We are having to get creative on sourcing hay this year, and I have found a good source who sells his hay in 21-bale bundles but does not deliver. We have a big tractor and bale spear at home so we can deal with unloading them. But I need some kind of trailer to pick them up. The farmer can’t load them in a stock trailer and needs an open side or top to load them for us. We have a Ford F-350, but currently I don’t have any kind of flatbed trailer or hay wagon. Here are my questions: how long a flatbed trailer should I consider? Gooseneck or bumper pull? The hay is 50 minutes away and we are going to have to make A LOT of trips in order to get our hay barn and lofts full, so I want something big but hopefully manageable.
We use our 16 foot flatbed bumper pull trailer to pick up 21 bale bundles, no problem.
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I am picking up hay today. We get 10, 21 bale bundles at a time. 3 on the flatbed truck, 7 on the trailer. Ours has fenders and ramps, it’s rated for 10k lbs. It is 20’ long.
The easier trailer to unload would be the kind where the floor of the trailer is above the wheels. Those suckers are $$$$.
And now loaded up:
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We have an 18’ flatbed rated for 15k lbs. It easily can put two bundles end to end on the trailer. We don’t have sides and the guys that load it love it. I will say that using a bale spear or even pallet forks are tough for removing the bundles. We just back up to our hay shed, break the bundles before storing.
We do take the ramps off the trailer to make it easier to unload.
My choice is always the gooseneck. Gives you extra space if you have deck space on top of the gooseneck. Our hay trailer takes 17 600 lb round bales off our hayfields at a time. It’s old (1964 Atco trailer). It’s no longer road worthy, it’s just a farm trailer. But the design is great for hauling hay. (It used to be a horse trailer with bunks on the gooseneck, but we cut the box off it to make it a flatdeck when the ribs were starting to rot out.) The deck is 16 feet.
I have an 8x16 flatbed trailer. I put 4 on the trailer and one in my truck bed. I probably could do more (trailer is rated for 7k pounds) but because I am traveling on the interstate I want to be really safe.
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Ugh!! Since 21-bale bundles seem to be the future for quality hay in our area,* I need to invest in the right equipment. We have a bale spear and pallet forks. Not the right tools for the job.
Another year, another stack of bales strewn about as we tried to unload them off the trailer and load them into the barn with pallet forks (as suggested by the hay farmer). Hay farmer had a telehandler with a bale handler (with hydraulic half-circle metal “fingers” that would rotate in to grip the bundles).
SO and I had just this -ahem- discussion. Him saying we could have/should have just unloaded by hand and we’d have been long done by now. We ended up loading them by hand anyway. I have serious back problems and isn’t the whole point of a bundle the ease of moving it?
It takes us a minute, and we have to be deliberate about getting the 2 truck bundles off, but with the pallet forks we’ve gotten pretty good at getting under the bundle and getting it into the loft and shoving it out of the way. To be fair I have ample room, an open access to get the hay in the loft, and a deep hatred for throwing hay lol.
Same.
We use a 16ft car trailer and get 6 bundles on the trailer and one in the bed of the truck. the farmer loads with his big tractor with hay spears, we unload and stack with our medium sized Kubota with 3 hay spears that attach to the bucket. Our barn has a 20x30 foot bay with a 14 foot tall opening. It does fine with the bundles turned up so they are on their sides, they stack 2 high. When we have to load the bundles into a friend’s barn where they go in on the flat side. Our hay spears aren’t long enough to go all the width of the bundle so we use a tow strap to secure the bundle on the spears and back to the tractor’s bucket. We stack them in her barn 2 high (10 foot clearance), we use a tow strap to hold the bale on the spears.
Key to moving the bundles with the tractor is sufficient ballast on the back. We keep the arena drag attached and have water in the rear tires. Also key is move the bundles on the spears as low as possible to the ground, only elevating them when coming off the trailer and going into the second row in the barn. AND GO SLOW! If the tractor gets off balance at all, we just quickly drop the bundle to the ground. After doing this 3-years in a row to the tune of 42 bundles per year, we have gotten pretty good at it.
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May I ask the size of your tractor?
John deere 4250
Just kind of wondering if the hay couldn’t be set on pallets to be easier to unload/move and distribute weight, even if they don’t fit all the way under the bundle. Used to be a forklift operator so… would love to see pallets.
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Hay will be easier to load and unload if your trailer is a deckover style. And without a dovetail will add a couple of feet, i.e. 18 foot trailer without dovetail gives 18 flat feet, versus 18 foot with 2 foot dovetail gives 16 feet of flat space. Picture is an 18 foot bumper pull deckover trailer with no dovetail.
Ours is a Kubota 3700 SU. A deck over trailer would be great but ours is a standard railed car trailer with fenders. When we unload the bundles, we put a couple of pieces of aluminum box tubing in the brackets on the side of the trailer so we can “push” into the bundles without pushing against the fenders. We have also used a smaller tractor to push on the bundles from the other side to hold them still while pushing the spears in.
the first year we used a forklift with pallet forks. It was a PIA to get the forks between the bundles to lift them. On the next trip, we stacked the bundles on the trailer with 2x4 spacer boards between them. That worked better. But the best is the hay spears. We got ours online at Titan Attachments. Be sure an get the longest spears you can find as it works best when the spears to almost all the way through the bundle.
Are hay bundles just what they sound like? Square bales tied together to form a larger bunch?
Yes, basically. 21 small squares stacked and strapped to make on large bale. The connecting straps can be cut to have 21 small squares again.
(Random internet photo)
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I really like hauling bundles because they are so much more secure. And they fit together closely and don’t take up as much space as unbundled bales. My tractor is too small to move bundles and I am pretty much over unloading and stacking hay manually. So my method has been to park the flatbed trailer under the overhang on my barn and just feed them off the trailer. The downside is that the trailer is tied up for 6 months but it sure beats manually unloading and stacking. Now if I won the lottery and could afford a bigger tractor…
My last purchase was bundles of 14 bales each. The grower’s fields were so hilly he said the 21 bale bundle machines would not work and they had to go with 14 bale bundles. So I fitted 6 bundles on the trailer and one in my truck.
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The hay I just got was in 15 bale bundles - an all one-layer bundle. Producer said they fit in the tractor trailers better, so that’s how he does his bundles now. Used a flat-bed hay wagon (no sides) to haul.
I like the idea of feeding off the trailer!
bring pallets to put under the bundles when you load them, I actually do that with loose small squares, feed, bedding etc slugging anything by hand is no longer on my to do list
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