Teach me how to round bale

One major drawback o the large square balers is the purchase price, double the cost of a round baler or more as well as much more maintanaince with knotters etc.

The used market on large square balers, atleast in this area is quite soft making the depreciation costs pretty wild.

I buy round bales because they can winter outside.  I'm yet to build a hay shed- will someday but it's down the road a few years.  I'll grant that big squares are a lot easier to haul, but they'd be junk by the time spring rolled around here.

As far as EFFICIENCY goes, you can't beat BIG squares.  Neither can you beat them for moving or stacking.  If I had 2000 cows to feed, I'd want squares.  Round bales in square sheds doesn't make too much sense.  We bale several thousand acres of straw every summer along with a bunch of both ours and custom hay with a NH BB960 of the 3x4 variety.  We can move stacks of 3 with the payloader in the field and at home.  We can stack 18 per semi load to safely move them any where.  In terms of baling speed, moving efficiency, and economics, I think it's hard to beat the big squares.

As for storage, when you make a "fort" out of them outside and cover the top, you'll have less spoilage than on individually stacked rounds.

How do you feed them and bed with them?????

Feed the hay in silage wagons a whole bale at a time.  The dutch dairy most of the straw goes to has some contraption they use.  I've seen it in action, but can't think of the name at the moment.  It'll come to me and I'll post a picture.  It's really a neat deal.  We flake it off a flat bed in our calving barns.

jbw said:

How do you feed them and bed with them?????

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Squares or rounds?  Rounds, just cut the strings and unroll them to bed or cut the strings (or cut the netting off) and drop them into a round bale feeder.  Squares?  When I used them out west on my own little place, I still stuck them into the round bale feeder because that's what I had.  I cut the strings and let the flakes fall into place.  If I were to use big squares for straw, I'd just cut strings and use whatever flakes I needed.  I think the key to easy usage of either rounds or squares is to put up or buy really good quality that's been put up right so the flakes come apart easily or so the round will unroll easily.  FWIW, on the Wy ranch, since they didn't put up any small squares, at the end of the baling, he'd reset the baler (a Vermeer) to make a few really small diameter rounds.  Those were the ones that the kids would take on the road for fairs and shows.

I was talking about 3'*4' and 4'*4' bales. They haul and stack easier. They make bale processors for them too so feeding the bunk is no problem. For feeding and bedding in the field we have a flatbed with roler chains that move the bale slowly to the end and drops a flake. I guess square bales do get a lot more spoilage though never thought about that because around here we only get like 13in of rain in a whole year