Flatbed trailer for 21-bale bundles?

[Bicoastal]

@sherian

bring pallets to put under the bundles when you load them

Holy cannoli that would have been so slick! Genius! Thank you for sharing this brilliant idea.

[Bicoastal]

@usernameTaken

in 15 bale bundles - an all one-layer bundle

And there’s a specific bale handler attachment for 15 flat bales, so it must be common in some regions.

For me, my problem is definitely not an undersized tractor. I have tried the ratchet tow straps around the back. Maybe I’m just not good at it.

In my defense, this year, the hay farmer said this hay is so soft the bales are “squishy.” Erm, no, they weren’t baled tightly either as small squares or the bundle. One of the bundle strings broke as he was loading. We were doomed .

Last year, the bundles were very loose (while the individual bales were tight). Even off a flat-bed trailer with a humongous tractor, they just weren’t going to hold together.

My own trailer has short walls, so that is less than ideal. I just learned my neighbor bought a 4-spike hay spear after last year’s mess. A week too late for me this year, but I’ll remember for next year!!

[SusanO]

Sounds like the hay farmer has not gotten the hang of the bundle machine. I do know that the hay has to be baled in certain sized bales for the whole shebang to work. And I suppose those bales need to be tight too. I have pretty soft squishy hay and the bales are tight and the bundles seem to be secure. Although they are sitting on the trailer and I have not had to unload them. I am sure there is a learning curve for both ends of this operation.

[Djones]

That’s 2 upright bundles with one laid over flat on top. Next time I’ll center a pallet under the top one to make it easier to unload. Once it comes off, we put a ratchet strap on as a ‘belt’ around the others, snugged them up, and pulled them off together with the tractor lol and onto the ground. From there I could pretty easily get under them with the forks and put them in the loft. I prefer to deal with them upright, they have to be for the forks to pick them up. These bales and bundles are both very tightly baled.

The trailer we have the luxury of just parking it under cover in the shed you see in the background and feeding those 7 bundles off of it.

[mvp]

I have a 5x8 utility trailer with wire mesh on the bottom. That holds a 21-pak nicely. Its weight rating would let me stack two, if I want to tie it down.

I bring that back to my place, tarp it, or back it under cover and feed individual bales off of that trailer.

The mesh and tarp mean that my hay is dry top and bottom. But don’t bring it home during a rain storm or you’ll get the bottom of the bales wet. But those are the small ends of the bales.

The goal of my life is to never buck hay more than once, nor use my body to do the work a machine should be doing… yet also a tractor that’s too big for my wallet (and my little farm and the 10-15 years I’ll own it), while being too small for all the jobs.

Some day, I might by a slightly larger trailer (at least 6’ wide) so that I can transport my Polaris somewhere for work if I need to, and/or have a second bundle of hay waiting while I have the first one empty and ready to go back to the hay place.

Where I live, folks tend to buy their hay in little bits, not a year at a time. You can also put a round bale on the 5x8 trailer that I have. It’s a cheap and good system!