Baler

This article describes the farm machinery. For the municipality in Aurora, Philippines, see Baler, Aurora.

A baler is a piece of farm machinery that is used to compress a cut, raked, crop (such as hay or straw) into bales and bind the bales with twine. There are several different types of balers that are commonly used.

Round baler

The most frequently used type of baler is a round baler. It produces cylindrically shaped 'round' or 'rolled' bales. The hay is simply rolled up inside the baler using rubberized belts, fixed rollers, or a combination of rollers and belts. When the bale reaches a determined size, the twine or mesh wrap that binds the bale is wrapped around the outside but not knotted. The back of the baler is opened up and the bale is discharged. Variable chamber balers typically produce bales from 48 to 72 inches in diameter (about 180 cm) and up to 60 inches in width. The bales weigh from 1100 lb (500 kg) to 2200 lb (1000 kg).

The round baler was invented in 1971 by the Vermeer Company, which as of 2004 continues to produce them. A man named Raymond Dyer of Tennessee invented the bale spear between the years 1971-1972 where Four Star inc. patent.

Round bale handling and transport

Round bales can weigh several tons, and are well-suited for modern large scale farming operations such as a dairy with 200 or more cows. However, due to the ability for a round bale to literally roll away on a slope, they require special transport and moving equipment.

The most important tool for round bale handling is the bale spear or spike, which is usually mounted on the back of a tractor or the front of a skid-steer. It is inserted into the approximate center of the round bale, then lifted up and the bale is hauled away. Once at the destination, the round bale is set down, and the spear pulled out. Careful placement of the spear in the center is needed or the round bale can spin around and touch the ground while in transport, causing a loss of control.

Alternatively, a grapple fork may be used to lift and transport round bales. The grapple fork is a hydraulically driven implement attached to the end of a tractor's bucket loader. When the hydraulic cylinder is extended the fork clamps downwards towards the bucket, much a like a closing hand. To move a round bale the tractor approaches the bale from the side and places the bucket underneath the bale. The fork is then clamped down across the top of the bale, and the bucket lifted with the bale in tow.

It is difficult to flip a round bale so that the flat surface is facing down and later flip it back up on edge, so transporting many round bales a long distance is a challenge. Flat-bed transport is difficult since the bales could roll off the truck bed going around curves and up hills. To prevent this, the flat-bed trailer is equipped with rounded guard-rails at either end, which prevent bales from rolling either forward or backward. Another solution for this is the saddle wagon, which has closely-spaced rounded saddles or support posts for round bales to sit. The tall sides of each saddle, or the bale settling down in between posts, prevent the bales from rolling around while on the wagon.

Round bales can be directly used for feeding animals by placing it in a feeding area, tipping it over, removing the bale wrap, and placing a protective ring around the outside so that animals don't walk on hay that has been peeled of the outer perimeter of the bale. The baler's forming and compaction process can assist in unrolling a round bale, as it is often possible to unroll a round bale in a continuous flat strip.

Large Rectangular baler

Another type of baler in common use produces large rectangular bales, each bound with a half dozen or so strings of twine which are then knotted. Such bales are highly compacted and generally weigh somewhat more than round bales.

Rectangular bale handling and transport

Rectangular bales are easier to transport than round bales since there is little risk of the bale rolling off the back of a flatbed trailer. The rectangular shape also saves space and allows a complete solid slab of hay to be stacked up for transport.

They are well-suited for large scale livestock feedlot operations where the farmer does not produce any of their own livestock forage, and instead purchases all of it from someone else whose exclusive task is growing and baling hay.

Due to the huge rectangular shape, a large fork lift is more appropriate for lifting and moving the bales.

Small Square baler

A type of baler which is less common today in some places but which is still prevalent in many countries such as New Zealand and Australia to the exclusion of large bales produces small rectangular or 'square' bales. Each bale is about 15 in x 18 in x 38 in (38 x 46 x 96 cm). The bales are wrapped with two, three, or sometimes four strands of twine and knotted. The bales are light enough for a person to handle, about 45 lb (20 kg) to 60 lb (25 kg).

To form the bale, the hay in the windrow is lifted by tines in the baler's 'pickup'. The hay is then dragged or augered into a chamber that runs the length of one side of the baler. A combination plunger and knife moves back and forth in the front end of this chamber. The knife, positioned just ahead of the plunger, cuts off the hay at the spot where it enters the chamber from the pickup. The plunger rams the hay rearwards, compressing it into the bales. A measuring device measures the amount of hay that is being compressed and, at the appropriate length it triggers the mechanism (the knotter) that wraps the twine around the bale and ties it off. As the next bale is formed the tied one is driven out the rear of the baling chamber onto the ground or onto a special wagon hooked to the end of the baler. This process continues as long as there is material to be baled.

This form of bale is no longer much used in large-scale commercial agriculture because of the costs involved in handling many small bales. However, it enjoys some popularity in small-scale, low-mechanization agriculture. Besides using simpler machinery and being easy to handle these small bales can also be used for insulation and building materials in straw-bale construction. Square bales will also generally weather better than round bales because a more much dense stack can be put up. Convience is also a major factor in farmers deciding to continue putting up square bales as they make feeding in confined areas (stables, barns, etc.) much easier.

Many of these older balers are still to be found on farms today, particularly in dry areas where bales can be left outside for long periods.

The automatic-baler for small square bales took on most of its present form in 1940. It was first manufactured by the New Holland Company and it used a small petrol engine to provide operating power. It is based on a 1937 invention for a twine-tie baler with automatic pickup.

