851 auto tie. New Holland

[DanielW]

I'm really passionate about this.

Take that net wrap bale............lift it up.......booooogey on out to your feeder...........then cut the wrap, and try to unwrap it. Most times, the bottom of the bale will disintegrate, and fall to the ground with the net wrap. Fun times. Now you got a ton of hay on top of the net wrap, UNDERNEATH THE BALE. Yeah.............good stuff........yeah??

Twine wrap............................ Dump the bale in the feeder, cut all of the strings on one side of the bale, pull them from under the bale...............

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Wind that twine up, head back to the house, and enjoy whatever meal time of the day it is. Compare that with net wrap.

I feel the same way personally, but I also think it's dependent on your feeding methods and climate. I always pull the twine off while the bale's on the loader, so it being under the bale doesn't matter because it's in the air anyway. But in a climate that stays below freezing all winter, net wrap can be a huge pain at feeding time regardless. If they were uber-dry bales stored inside, then it may not be not so bad. But if there was any moisture in the hay at all (or especially with silage bales) and if any of them were stored outside, the time spent pulling off net will be waaay more than the time saved baling in the field. Once you get good at taking twine off a bale you can do it pretty fast. Depending on the baler, our twine spacing is either 3" or 4". Go along with your fingers open
like a pair of scissors on your left hand and catch the twines between them as you cut on an angle with the right hand. Twist your wrist around once you have all the twines between your fingers to knot them all together (like a billhook on a baler knotter) and pull them all off as one. My brother and I used to race pulling twine off bales. We could consistently do it in under 15 seconds (he could almost always do it in under 10). Never could get net off nearly as fast, unless maybe uber-dry straw bales stored inside.

We buy hay baled with net, but I've only baled with net a few times myself. I agree it is a joy to bale with. Takes no time at all to wrap and dump a bale. But you'd want a newer style net baler in top-notch condition. Both times I was using a Deere 35 series baler, and those net systems weren't the best compared to Deere's later systems. Both times I had net wrap around a roller at one point during the day. And both times I remember thinking that the time lost cutting and freeing the net from the roller was far more than the time savings from baling with net the rest of the day.

 

[m16ty]

I was out of the hay business and I sold my roller. My son wanted to get back into it, but I didn't have a roller. He's 14 and not knowing how committed he was, I either wanted to buy a roller cheap or at least get a good deal where I could resell easily if it didn't work out.

Was at a auction where they had a NH 849 chain baler, manual tie. Ended up buying it for $300, figuring it all else failed I'd carry it to the scrap yard and get my money back. Rolled 140 rolls so far this year with out a single issue. The manual tie is a pain, but it works every time you crank the rod. I think, if I keep it, this winter I'm going to try to hookup a hydraulic cylinder and convert it to hydraulic tie. For around 200 or so rolls a year though, the manual tie isn't a deal breaker.

 

[GermantownGreen]

I’m not a supporter of the old chain bailers as when the chains wear they can be problematic and costly to repair. However old worn belt balers can have their own issue's, some of the early designs can encourage far less than acceptable vocabularies
Any of the old closed throat belt balers should be avoided, some of the early open throat balers could be in perfect working order but if hay was too dry or to high in moisture you couldn’t pay them to make a bale, Hesston 55?? Series, JD 415 come to mind. Worn belts and failed lacing are to be expected over time and will come sooner on balers with high bale counts. Bearing failures are the real issue, caught early depending on bearings location you can be down for a few hours to a few days, caught late the challenge of the day can be getting your tractor unhooked from a burning baler
Affordability and cost over benefit are factors to consider when purchasing a used baler, I’ve been in the can’t afford better category plenty of times, but spending big money for a late model used baler just to made a couple hundred rolls or less per year is hard for me to pencil out
In the mid 90’s when we were making 200 rolls per year a Hesston bale baler replaced the NH bar baler, in the early 2000’s we expanded to making 500/600 rolls and needed a baler that wasn’t as picky about hay conditions so a NH 640 replaced the Hesston, by 2014 we were making over 1000 rolls of spring hay and a late model used NH BR 7070 replaced the 20 year old 640 that was going to need all new belts and roll bearings in the near future. Today we are back down to 400-600 rolls per year and would have a hard time penciling in a replacement for the BR 7070 that has over 10,000 rolls on the counter

Two 688 NH netwrap balers on our hayfields.
We run JD straight wrap.
Dream machine to run...
Got a spare one in the shed could be sold.
West Central Missouri
Drop a note if you want to visit.
Life is too short , leave that 851 to someone else..
GG Wes