Greenhill

I would imagine, in the world of lawyers, your word "staff" is replaced with the phrase "your children" followed by "who are paid their wages into a joint account from which the father withdraws all funds in cash to spend on cocaine and prostitutes."

R I C H

That would have been nice. A luxury I couldn't afford - even offering local kids $50 for a couple of hours work to assist didn't tempt them. They knew the pain, sweat and dust that came with it.

Shard

How much do they weigh?

R I C H

Square bales range from c50lbs at the low end to as much as 80lbs. 60-70 is a fair average. The bales at the heavy end of the scale are nasty to handle after a couple of hundred.

Oink

Don't they have machines to lift them?

R I C H

That's the elevator machine AC is looking for.

My delivery used to come on a double trailer rig which got reversed into the barn. It was a matter of climbing onto the top of it and throwing the bales off and stacking them. Lifting to stack 400+ of them 8 bales high wouldn't have been feasible without machinery.

Almost Canadian

Thank you.

My searches on similar sites threw up lots of hits in Ontario and Quebec, but bugger all in Alberta.

Almost Canadian

We have space in the quonset for 150 or so square bales but could probably fit 10 times that in our loft. We have been informed that we will probably get 300 or so from our "hay field" so it's either bale elevator, or I will have to build some form of shelter for them in the next few weeks. I don't wish to muck about with tarps and tires as many of my neighbours do.

I don't have arms like Popeye and I no longer enjoy hard work as much as I recall I used to

I need some neighbours like yours

Almost Canadian

The ones we have had have been "homemade" ones. So not a uniform size or shape. I assume that the balers used weren't always set up correctly as some of them were curved like bananas. Those were a real joy to move as, if one did not have the "bend" the correct way, they would break apart mid lift.

R I C H

Curved bales mean the string tension is too low and not keeping the bale nice and tight. If you've got many like that you can increase the string tension by using twine across the middle to pull the parallel strings together.

dbd33

At the new place we have hay fields but, at present, no hay eating creatures so we've sold the crop for this year. I look forward to watching someone else bale, stack and drive away. (Not gloating too hard though, I've seen the future and it leaves red marks all over my arms).

Almost Canadian

It seemed to me that the strings were in the wrong place (diagonally, rather than parallel with the edges), or there was too much vegetation for the space in the baler (so that there was a bulge on one side so that, the tighter the string, the greater the bulge). Whatever the reason, they were a real pain to carry and stack.

When I first started to lift them, I placed my body into the concave portion and pulled the string towards me with the result that the bale came apart. I learned that convex was the way to go

Almost Canadian

Where we are people will bale a field for 50% of the crop. Trouble is, most put them into round bales. These are no good for us because (a) we don't have a tractor capable of moving them; and (b) my wife likes the "flakes" that squares provide.

We moved in just before Christmas so didn't have any hay from the previous year. A local hay place was able to provide a couple of rounds on a back of a truck with arms that could lift the rounds to wherever we needed them.

That worked out quite economical until we bought a horse that seemed to love playing with the hay rather than eating it. The round was scattered around in no time at all and, once they had shat and wazzed in it, they, for some strange reason, didn't want to eat it.

Onto squares we went. As you are aware, they are way more expensive (for a similar volume) but are much easier to handle and, as we know put the feed directly into those inside out tyre feeder things, there is far less mess. Of course, one can fork from a round into the feeders to but the wife doesn't like doing that when it is cold

Atlantic Xpat

Excellent fred drifting by the way. I bet the OP never knew that her plea for some help in vehicle selection would spawn a discussion around the merits and handling of hay bales.

And for you yokels....

dbd33

Same here.

And again. I had easy access to round bales (see picture above) but no bale spear and no large tractor. I question the claim that round bales work out cheaper though because, as you note, there's a lot of wastage with them.

Slightly more on thread, in the country around here there are no SUVs but every driveway has an F150. Very many driveways also have a commuter car so the PBC isn't the object of derision the way the JD790 (a compact tractor) was and the Mahrindra (an imported compact tractor) is. I could probably drive a pink Ridgeline and people would still think of me as "the guy with the faggoty little tractor".