Wire balers

Bales prior to 1937 were manually wire-tied with two baling wires. Even earlier the baler was a stationary implement, driven by power take-off (PTO) and belt, with the hay being brought to the baler and fed in by hand. The biggest change to this type of baler since 1940 is being powered by the tractor through its PTO, instead of by a built-in internal combustion engine.

Square/Wire bale history

Pickup and handling methods

In the 1940's most farmers would bale hay in the field with a small tractor with 20 or less horsepower, and the tied bales would be dropped onto the ground as the baler moved through the field. Another team of workers with horses and a flatbed wagon with would come by and use a sharp metal hook to grab the bale and throw it up onto the wagon while an assistant stacks the bale, for transport to the barn.

A later time-saving innovation was to tow the flatbed wagon directly behind the baler, and the bale would be pushed up a ramp to a waiting attendant on the wagon. The attendant hooks the bale off the ramp and stacks it on the wagon, while waiting for the next bale to be produced.

Eventually as tractor horsepower increased, the thrower-baler became possible, which eliminates the need for someone to stand on the wagon and pick up the finished bales. The first thrower mechanism used two fast-moving friction belts to grab finished bales and throws them at an angle up in the air onto the bale wagon. The bale wagon was modified from a flatbed into a 3-sided skeleton frame open at the front, to act as a catcher's net for the thrown bales.

The next innovation of the thrower-baler as tractor horsepower further increased was the hydraulic tossing baler. This employs a flat pan behind the bale knotter. As bales advance out the back of the baler, they are pushed onto the pan one at a time. When the bale has moved fully onto the pan, the pan suddenly pops up, pushed by a large hydraulic cylinder, and tosses the bale up into the wagon like a catapult.

The pan-thrower method puts much less stress on the bales compared to the belt-thrower. The friction belts of the belt-thrower stress the twine and knots as they grip the bale, and would occasionally cause bales to break apart in the thrower or when the bales landed in the wagon.

Storage methods

Before electrification occurred in rural parts of the United States in the 1940's, some small dairy farms would have tractors but not electric power. Often just one neighbor who could afford a tractor would do all the baling for surrounding farmers still using horses.

To get the bales up into the hayloft, a pulley system ran on a track along the peak of the barn's hayloft. This track also stuck a few feet out the end of the loft, with a large access door under the track. On the botton of the pulley system was a bale spear, which is pointed on the end and has retractible retention spikes.

A flatbed wagon would pull up next to the barn underneath the end of the track, the spear lowered down to the wagon, and speared into a single bale. The pulley rope would be used to manually lift the bale high up into the air until it could enter the mow through the door, then moved along the track into the barn and finally released for manual stacking in tight rows across the floor of the loft. As the stack filled the loft, the bales would be lifted higher and higher with the pulleys until the hay was stacked all the way up to the peak.

When electricity finally arrived, the bale spear, pulley and track system disappeared, replaced by long motorized bale conveyors known as hay elevators. A typical elevator is an open skeletal frame, with a chain that has dull 3-inch spikes every few feet along the chain to grab bales and drag them along. One elevator replaced the spear track and ran the entire length of the peak of the barn. A second elevator was either installed at a 30-degree slope on the side of the barn to lift bales up to the peak elevator, or used dual front-back chains surrounding the bale to lift bales straight up the side of the barn to the peak elevator.

A bale wagon pulls up next to the lifting elevator, and a farm worker places bales one at a time onto the angled track. Once bales arrive at the peak elevator, there are adjustable tipping gates along the length of the peak elevator. By pulling a cable from the floor of the hayloft, tipping gates can be opened and closed, so that bales will tip off the elevator and drop down to the floor in different areas of the loft. This permits a single elevator to transport hay to one part of a loft and straw to another part.

This complete hay elevator lifting, transport, and dropping system reduced bale storage down to a single person, who simply pulls up with a wagon, turns on the elevators and starts placing bales on it, occasionally checking to makes sure that bales are falling in the right locations in the loft.

The neat stacking of bales in the loft is often sacrificed for the speed of just letting them fall and roll down the growing pile in the loft, and changing the elevator gates to fill in open areas around the loose pile. But if desired, the loose bale pile dropped by the elevator could be rearranged into orderly rows between wagon loads.

Usage once in the barn

The process of retrieving bales from a hayloft has stayed relatively unchanged from the beginning of baling. Typically workers were sent up into the loft, to climb up onto the bale stack, pull bales off the stack, and throw or roll them down the stack to the open floor of the loft. Once the bale is down on the floor, workers climb down the stack, open a cover over a bale chute in the floor of the loft, and push the bales down the chute to the livestock area of the barn.

Most barns were equipped with several chutes along the sides and in the center of the loft floor. This permitted bales to be dropped into the area where they were to be used. Hay bales would be dropped through side chutes, to be broken up and fed to the cattle. Straw bales would be dropped down the center chute, to be distributed as bedding in the livestock standing/resting areas.

Traditionally multiple bales were dropped down to the livestock floor and the twine removed by hand. After drying and being stored under tons of pressure in the haystack, most bales are tightly compacted and need to be torn apart and fluffed up for use.

One recent method of speeding up all this manual bale handling is the bale shredder, which is a large vertical drum with rotary cutting/ripping teeth at the base of the drum. The shredder is placed under the chute and several bales dropped in. A worker then pushes the shredder along the barn aisle as it rips up a bale and spews it out in a continuous fluffy stream of material.

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