New Holland balewagons. They stack Lego blocks at that length with 13 to 16 strokes or flakes in a bale. Do handle your bales with a Balefork?


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

haymaker1979 said:


> Im located in Western ky and all of my customers are located in louisiana


 I bet you are one of a very few people east of the Rockies that has a 3 tie baler. Congrats on the new baler. How about a few pictures??


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

In the mid nineties there was a guy here who tried the 3 string bales. The bales were fine. The baler worked great. Just people didn't like them and he had a hard time selling his hay. The complaint. To heavy to lift a lot by hand and to little for a loader (not a lot of skid steers around then). That's why I'm kinda of surprised you've found people outside of the west of the rockies that likes them. Heck people here stopped liking my 16x18 70 lb bales. They thought they were too heavy and they must be wet.


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

Same here, a 3 tie baler sat for sale on Kijiji/Craigslist here for a year or more. No market for them, people don't understand them.


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## ARD Farm (Jul 12, 2012)

I went to th NH website and looked at that model and I cannot find a 3 tie option on site.....

What xactly is a 3 tie? 3 knotters? Are the bales any different size wise? and what is the advantage, if any?

My curiosity is aroused.


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

ARD Farm said:


> I went to th NH website and looked at that model and I cannot find a 3 tie option on site.....
> 
> What xactly is a 3 tie? 3 knotters? Are the bales any different size wise? and what is the advantage, if any?
> 
> My curiosity is aroused.


They are usually 16x22xwhatever. Hesston/MF makes one that is 15x22. So there is an inline also. Freeman also still does 3 string bales. Yes 3 knotters. The advantage to some is they are larger and you can bale faster? I'm not really sure?


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

slowzuki said:


> Same here, a 3 tie baler sat for sale on Kijiji/Craigslist here for a year or more. No market for them, people don't understand them.


When I traded our NH 580 16x18 baler in a few years ago it sat on the dealer lot for a year and a half before it sold for $11,000. I tried to sell our NH 5080 on here and craigslist for $18,000 what is a cheap price compared to new costs and for what it was. No takers except one dude that wanted me to ship it to Iowa on my dime. I got $15,000 in trade for it (I was happy to get that) from the JD dealer I bought my Krone rake from. They are now asking $21,000 for it. I don't think they are going to get it. I don't think they realize the demand isn't there for those balers. Which is why I decided to trade it to the Deere dealer, who doesn't sell them often. Rather then the dealer that had my other one sit on the lot for some long. Or the NH dealer. In the 80s all you could buy here was 16x18 balers. Now 14x18 is the choice.


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## cornshucker (Aug 22, 2011)

haymaker1979 said:


> I went west and brought back a new bc5080 new holland baler this yr and its the best thing ive ever done. Any word of advice on best sizes to make these bales. Thanks alot


Congratulations hope you have many years of trouble free service from the baler. As for the length of bale I've never been around a 3 tie bale don't have a clue.


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## jeff outwest (Sep 13, 2009)

The advantages of a 3 tie bale is you can make a squeeze block with them. You can load semi trucks with hay and never touch the 512 bales on the truck by hand.


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

jeff outwest said:


> The advantages of a 3 tie bale is you can make a squeeze block with them. You can load semi trucks with hay and never touch the 512 bales on the truck by hand.


That's nice and all for the producer or shipper, but how do the end users really like handling a 100 lb bale? Somewhere from the field to the animals mouth these 3 string bales have to be handled by hand at least a little bit. Do people buy 10 of them at a time to put in a horse trailer or pickup bed?


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## haystax (Jul 24, 2010)

Maybe my customers are tougher than the rest :shrug:

Congrats to the OP on the 3-string baler, I'm not a NH fan but the baler is basically a Freeman chamber with NH pickup and will probably last a while. We run Freeman balers and probably will forever at the prices for the new Massey's. For a while there were buyers who didn't like the inline bales but that hasn't really been an issue for the last few years. It all comes down to hay quality and you can't cut corners as the bale size and density increases. Good luck and I hope you do well with the new baler

We ship 3-string bales around the world and my uncle has been in retail business for 41 yrs, never once had a customer complain about the 100# bales. Couldn't pay me enough to mess with 2-string bales!! I tried for years to convince my Colorado friends to switch to 3-string and market their hay but the customer who pays more for less hay is one worth keeping happy I suppose


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

I love the squeeze block concept and wish 14x18 bales worked in a bigger squeeze block than 6x6 ft but we need a 40-50 lb package for the ladies. I don't think I've sold a small square bale hardly to a man... maybe a few dozen bales?

I like the idea of midi bales too, the little 2x3's or smaller, they don't seem to have caught on though.



Teslan said:


> That's nice and all for the producer or shipper, but how do the end users really like handling a 100 lb bale? Somewhere from the field to the animals mouth these 3 string bales have to be handled by hand at least a little bit. Do people buy 10 of them at a time to put in a horse trailer or pickup bed?


