Hay making 2022

hollister

Member
Location
Alcester, warks
Planned to go to The Game Fair at Ragley Hall today, but a friend who does one of the gundog demo's, sent me a pic, down one of the stall aisles😲.
I've got a lump hay I'm making for a neighbouring farm, which I'm going to bale today, instead.
I wonder if sunday might be quieter.
Busy down the shopping aisles but out in the trials areas it's quiet
 
I'm impressed by how well farmers of today stack with tele handlers. I know I can't do it so tidy.

Does anyone still stack barns by hand?

I mark bays out with builders twine to keep straight & have 6 different courses so that there are no cracks in the stack. I'm a bit of a dinosaur. 15k bales hay & straw, I'm the only one on the stack.

Its on the wish list to fit a flat eight to the industrial 2.5 ton forktruck we use in the yard to put the bales on the stack.
 

Agri Spec Solicitor

Member
Livestock Farmer
Our system with small bales is flat 8 onto all our trailers but stack with labour to make flat 10 and use all of 8 ft trailer width. Park under cover.
Then manual stack into an awkward corner to take about 400.
We bought a 56 bale carrier but it has not been used. Might sell it, but our new Dutch barn may make 56 bale blocks more practical.
When I was a lad an army of kids appeared after supper time (read dinner time if you are not in our village) to stack bales. Not any more!
Flat 8 on and off trailer has to be the gold standard for us in future. It doesn’t need to look good.
 

bobk

Member
Location
stafford
I'm impressed by how well farmers of today stack with tele handlers. I know I can't do it so tidy.

Does anyone still stack barns by hand?

I mark bays out with builders twine to keep straight & have 6 different courses so that there are no cracks in the stack. I'm a bit of a dinosaur. 15k bales hay & straw, I'm the only one on the stack.

Its on the wish list to fit a flat eight to the industrial 2.5 ton forktruck we use in the yard to put the bales on the stack.
80 x 50 , the future ,,,, idiot bricks need to be £8 .
 

Bob c

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Cotswolds
use to stack with Flat 8 but it to slow
stack Hay and straw with a 40 bale grab
if there is 3 off us, can cart 1k in a everning easy

1659206739520.png
 
use to stack with Flat 8 but it to slow
stack Hay and straw with a 40 bale grab
if there is 3 off us, can cart 1k in a everning easy

View attachment 1053175
2 of us can do 1,000 after tea.

Not easy though, might be early hours when finished. Thats flat 8 onto trailer with one man stacking proper load by hand. Then unload onto stack by hand, top of load to top of stack, bottom of load to next stack.

More trailers would be a step up for us, so we can unload the next morning. Sadly access prevents us using cheap wagon trailers.

Did 2,000 once two of us 7pm start 8.30 am finish when we got rained by thunderstorm off lost about 150.
 
Last edited:

Pan mixer

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Near Colchester
Our system with small bales is flat 8 onto all our trailers but stack with labour to make flat 10 and use all of 8 ft trailer width. Park under cover.
Then manual stack into an awkward corner to take about 400.
We bought a 56 bale carrier but it has not been used. Might sell it, but our new Dutch barn may make 56 bale blocks more practical.
When I was a lad an army of kids appeared after supper time (read dinner time if you are not in our village) to stack bales. Not any more!
Flat 8 on and off trailer has to be the gold standard for us in future. It doesn’t need to look good.
You can get a 56 bale grab that fits on the forklift too you know, that speeds up stacking if you are bringing them in from the field in 56's

I have 2 56 bale squeezers and don't ever stack hay on trailers as usually there is not time to unload them and or they are not fit to stack for a while. I just put them down in cattle yards until I am ready or they are ready to stack.

Most of my small bale customers take a 56 at once and so I will usually deliver them straight out of the cattle yards until the moos come in, saves a lot of bother.

Those strings are there to keep the hay in, they are not handles.
 

FG.

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Wiltshire
I run double flat 8 grabs.
Most of my trailers are 4, flat 8 long.
Which If I push to 8 layers high, when travelling is good, I can be just sly of 2000 bales.
On the fifth layer, I turn the stacks on the floor, so it ties the load together.

My neighbour, stacks 5 high on specially made pallets, ties them on, then brings them back to his adjacent barn, with his telehandler.
The whole hay making process is a very slow, technical and scientific process, developed over a handful of years, catering for the more 'discerning customer'. So I'm told.
My house is up quite high and if I'm feeling very relaxed, I can watch the process from the garden with a drink.
 

Lowland1

Member
Mixed Farmer
We dont feck here to get the job done
sledge was new in 1978

View attachment 1053176
I think there's been a few articles over the year's in the farming press about that design how do you get on with it? Over here my landlord bales maybe 500 acres a month of Lucerne all loaded singly by hand on trailers we keep telling him there are other ways but it falls on deaf ears.
 
Totally out of date here.

But if you go back 40 years loads of great kit available. But farmers did not buy it & in real terms more affordable than today. If there were no round or big square balers farmers would buy Hew Holland bale wagons & top notch elevators. But 40 years ago they did not, I wonder why?
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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