Bale Shear/Slice

Chips · May 19, 2019

My wife thinks I'm not fat enough and thus in need of removing exercise from my day ! I feed round bales into a 14cube tub mixer (thus very high ) with a mxT10 loader on a little cx105 with big counter weight .
At the moment I cut round end of bales and tip onto said end , then get out remove wrap and then scoop back up with bucket grab .
The most common machine to do the job is the tanco bale slice but I guess would still need half the bale dropping on the floor and not direct into tub to prevent wrap getting caught by auger .But would still speed the job up massively and give the tub a bit more time to chop not dropping whole bale in one go .
Much rarer seems to be the upward cutting Keltec bale slice, are they rarer for a reason ? . Wrap trail being shorter means I guess you can feed direct into tub even with a loader tractor or can you ? Looking on the videos it seems you have to lower the knife and tip quite steep to shake off silage caught on the knife and with the knife below tine level I doubt I could tip it very steep before fouling the tub mixer IYSWIM .
The Tanco seems a lighter machine with the bale held closer to the tractor and so maybe a bit safer on a small tractor like mine , also it seems to be the cheaper option .
Are either better at retaining wrap and not half a bale of silage ?
So what are peoples real world experiences before I start ringing dealers this week ?
Thanks in advance

KB6930 · May 19, 2019

You'll need a telehandler to use a tanco I tried one to do exactly what you're on about and front loader was nowhere near high enough and they're not 100% foolproof at holding net and plastic

Galcam · May 19, 2019

Keltic here and they are heavy. My 2018 MF6615 struggled to lift wet fusion bales and also had problems slitting the bale. I normally had the hedgecutter on the back and I felt like one day the tractor was just going to split in two!! On a 6cyl Jd6145 now and its not a problem but I am on level concrete. 99.9% of the time it will hold net and plastic or NRF and plastic but I would hate it going into a diet feeder as I have no experience of those machines. Also it can be difficult to not drop the entire bale rather than say half of it!! Hope that helps.

Beames · May 19, 2019

I had a demo of a tanco bale shear a few months ago. Couldn't get on with it. Must of succeeded twice out of 25 bales in grabbing all the plastic and net. And most of the time when the bale fell in half it would sit in the cut plastic instead of falling into the feeder. Definitely wouldn’t want to do it into a wagon.

Pan mixer · May 19, 2019

I use a tanco for several hundred dry bales of haylage into cattle racks.

Failure rate of keeping hold of the plastic and net is honestly less than 1 in 50, there is a knack.

I agree that you will need a telescopic to tip into a high wagon though, there would still be a risk of plastic getting in perhaps but not much of the bottom half of my bales falls off when I cur right through, nearly all of it waits until the blade is back up out of the way - but that may be because my bales are dry, long grass.

vantage · May 19, 2019

If your not feeding many bales I wouldn't bother. I am thinking about one to feed bales into a feeder here and use to feed bales over a cowpow barrier on our Y/S farm. I would get the multi shear ,cut bales and silage onto the floor to load into feeder with the bucket.

Chips · May 19, 2019

I thought with the tanco I would cut half on the floor then drop the other half straight in tub as the trailing plastic would hang outside the tub , then drop plastic in pile and scoop up other half of the floor using it as a grab

Pan mixer · May 19, 2019

Chips said:
I thought with the tanco I would cut half on the floor then drop the other half straight in tub as the trailing plastic would hang outside the tub , then drop plastic in pile and scoop up other half of the floor using it as a grab

I think that would work especially since you wouldn't have to lift any where near as high.

Galcam · May 19, 2019

I would get a demo of Tanco, Cashels, Keltic as they are all different and now is the time to test out your theory because in practice it may or may not work!!

Chips · May 25, 2019

Bought a new tanco 175 after seeing Weaving machinery had an old stock one for good money . Very pleased with it , started off a bit wary and split half onto the floor first , then tipped the first half in tub and scooped up the rest . Now I just split them straight into the tub and had no bother so far even though I only have a FEL . I just push into the bale against a wall to ensure the knife comes down over half way through the bale , that way you only get a short trail of plastic fall and thus doesn't get caught in the auger . Fill it faster than with my old 5ft shear grab did with clamp .

Pistonbroke · May 25, 2019

I just use my old sheargrab to open and split the bale and then load. Put "sheargrab silage bales " on YouTube and there are a few options

RhysT · May 26, 2019

Mchale R5 a possibility? Cut off wrap. Undo net, then pick up bale with soft hands?

Spudie · May 26, 2019

Do any of them hold half so you could split a bale between 2 pens?

Galcam · May 26, 2019

Well on my Keltic and iv had it 3 years I would say no. You have no control of the bale once the knife has cut through it and it’s not like you are splitting the bale in two half’s. It could be 70/30 or 60/40 depending on how you clamp down on it initially but in general you MIGHT be able to hold on to SOME of the bale rather than it all falling out in one heap if you are careful and lucky and when your in a hurry neither of the above apply!

Chips · May 26, 2019

Spudie said:
Do any of them hold half so you could split a bale between 2 pens?

The tanco will do exactly that

Bale Shear/Slice

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vantage

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