Hay wagon: 1 or 3 sides?

[Dave41A]

I recently picked up a farm wagon at auction. It has a 6x12 foot flat deck, which is fine for my needs. I am going to use the wagon behind a Farmall H pulling an engine-driven NH Super 66. It has a bale chute and my goal is to have someone on the wagon to stack bales while I drive. I've used the baler for the past few years just dropping the bales on the ground, so the hope is to make this an improvement over that. Small operation: 20 acres hay, with maybe another 20 if I can get a second field groomed up.

My question: the wagon is flat-top right now. I have seen them with just a fence at the back (1 side) and also with both sides and back (3 side on wagon). With a thrower 3 sides is of course needed. But what's the best option for baler chute and hand-stacking on the wagon? Any insight appreciated. Thanks in advance, Dave

 

[fastfarmall]

All i ever used/built was a back on the trailer,but you have to tie the bales , they were 14x18 bales but my racks were 8 x16, so we used a edge bale, and then the next layer up put the edge bale on the other side, and so on !!

 

[Loosehandle]

Always just the back here, smallest wagon we had was 7x14 and we did put a bale lengthwise down the center for the first couple layers. Dad taught me to make a slightly pyramid shaped load to help keep it on the wagon. I'd get another wagon minimum.

 

[paul]

Just the back. It would suck having to unload out the front all the time, might work for some but more flexible to unload off the sides working back most of the time.

A secret many might not know or understand is to have the rack on back slant backwards just slightly. Just a couple degrees. Bales stack and hold on the rack so much better.

Especially at just 6 feet wide, you want to be able to let bales hang off the edges a little bit.

We always liked to put a 1x4 down each side of the hayrack, this gives the bales a ridge to keep them on the rack. Real easy to unload over the 1 inch lip, but it makes a huge difference at keeping the bales on the rack as you rumble down the field.

Paul

 

[caterpillar guy]

6x12 he will have to load only 4 wide as he loads. He will also want the front end of the rack fastened to the running gear or they can dump off as the front tips up. 7and 8 wide wagons can be loaded 5 wide. Been 30 or more years since I loaded a load of idiot cubes.

 

[showcrop]

What Paul posted.

 

[Greenfrog]

This is good design. Yes board along edge is good.
We put row of bales down the middle perpendicular to rear rack, then bales on each side.
Agreed, no side boards. One wants to drags bales off the side, yet that edge board doesnt inhibit that much. Rear rack should be substantial, as wide as the bed. Not just a couple of 4x4 s sticking up.

 

[Greenfrog]

Although your wagon is rather narrow for the center row of bales.

 

[DanielW]

As others have said, just the back, though it doesn't hurt to make provision for dropping a rack on the front as well in some cases. All our wagons have steel tubes to drop front & back racks into to take them on/off easily.

About 85 percent of our field loading is done with only the back rack, but our fields are a 30 minute tractor drive from the barns down some pretty busy and hilly roads. So once we load as much as we can with the wagon behind the baler, we'll unhook it, drop the front rack in, and can load another 25 or so bales right up against the front rack. Lets us get more on each load (important, when it's an hour round trip to the barns for each load) and also helps tighten/stabilize the load when running up/down the hills in road gear. Having the racks removable also greatly helps unloading in some of our barns.

 

[ss55]

6 X 12 sounds like it could be a repurposed barge box (grain wagon) from about fifty years ago. Is there a hydraulic hoist under the front end? It would probably hold 60 to 80 small square bales.

 

[Dave41A]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I'll pick up some stake sockets and build just the back.

The running gear looms like a typical hay wagon running gear that has been set in a couple notches on the telescoping tube frame. The only markings I see look like L005-E266 on the rear half and L005-E255 on the front half. The deck is 5/4 pressure treated lumber. I'm guessing whoever built it had some 12ft boards and just cut them in half.

I would have preferred a 7x14 but it was slim pickings at the Spring auction this year. I could add an overhang at the back to add a couple feet length if I think it is too small. But with an H, the baler, and the wagon, a full load could be 80-100 bales. My ground is pretty flat but has some spots where I do not want to experiment with the upper limits of what I can control, especially with a person on the wagon.

 

[495man]

Back ladder only.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

I wish people would quit calling them "idiot cubes" and puffing out their chest like they came up with something original.

You complain that people are soft these days. You know what makes them soft? Round bales. Bucking small squares made boys into men and girls into women.

Besides, who's the idiot? The guy that in one pass leaves a clean empty field, or the guy that in one pass leaves a bunch of giant hay turds all over the field and then spends hours chasing after them one or two at a time, beating their loader tractor to pieces and wasting fuel?

 

[Northvale PA]

My 2 cents: we use a kicker baler and rack wagons. Yes, you need a higher HP tractor and a different baler but we can do the baling with 1 person and only unload. That cuts the labor you are doing by half. You may think hand loading wagons is ok but once you use a kicker you will have a very big advantage for the helpers. And, we can throw on about 150 bales so a rack wagon has huge capacity.

