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Soft or Hard?
By; Rick Vorce.
 Baler Throat
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Windrowers, swathers and balers are common, necessary
tools in the hay and millet fields. Every machine
operator has their favorite make or 'color', of machine
they know is the best money can buy. I use a round baler
for most of our hay needs with a few small square bales
thrown in for extra back and muscle exercise. I have personally used John Deere and Vermeer round balers. I had a 605J Vermeer that would make a good solid round bale. It used air bags for bale tension much like a simi uses air bags for a better ride. The air bags, coil springs or whatever system used on most balers provides more tension as the bale grows in the chamber. Most farmers and custom operators try and make the largest, heaviest bale they can by pushing the balers tension method to the limit. I disagree with most baling practices today. I have seen bales so tight a horse or cow can rip their lip getting a bite of hay! I didn't own the 605 baler long enough to find all the weaknesses. The 605 did have a bearing that seemed to cause lots of trouble. Anyway we had a straw contract with a large feed-lot and the wheat didn't yield much for straw that year. The John Deere and Vermeer balers wouldn't make a bale or even begin one. My boss pulled his new 535 a half mile on the outside windrow and the monitor needles barely moved off the peg! The tiny bale finally spilled out on the pickup and plugged the machine. Just when it seemed his straw contract was history we investigated a different type of round baler. It was a model 486 New Idea soft-core baler. I had heard of New Idea, but I thought they only made corn pickers that were now gathering dirt in a fence row. This baler didn't seem to care that the straw was to dry, or that the only way you could stay on the row, was to follow the combine tracks in the standing stubble. This machine made bales! This baler tumbles the hay inside a fixed chamber until it's full enough to compress. One of the benefits of this baler is that I don't have to weave as much like we did with the other models. I own a 486 baler and I wouldn't trade it for another style. The one thing I have to be careful about is baling to wet or green. This baler likes dry hay and the bales will sag if baled wet or green. Another drawback is speed. This machine has to have time to compress the hay into a bale. It's something like packing silage! Uncrimped hay is another drawback, but the quality of the hay is well above average. Dry hay I bale in the evening has very little leaf loss. So why don't more farmers use this type of machine? Maybe you too thought New Idea only made corn pickers sitting in fence rows! |
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