# Small Squares, what's holding you back?



## enos (Dec 6, 2009)

I see a lot of folks on here run many different sizes of balers( small square, round, large squares, etc) in the same operation. I do the same. For me the most return is in small square bales,15000-25000 a year, most work too, round bale/ wrap by accident. 
What holds me back from doing more is the balers. No problem hauling/ stacking with NH bale wagon, can mow 8 acres an hour, ted 15, rake 15, then I have to crawl across the field with a machine ( 348 JD 3 years old) that in perfect conditions can make 350 bales per hr (2.5 acres per hr) If I want to bale faster, I have to get another baler in the field. Another tractor, another operator, another paycheck.








Just wondering if the small square baler market is so small that companies don't spend R+D money on it? Balers really haven't changed much in the last 50 years, little faster, little bigger capacity but have not kept up with the capacity in the rest of the hay making tools. If the balers were faster, say 600 to 800 per hour would you all do more small bales or is it other factors that limit your operations? In these parts we have a narrow baling window, maybe 6-7 hrs in high summer, 3 hrs is probably average. Have jumped on the round baler just to get a field finished before dew hits and we have to start all over again the next day (ted, rake bale). I look at some of the numbers of bales the larger producers are doing( 40,000 a year) you must have 3-4 balers in the field, be nice to have one and buy another stackliner. Your thoughts are appreciated.


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## Rodney R (Jun 11, 2008)

For us, it's the stackwagon. We have 2 balers in the field already, and most days they get done hours before I get all the bales picked up. They can bale everything during the daylight, and then by 10-11pm I roll into the shed with the last load. We do 50-60k per year. On the later cutting alfalfa, I can almost keep up with them - we get started much later in the day 6-9pm normally, and only run a few hours till the field we are working is finished. 1 baler is no problem to keep up with, I can almost pick them up as fast as 2 drop them on the ground, but when I have to leave the field and head to the shed, I fall behind. Fortunately, most runs are not all that long, and I can get 2-3 stacks per hour.

Rodney


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## Customfarming (Oct 8, 2009)

The cost of producing small squares is higher than producing other size bales. We run two small square balers in bemurdagrass hay and lucky if we can get 50 acres baled a day. With both balers running we bale about 2500-3000 bales a day and produce about 75k-100k a year. We have one guy loading trailers all day and can keep up with the balers if the guy loading doesn't have to move trailers and then unload in the morning. But more equipment, labor, higher production costs, and more trips to the field. With our 3x3x8 baler we can bale 150 acres with one baler and be able to get all the hay stacked in the barn quicker than we can with small squares. Even though you can sell small squares at higher price than the big squares the price of production of the small squares is considerably higher. With small squares you going to be selling mostly to horse people since most beef and dairy producers do not want the small squares but with 3x3x8 bales you can sell to all of them. With the economy as it is the horse people are going away and always want the hay for nothing.


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## enos (Dec 6, 2009)

Rodney, when you pave the floor, you won't have to play with those pallets and then you will keep up!


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## HALLSHAY (Nov 30, 2008)

The thought of loading all those bales out in the winter is what drove us to produce more big squares. Employees only last so long loading little bales every morning in the winter. Next thing you know, there are 2 of you and several thousand bales to load. We used NH stackers and had to hand hook every bale on our self-unloading flat beds. We set them up onto the flatbed with a loader, but they had to be reorganized row by row. I could unload a load in about an hour with the self-unloader. I don't know how all of you guys handle the hand unloading when you deliver, loading is bad enough. We still have a 54' and a 52' self unloader and would be interested in parting with one.


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## haybaler101 (Nov 30, 2008)

Went away from small squares for 2 reasons. Capacity and market. Limited to about 30 acres a day with small baler, but the 3 X 3 will do 100 acres easy if we need to. My market is mostly dairy and beef and they all want 3 x 3's, even the Amish. I have very few horse clients and intend to keep it that way. There is enough demand for hay that I do not need to deal with people with horses.


