V Rake

[flying belgian]

I do some small sq baling for a lady. Its a 4 acre triangle of grass. Its really nice clean hay and produces well. She has a couple horses which is beside the point. She has her neighbor mow and rake it. He rakes with a Vermeer V rake. I've never seen such a terrible job of raking in my life. All big bunches and skips. Is that because it is a small odd shaped field? or is he just a poor operator? Or is that the nature of V rakes?

 

[Jim Wendt]

First of all, how bad was it mowed, but triangles are hard to rake.

 

[flying belgian]

First of all, how bad was it mowed, but triangles are hard to rake.

Mowing is always done well.

 

[Vito]

Real art to take properly. I tried it once and that's is all I'm saying about that.

Vito

 

[Jim.ME]

Sounds like it is bunching and dragging from a lot of sharp turning.

 

[Ellis Kinney]

I have used v rakes, but on larger fields and they do fine. I would say all the turning on such a small field would cause problems. I have several small 5 or 6 acre fields and I use a basket rake which works well. Ellis

 

[paul]

Those wheel rakes are a miserable thing on odd little bits of hay ground. They are designed to work in long straight windrows. Curves and angles and lots of turning, ugh.

I’m glad I got my 5 wheel cheap wheel rake for some jobs and backup duty; but for the type of irregular hay fields here I’m glad I didn’t spend much money on one. Granted a good quality one would work better I understand. And a v wheel rake seems so inflexable I don’t know how you can efficently use on of those in less than perfect big rectangular fields.

But, I didn’t say I was a good rake operator either………

Paul

 

[flying belgian]

Those wheel rakes are a miserable thing on odd little bits of hay ground. They are designed to work in long straight windrows. Curves and angles and lots of turning, ugh.

I’m glad I got my 5 wheel cheap wheel rake for some jobs and backup duty; but for the type of irregular hay fields here I’m glad I didn’t spend much money on one. Granted a good quality one would work better I understand. And a v wheel rake seems so inflexable I don’t know how you can efficently use on of those in less than perfect big rectangular fields.

But, I didn’t say I was a good rake operator either………

Paul

As discussed on here before, noone should operate a rake who hasn't operated a baler.But in this case the guy also does lots of round baling. That leads me to believe the rake itself must be the culprit.

 

[Fred Werring]

I do some small sq baling for a lady. Its a 4 acre triangle of grass. Its really nice clean hay and produces well. She has a couple horses which is beside the point. She has her neighbor mow and rake it. He rakes with a Vermeer V rake. I've never seen such a terrible job of raking in my life. All big bunches and skips. Is that because it is a small odd shaped field? or is he just a poor operator? Or is that the nature of V rakes?

I've got a triangular field just about that size.
Had an older Frontier 10 wheel v rake, had a hard time cleaning up the ends of the windrows, never liked the way it looked when I got done.
But the cows would get it for pasture a few weeks after baling, they didn't seem to care.
Bought a new Enorossi v rake last fall, (did a post on it in Implement Alley) using it this year, there's a big difference in how it does the job.

 

[Fixingfarmer]

Was there a lot of hay in second cutting or a really late 1st? Sounds like too big a swath plug it slightly between the last 2 wheels

One thing the Tedder has helped is there’s less of that spreads it out evenly and makes it dry faster

The Tedder throws it out and gets rid of your row it drives dad nuts he tries to go at a low pto rpm to keep his mowed strips to count instead of just making it consistent and deciding with the rake how much windrow you want. 2 different ways to look at it I guess I’d rather get rid of that completely and make my own windrow with the one pass of the rake so it’s consistent

 

[DanielW]

A lot of folks with V-rakes don't set them up properly at all - they just drop the wings and go. There's a lot more to it than that - getting the float adjusted and set right, and making sure the hay is turning the rake - not the ground. If not set up right, it can ride over, into, and bunch up far more than it should. Just a guess, but I'd suspect it's probably equal parts improper setup, operator carelessness, and the odd nature of the field. Though 4 acres in a triangle should still be large enough that most of the runs would be ok.

V-rakes typically do clean jobs if set up an used correctly. But with that being said, I'd never, ever go back to a V-rake or rolabar rake after using a rotary rake.

 

[dcarp]

I do some small sq baling for a lady. Its a 4 acre triangle of grass. Its really nice clean hay and produces well. She has a couple horses which is beside the point. She has her neighbor mow and rake it. He rakes with a Vermeer V rake. I've never seen such a terrible job of raking in my life. All big bunches and skips. Is that because it is a small odd shaped field? or is he just a poor operator? Or is that the nature of V rakes?

V-rakes do not like corners. I have a leased triangle field. I mow the rounds then mow straight lines from the longest point. Eliminates corners.
2 things v-rakes have problems with are corners & the rear opening being set too narrow. I set my rake to just a few inches less than the width of my baler pickup. With a round baler that eliminates 99% of the weaving. Should make squares easier also.

 

[Tx Jim]

Not all wheel rakes were created equal. I custom baled using wheel rakes for over 25 yrs. Some wheel rakes such as a H&S hi-cap rake shown in photo below handle raking around corners much better than Butterfly type rakes that raises rake wheels similar to Butterfly wings. Wheel rake that have rake wheels pushing hay in front of wheels rake handle hay much better & form better windrows than rake wheels that pull hay. Back before I retired my regular rake tractor driver could rake fields as small 1.8 acres each shown in aerial photo below of one of my hay baling customers. Dark item in area of each parcel is a tree.

 

[moresmoke]

As discussed on here before, noone should operate a rake who hasn't operated a baler.But in this case the guy also does lots of round baling. That leads me to believe the rake itself must be the culprit.

I let my wife try raking once. If you can imagine what it would look like if a Roomba raked hay! She was promoted to baler operator thereafter.