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

haystax said:


> Maybe my customers are tougher than the rest :shrug:
> 
> Congrats to the OP on the 3-string baler, I'm not a NH fan but the baler is basically a Freeman chamber with NH pickup and will probably last a while. We run Freeman balers and probably will forever at the prices for the new Massey's. For a while there were buyers who didn't like the inline bales but that hasn't really been an issue for the last few years. It all comes down to hay quality and you can't cut corners as the bale size and density increases. Good luck and I hope you do well with the new baler
> 
> We ship 3-string bales around the world and my uncle has been in retail business for 41 yrs, never once had a customer complain about the 100# bales. Couldn't pay me enough to mess with 2-string bales!! I tried for years to convince my Colorado friends to switch to 3-string and market their hay but the customer who pays more for less hay is one worth keeping happy I suppose


When I was doing small bales I had a customer from CA that had said she didn't know smaller bales existed until she moved to Colorado. She said it was hard to get used to the small bales, but not due to the weight, but the feeling she wasn't getting ripped off. She liked my 16x18 inch bales better then the 14x18 inch bales. She said the 70 lbs made her feel better. But I couldn't charge more for my 65-70lb bales then someone selling hay with a 14x18 55 lb bale.

The smaller square balers of 14x18 are significantly less to buy. It appears nearly maybe half the price if tractorhouse.com prices are accurate. So it's kinda risky for someone east of the Rocky mountains to take the risk to buy a baler that produces a bale that doesn't have a good track record of being able to sell that hay locally. It took about 6-7 years for the 3x3 balers to catch on. We'll see if the NH 2x3 balers catch on. If more brands like Hesston, Deere, Krone would produce a 2x3 it might catch on faster. But I think those bales would be easier to sell here then the 3 string small bales.


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## cdhayman (Jan 25, 2011)

I know a lot of people are worried about the weight of 3-string bales, but honestly most retail locations do not want them over 100 lbs. they prefer them closer to 95 lbs. occasionally we make some really heavy bales but we won't send them to retail locations. The one bad thing about 3-string is the expense of machinery. We have 6 balers, 3 stack wagons, and 2 squeezes. We have spent a lot of money on this equipment and to replace it we would have to spend close to a million bucks, and that to us is what makes 3-string bales worth more money. Our top dollar hay is orchard grass, and it goes all over the country.


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

cdhayman said:


> I know a lot of people are worried about the weight of 3-string bales, but honestly most retail locations do not want them over 100 lbs. they prefer them closer to 95 lbs. occasionally we make some really heavy bales but we won't send them to retail locations. The one bad thing about 3-string is the expense of machinery. We have 6 balers, 3 stack wagons, and 2 squeezes. We have spent a lot of money on this equipment and to replace it we would have to spend close to a million bucks, and that to us is what makes 3-string bales worth more money. Our top dollar hay is orchard grass, and it goes all over the country.


The same goes for converting to any different bales then your currently have. When we had 2 16x18 inch balers we kinda wanted to switch to 14 inch balers, but didn't do it because you would have to spend more money to "upgrade" to what I think of as an inferior baler. We wouldn't have had to get a different stacker though like you would have to. Then there is the thought have having to pickup more bales with a 14 inch then a 16 inch bale. So we went up instead to a 3x3 and probably spent more money......


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## 3string (Sep 8, 2014)

cdhayman said:


> I know a lot of people are worried about the weight of 3-string bales, but honestly most retail locations do not want them over 100 lbs. they prefer them closer to 95 lbs. occasionally we make some really heavy bales but we won't send them to retail locations. The one bad thing about 3-string is the expense of machinery. We have 6 balers, 3 stack wagons, and 2 squeezes. We have spent a lot of money on this equipment and to replace it we would have to spend close to a million bucks, and that to us is what makes 3-string bales worth more money. Our top dollar hay is orchard grass, and it goes all over the country.


I've put electronic scales on my baler. My customers want 90 to 95lb bales. The scales make it nice to get constant bale weight. I agree with expense of machinery. I'm thinking of upgrading my balewagon. But when I get to thinking about it to much, my old one looks pretty good.


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## Maxzillian (Sep 11, 2014)

Teslan said:


> When I was doing small bales I had a customer from CA that had said she didn't know smaller bales existed until she moved to Colorado. She said it was hard to get used to the small bales, but not due to the weight, but the feeling she wasn't getting ripped off. She liked my 16x18 inch bales better then the 14x18 inch bales. She said the 70 lbs made her feel better. But I couldn't charge more for my 65-70lb bales then someone selling hay with a 14x18 55 lb bale.
> 
> The smaller square balers of 14x18 are significantly less to buy. It appears nearly maybe half the price if tractorhouse.com prices are accurate. So it's kinda risky for someone east of the Rocky mountains to take the risk to buy a baler that produces a bale that doesn't have a good track record of being able to sell that hay locally. It took about 6-7 years for the 3x3 balers to catch on. We'll see if the NH 2x3 balers catch on. If more brands like Hesston, Deere, Krone would produce a 2x3 it might catch on faster. But I think those bales would be easier to sell here then the 3 string small bales.


At one time AGCO offered a 2x4 baler in North America, but no one bought on to them. There is a 2x3 baler built, but it's export only. I think the only reason Europe uses them is because their trailer decks are at a different height and a "2 foot" bale fills the height better. Technically they're 70x80cm and 70x120cm balers.


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