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## Rodney R (Jun 11, 2008)

enos,
You might be right - those pallets are holding me up. Forgot to mention, 2nd cutting grass hay it's the rake that holds us up - we can only rake so much per day. Everything here goes for horses, so it all has to be perfect. So far as folks wanting hay for nothing.... I think that's the dairy guys. As more guys get 3x3 balers, the more demand there is for the guys who are willing to make little bales, and there will NEVER be a 100% switch over to 3x3's with the horse owners. You have to remember that many facilities here were built 100 years ago, or more, or are patterened off those that were, and anybody that can throw a 3x3 10ft off the ground through a 2ft door will be in high demand. Some of the buildings that we stack hay in are approaching their 250th birthday.

Rodney


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## hayfarmer (Nov 9, 2008)

Hey ENOS, 
I curious what you mean by paving the floor. Are you talking about asphalt or something else? I use a stackliner and pallets don't work for me. Even using a perservative, my bottoms bales on a wooden floor mildew. Down here in the south we battle with high humidity. Looking for a cure, other than pallets.


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## RCF (Sep 14, 2009)

hayfarmer we are in Northeast Texas and the best thing that we have found to do is put plastic down cover it with a couple inches of clay and then put another layer of plastic on top of that.


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## hayfarmer (Nov 9, 2008)

Are you using a stackliner to put the hay in the barn? How did you sread the clay without tearing the visqueen? I may need to put 6-8 inches of clay on top of the clay. That is a interesting solution. Does the soil stick to the bales?
Thank you for the suggestion!


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## enos (Dec 6, 2009)

Hay Farmer
Very wet climate here as well, we live in a rain forest.
The oil in the asphalt seals and prevents moisture transfer into/outof the bottom bales. I have had horse girls which are 100% of my market, maybe the odd lama or pasture maggot(sheep) farmer load up hay and leave the bottom bales. Just flip them over, dust the chaff off and throw them back on the stack for the next time.(the bottom bales, not the horse girls)


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## enos (Dec 6, 2009)

Rodney, same here.
Market is horse hay, Old barns designed for when farmers had 10 kids with pitchforks to do chores. We deliver 60% of our product with the bale wagon straight to customers barns. Best part of that is the hay is coming when I say it's coming. Sell bales delivered to front of customers barn for the same price as outa mine. I figure it costs about 60 cents a bale every time I handle one so less touching is better for me. We have a excellent crew of native guys that do our hand stacking in barns the bale wagon doesn't work in. We went to one place that had some 3x3s in the loft beside where we put our stuff and the indian fellers where just staring at them wondering how we got them up there. Told them I got some really big indians to chuck them up there, don't want to mess with them.


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## RCF (Sep 14, 2009)

hayfarmer.....we make the ground level and then put a sheet of 6mil plastic down and carefully use the bucket on the loader to spread out clay on top of the plastic and put clay down a couple inches thick then when we bring the hay in we put another sheet of plastic down if you but hay directly on the ground the bottom of the bale will have some dirt or moisture on it.


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

We use 6' X 6' pallets on top of crushed concrete that's more like a slab. I stack with a grapple so I need to be able to drive in. When the first row is full, I lay down another row of pallets and work my way out. Our customers are all horse owners and 99.9% female. As we run a horse facility, we only sell our excess and won't deal with the backyard cowboys who will feed anything and then try to nickle and dime you to death. I used to use an old Stacker Wagon but it got to be more trouble than it was worth and when I built the new shed the cost of the extra height just wasn't worth it.


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## hayray (Feb 23, 2009)

You bring up a good point about capacity of small squares not keeping up with other advances in hay and forage equipment. My guess is that the market is limited, I heard a few years back that most manufacturers were considering discontinuing small square baler manufacturing, being that most sales are in the Midwest and East coast, but for now I think those suggestions have been tabled due to the fact that small squares still fit a significant niche even now that modern high capacity packages have been available for some time now. For me small squares are still a fact of life and a significant part of my business. In years like this with surplus hay I see alot more rounds on the market due to the fact of higher capacity needed and limited inside storage space. On dry years with tight supplies rolls sell alot better - all goes back to capacity. For me it was more cost effective to go a small round baler rather then a second square baler, just because of how much the cost for extra capacity would cost. If I could bale more squares in a day I would still have alot more problems with bottlenecking getting the product to storage, still all manual stacking here.