 

[Dave41A]

Thanks again to everyone for the continued feedback. I am not putting up a lot of hay and want to do the best with what I have. I really couldn't justify the expense of higher capacity equipment right now. I will see how it goes with what I have and if the payback time is reasonable look at other equipment. I'm still running an IH 100 sickle-bar with tow-behind hay conditioner (JD #1) which is less than ideal. So a haybine would be the next purchase for me, although the NH 477 at the same auction shot up real quick in price. It will be a few years before I clear enough to spring for one of those, much less a new baler, bigger wagons, or even a thrower. Thanks again, Dave

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

Hey Dave if it isn't too much of a bother could you post a picture of the conditioner hitch on your mower?

 

[lastcowboy32]

You are thinking fine. When we did about 20 acres of hay, we baled on the ground and loaded flatbeds.

Now that we do a hundred acres or so, we have a kicker, but I've spent the better part of, I don't know five or six full days plus a few hundred dollars fixing the kicker on our old baler.

And, we bought a new, bigger, tractor to pull the baler and wagons around, while operating the kicker. And kicker racks...

If we weren't baling more hay, I could have hired more help to do it the old way and still be money/time ahead, compared to the kicker, tractor, wagons, etc.

Getting bigger in farming is a treadmill, if you don't know where you're getting off, it's better not to get on in the first place.

 

[showcrop]

(quoted from post at 14:25:32 04/27/23)
You are thinking fine. When we did about 20 acres of hay, we baled on the ground and loaded flatbeds.

Now that we do a hundred acres or so, we have a kicker, but I've spent the better part of, I don't know five or six full days plus a few hundred dollars fixing the kicker on our old baler.

And, we bought a new, bigger, tractor to pull the baler and wagons around, while operating the kicker. And kicker racks...

If we weren't baling more hay, I could have hired more help to do it the old way and still be money/time ahead, compared to the kicker, tractor, wagons, etc.

Getting bigger in farming is a treadmill, if you don't know where you're getting off, it's better not to get on in the first place.[/quo



Sounds like my operation. built rapidly up to 95 acres then gradually back down to 12. The driver is that here in the northeast you can plan on only so many good windows so you have to be set up to make the most of them when they come.

 

[lastcowboy32]

(quoted from post at 04:17:01 04/28/23)

(quoted from post at 14:25:32 04/27/23)
You are thinking fine. When we did about 20 acres of hay, we baled on the ground and loaded flatbeds.

Now that we do a hundred acres or so, we have a kicker, but I've spent the better part of, I don't know five or six full days plus a few hundred dollars fixing the kicker on our old baler.

And, we bought a new, bigger, tractor to pull the baler and wagons around, while operating the kicker. And kicker racks...

If we weren't baling more hay, I could have hired more help to do it the old way and still be money/time ahead, compared to the kicker, tractor, wagons, etc.

Getting bigger in farming is a treadmill, if you don't know where you're getting off, it's better not to get on in the first place.[/quo



Sounds like my operation. built rapidly up to 95 acres then gradually back down to 12. The driver is that here in the northeast you can plan on only so many good windows so you have to be set up to make the most of them when they come.

Truth.

These guys on irrigation... they can just turn the water off when they want to start baling. But then they get driven to go big by planting a monoculture (alfalfa)... if they had a few different hay crops with different maturities, they could control their windows.

But yeah, here in the Northeast, unless we're gonna put a tent over hundreds of acres... Mother Nature rules the roost.

 

[wildwes]

This is how I've settled on building my wagons. The one in the pictures is 8'3" wide and 20 feet long. It is the 4th or 5th one I've built, and I've built one or two since it, but it is about the optimum size and design for what I do. It has the most angled back backboard of any I have built, and is also the widest, and the hay stacks the best on it of any I have built. I can put around 120 bales on it stacking 4 high with it hooked to the back of the baler, or I could easily go 150-200 bales if I wasn't on such hilly land. The one in the picture is also on a home made running gear that I made from junk odds and ends I had laying around.

I have built them as small as 7'10" x 18' and as large as this one. I normally use 6" or 8" channel for the main runners if I can get it, but have used other scrap steel. My next one will probably have oak 3x8 runners since I have a sawmill now and can make my own lumber dirt cheap.

I bale anywhere from 500-2500 bales in a year, so I am definitely I small time operator. I use either a Farmall M or a Farmtrac 35 to mow with a New Holland 472, A John Deere 1050 with a two basket tedder, a Farmtrac 35 with a V rake or JD 1050 with a NH 256 rake, and a Massey Ferguson 35 with a New Holland 311 baler. My goal is to build 10-15 wagons and have enough barn space to bale straight onto the wagons and park them in the barn without ever unloading, until they are unloaded unto the customer's truck or trailer.

I have very little money in my wagons, just a little time, so if you are so inclined you can expand your wagon fleet without spending a lot of money.