OH NO hay crisis!

[Chick_a_dee]

I just found out that the place we were going to get our hay from only deals in those large square bails, that are something like 1000 bales put together into one large bail, the thing ends up weighing about 800lbs! Well...unfortunately our only way to unload is to do it by hand, because we don't have the 40k for a large farm tractor. Now it's so late in the season, second cut will be coming soon, and we have NO HAY for the winter! WHAT ON EARTH ARE WE GOING TO DO?!

 

[gumpsgirl]

Oh my... I hope you can find a different farm close by to buy your hay from. Good luck with it.

 

[BeardedChick]

Big bales are easy to unload from a pickup bed. Chain the bale to something solid, drive out from under it. You don't have to unload them by hand.

Wish I could buy small bales bound up into one big bale. That would be handy for my setup. Instead I have to buck 80# bales. Ouch.

 

[Chick_a_dee]

Quote:
I'm HOPING that I can find someone else, but at the moment it's looking rather bleak..the man we're buying the farm from sells hay to the riding school down the road, but I'm not sure he'd feel comfortable selling to us as well, since we're going to be competition for the boarding part of the riding school. If I can't get square bales, I'm just going to have to get some small round bales this year, or pay extra and get it trucked from by our old house.

 

[Chick_a_dee]

Quote:
They're coming on a flatbed transport I believe.. It'd be great if I could do that, but I don't think there is anything solid around! At this moment, I don't even know how much hay I'm going to need, we're looking at 3/4 horses right now, and so I don't know how many small bales that would make. Small bale being probably an 8 flake bale, or a 4 flake bale. We're only feeding hay October to about Late April-May 1st. The rest of the year it'll likely be hay cubes and sweet feed twice daily.

If he can omit the twine around the massive bale, or if it is indeed a bunch of small bales combined into one massive, then we can just cut the twine and pull the bales off 5 or so at a time. I was just worried about getting them off the truck, because the guy who told us about him said they don't unload for you.

 

[Katy]

The big squares they make around here couldn't be made to stay together with out twine or wire around them. They're one big bale...not smaller ones bound together.

 

[Chick_a_dee]

Quote:
I'm hoping they're smaller ones bound together, we were looking for the large regular sized square bales, that are 8 flakes in a bale... and thought we'd found it, but apparently not. I'm hoping it's either lots of 8 flake bales, or 4 flake bales, bound into one large bale.

 

[Katy]

I've never seen any that are smalls bound together. I'd say the big squares around here are probably the equivalent of 8 or 10 small square made into one. We make the big rounds...I don't miss unloading bales!!

 

[Chick_a_dee]

That would be rather messy in the hayloft wouldn't it? Plus they wouldn't fit into our hay feeder for the winter, which is designed to fit a large regular square bale, which is about 8 flakes.

We definitely can't move rounds, we wouldn't even have the space for them because the only place we can put our hay, is in the hay loft upstairs in the barn... no hay shed on the property anymore, the one it did have was severed off with another property like 30 years ago.

 

[BeardedChick]

Photos of a bale bander:

http://www.balebandit.com/BanditPicture.htm

It's a pretty cool machine. I wish my hay guy had one.

When we fed 700# bales, I chained them to my shed or tie rail and drove out from under them. Works like a charm.