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## baledog (Jul 30, 2008)

In my situation, the reason to continue to pursue small square bales is the potential to produce a high quality dry hay. Many hay preservative labels acknowlege a 2% moisture advantage for a small square bale, I suspect with good reason. Capacity and convenience aside, I don't want to lose the potential advantage.


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## hay wilson in TX (Jan 28, 2009)

In theory my old NH 315 baler will put 459.9 bales an hour on the ground. In practice 360 bales an hour is not uncommon. I use 300 bales an hour for planning. I usually have two hours of baling time. That is starting when the hay is still a little tough and finishing before leaf shatter becomes an issue. 
The Old NH 320 and even more so the latest NH heavy duty 2 tie baler can put 500 bales an hour on the ground.

The key is in the raking and the shape of the field. The field has to be raked in a way to keep turns and deadhead running at a minimum. 
One of the cutting and raking habits that reduces bales per hour is not having cross windrows on the ends. Usually when making the turn pulling a rake the corner is not clean and then the corners are raked to get the missed hay. One big dead head for the baler!
Cross windrows just puts bales of hay in your way when turning on the ends. This usually is not a problem with a round baler but it is for a square baler. Think about being able to turn right around and bale the windrow going back right next to or close to the one you went out on. 
You want as large a windrow that the baler can handle.

Just being able to count will speed up baling. Modify you baler so the OPERATOR can hear when the baler starts a tie. This makes it easy to count strokes. I simply cut the little rubber bumper off the trip that puts a block in front of the plunger to keep the needles from being cut off.

With my older NH baler and intermediate 2003 bale wagon it takes me about twice as long to stack the hay in my barn than it took to bale it. With one of the newer truck style bale wagons I could cut my pick up and stacking time considerably. With a modern NH or Hesston baler a 1,000 bale day would be normal, not the exception, here in my climate and my fields.

A little planning doesn't cost much, while ideal equipment does cost real money.

Appreciate any and all suggestions as I know I can improve.


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## hayray (Feb 23, 2009)

Hay Wilson makes a point that brings us back to how you pattern the cutting of the fields. Baling is the bottleneck compared to mowing and raking in which you can be more opportunistic and not so limited time and climite wise. This is why I cut my fields in somewhat of a circular pattern so that I do not have any turn-a-round time until I get in the center of a field. If I can bale 250 avg. per hour I am doing good, for me I have to stop and switch bale basket wagons and this takes about 20 minutes per hour of switching wagons. I can do up to 300 per hour on a real good day.


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## maknhay (Jan 6, 2010)

Howdy all. New member here and first post. I would absolutely love to put all my hay acres in small squares but..................ya just can't get it all done. I'm amazed at the market potetial out there for premo quality small squares. Just think of the demand when the economy picks back up (or if) and horse owners go back to spending more on their ponies than groceries for the family. 
A little about myself. Finally decided last fall to shift my opperation excusively to hay production. Had been putting about 300 acres of alfalfa and grasses into small squares along with row crops, wheat and cow/calf herd the way dad and grampa did. I started the hay-for-cash crop outta high school. Got tired of feeling like a circus juggler the last few years so I simplified my life,LOL. My current small baler is a Freeman SP270 pulling a 950 Steffen acummulator of which I've used from the haying get-go. After almost tripleling acres I knew a big baler had to be in my future. Now, baling during the day and using the five bale accumulator to get them to the end of the feild and a loader at each end to load we can have 80 to 100 acres off and stuffed in the shed by midnight. Even with that big Freeman 40 acres was about it, and that's having to wait till dew starts to set and my dad picking up 20 at a time (two 10 packs) with the flatbeds down the middle of the feild. And with the weather last year in these parts our window with the big baler was less than ideal. For the record though, I really hate seeing the leaf shatter with the big baler but I'm sure ya'll know the the repercussions of trying for leaf retention too!


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## rank (Apr 15, 2009)

Seems to me the thing that holds the small balers back is the size of the chamber. There is simply a limit to how much product can be forced through with every stuffer and plunger stroke. The only thing you can do is increase strokes per minute.


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## hay hauler (Feb 6, 2010)

About the barns.... We put down plastic with 6" of 3/4 minus rock works very well don't loose a bottom bale in the stack. Stacked on it for 8 years with no issues.... Even in a dry climet we get a lot of moistuer from the ground and with out something we will loose the bottom in a week. To much loose hay can make stacking with a wagon very difficult and even get them stuck in a barn&#8230;.


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## hayray (Feb 23, 2009)

rank said:


> . There is simply a limit to how much product can be forced through with every stuffer and plunger stroke. The only thing you can do is increase strokes per minute.


Why have strokes per minute not increased? Is there a engineering principle that allows 90 strokes per min. max - PTO to flywheel - to plunger arm? Because we sure can increase ground speed, pick up width, pick up tines etc.? Probably have to talk to an engineer who designs these things to find out but there prob. is only half a dozen in North America that really do that.


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## enos (Dec 6, 2009)

Knotters. Already asked Hesston engineers this. Anything over 105 strokes a minute does some strange things to knotting cycle. Like baling kneedles, miss ties on knots, general distruction and mayhem on the mechanical bits. I thought about putting a 1000 rpm shaft on a baler, not recommended, definitly voids warrenty.


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## hay hauler (Feb 6, 2010)

Enos,

One of the locals aroud our area did this just to drop his tractor rpm and still runs the bailer at 540pto... Seems to work and keep his air cleaners cleaner, and he says it takes less fuel... Around a 100 and something hp NH tracotor on a NH 580 small bailer... I dont know much more than that about the idea


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## enos (Dec 6, 2009)

hay hauler said:


> Enos,
> 
> One of the locals aroud our area did this just to drop his tractor rpm and still runs the bailer at 540pto... Seems to work and keep his air cleaners cleaner, and he says it takes less fuel... Around a 100 and something hp NH tracotor on a NH 580 small bailer... I dont know much more than that about the idea


Makes sense to save fuel/ wear on larger tractor running a machine that does not require alot of HP. Seen guys do it with tedder/ rakes etc. Just don't stomp the throttle. 1000rpm input to a small square bale will be an impresive show for a short while, a very short while. If you think about it the knotters do a complete kneedle/tieing cycle within one stroke of the plunger. That is a lot of stuff to do in about 3/4 of a second. The Hesston baler engineer told me that over 105 SPM the process/ machine just goes south.


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## hayray (Feb 23, 2009)

I bent my 540 rpm output shaft on my White 2-105 and while I was waiting for the new shaft I used a 1000 rpm output insert while baling. Everything was fine until I got distracted on the phone talking trying to explain directions to a guy working for me who is really bad with directions, hit the throttle too hard and watched the bale jump up and down - that was it for me on that.


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## hay hauler (Feb 6, 2010)

I would see the 1000 PTO settings with lower rpm working the best on newer tractors with digital read outs of PTO speeds. Also I am assuming some don’t use the hand throttle to set a constant rpm when bailing? If so why? (Just want to learn, not looking down on how others operate) Wouldn’t this solve the problem of over "revving" the bailer? It would be a whole different story with hired help I know....


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## kingranchf350 (Dec 13, 2009)

I was at a customer appreciation event at the New Holland Plant a few weeks ago and I had the oppourtunity to talk with the product engineers for the small square balers. I recommended to them that the plunger speed on the small square baler be increased from 93 to 100 SPM. It seems the New Holland machines have a very high capacity as far as the pickup, feeder and bale chamber opening (283 sq. inches) are concerned. The problem seems to be with the plunger - it does not have the capacity to handle the amount of crop the baler can handle on the front end. Now I have a BC5070 Hayliner coming in - they have lengthened the bale chamber and moved the bale length measuring wheel rearward to increase bale length consistency. My take is that if they would spped the plunger up to 100 SPM this would take care of MOST bale length inconsistency and make better formed flakes.....because if the baler has a large capacity on the front end..then whatever gets put in front of the plunger is going out the back of the baler -- whether it is a 6 inch longer bale than we wanted or a 2 inch wider flake - they have contacted me back and the engineers are planning on outfitting a small square this summer with a 100 SPM plunger speed and trying it out. I will try to post what I hear back from them.


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## BCFENCE (Jul 26, 2008)

Kingranch thats pretty interesting, Keep us posted please, Thanks
THOMAS


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## enos (Dec 6, 2009)

93 to 100 SPM, do it your self method. Tractor PTO at 540 RPM = 5.80 RPM per stroke. 100 SPM = 580 pto RPM speed.
PTO speed 540 at 2000 engine RPM = 3.70 engine revolutions per PTO shaft revolution
=PTO speed 580 at 2150 engine RPM
Also known as the rain's coming/ stomp the throttle method.
Hope I did this right, one cup of coffee and early on sunday morning.


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## hay wilson in TX (Jan 28, 2009)

Interesting idea 100 SPM up from 93. 
This might be something for my NH 315 to consider. The thread also tells my why the NH 320 and its up to date counterpart has 105 SPM on the top end. 
For all but the first couple of years I ran the NH 315 at 92-93 SPM at the recommendation of the Maintance reps who teach the dealer mechanics. 
Their rational was the torque on the plunger is at it's weakest just as the knives were cutting the hay. The higher SPM gave the plunger some extra momentum for the knives to cut the hay. The NH 316 had a slightly different angle on the knives that helped with the cutting of the hay. 
I do have to reduce the RPM's when getting down to check the bale length and weight, other wise the wire can be pulled from the twister. 
I might want to consider bumping up the RPM's to achieve 99 SPM.

Did you attend the Forage Conference there at Western Alabama University, Livingston AL, Dec 10? 
I was highly impressed by the meeting, & the attendance. I was hoping to hear more about farming the Blackland Strip but I still picked up a number of things to consider.

What really impressed me was the interest the Alabama Farm Bureau takes in forage, and how they work hand and glove with the University & Extension. It would be nice if Texas was that smart.


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## OneManShow (Mar 17, 2009)

Our entire market is either horse owners, or horse boarding outfits -mostly female, and mostly small bale lovers. If we make a bale much over 80lbs, I hear about it. So unless we fall into a ton of money and buy some fancy equipment to make big bales into small bales, we'll just keep going with small bales.

We store our hay on 6 mil plastic, which is placed on the barn floor (6"-8" of 3/4-0 crushed rock). We have absolutely no moisture probs on bottom bales-at all. But, If any part of a bottom is off the plastic-the bale will turn in just a few days.


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## kshayharvester (Mar 21, 2009)

Whats holding me back???? Just the thought of picking them UP!!!!


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## kfarm_EC_IL (Aug 5, 2008)

Time / weather >money to fix time
Mark


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## Edster (Feb 23, 2010)

Have you ever thought of rebaling?

T's Easy Unroller

The University of Maine did a short feasibility study--

Feasibility of Rebaling Large Ro


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## Elliotb16 (Aug 3, 2009)

On a good day we can bale alittle over 1000 square bales. Stack them on either a cotton wagon (200-300) bales, gooseneck(210) or flatbed semi trailer(300-350). We buy rolls of plastic from hardware stores and lay them out on the ground, so far this has worked best for us, pallets seemed too aggrevating. Its probally hauling the hay back to the barn, is whats holding us back. We put up about 1000 6ft rolls to unroll during the winter


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