I’ve a few acres I’m considering putting to a hay crop for my horses and excess for sale. I’ll have to purchase hay equipment. A local square baler is up for sale, but it’s a wire baler. The few times I’ve purchased wire baled hay, I’ve really liked the wire. Just needed a wire cutter to open the bale. The used wire went to my metal recycle barrel.
What are your feelings about wire vs twine baled hay? and your location?
I prefer twine ~ easy to cut with pocket knife and can be used in a zillion other ways later. Wire requires pliers or wire cutters and is cumbersome to dispose of -IMHO. I am located in the Midwest - Brome country!
I’m in MI, but have bought hay in MI, IA and TX.
I’ve had wire a few times–especially on the big square bales (big, not the rectangle bales)
I’m not a huge fan of wire. Mostly due to ease of use. You pretty much HAVE to have wire cutters unlike hay twine that you can usually pull off, cut with another piece of twine, etc etc.
Also, I’ve cut the wire and had it snap back on me more than once–especially when it was cold out.
I would think it would also be more expensive to use wire…but maybe not, eh?
Hate wire. Hard to carry unless you always have a pair of gloves with you. A pain to open unless you always have sharp wire cutters with you. The spring-back feature, as above mentioned, is also a pain.
Twine is so much easier to deal with all the way around.
Twine.
Almost put my eye out too many times with wire. And it’s a real bear losing a piece out in the pasture - then find it in the spring with the bushhog.
ETA: I do prefer sisal over plastic - the sisal I can use to start fires, or to hold up garden plants, or just compost.
From the perspective of the baler - mine is a twine baler but the book shows both mechanisms. I read the wire directions one day and it looked a lot more complicated to work on.
In New England anyway nearly all balers are twine, so that tells me that wire is either not desirable by the end user and/or harder to work with when you’re baling.
Ugh, I hate wire. I never thought to even ask and we got a load delivered once that was wire. I swear I’m shocked I didn’t end up poking out an eyeball. Pain.in.the.butt. Like others said, you always have to have wire cutters, pain to dispose off, etc. I always end up using so much of the twine around the barn and the wire was just a bulky mess.
We love wire because everything here that needs fixing gets done with wire.:winkgrin:
I don’t know where we would be without baling wire.:lol:
I would check about the baler, because most will change over easily from wire to sting.
Ask the brand name dealer if that is possible, if your only problem with buying a good baler is the kind of tying material.
A friend of mine (not someone I know, who knows someone, but someone I ACTUALLY am friends with) DID put her eye out with a wire-tied bale…not when she cut it open, but later when she leaned down to grab a section and the loose wire poked her in the eye. Yes, truly, she really did lose her entire eye and now has a prosthetic.
For that reason I hate wire-tied bales - plus, as others mentioned, they’re hard to carry, impossible to open without wire cutters.
After the above incident, the minute I open a wire-tied bale, I fold over the ends to make them a bit safer.
[QUOTE=cyndi;4300006]
A friend of mine (not someone I know, who knows someone, but someone I ACTUALLY am friends with) DID put her eye out with a wire-tied bale…not when she cut it open, but later when she leaned down to grab a section and the loose wire poked her in the eye. Yes, truly, she really did lose her entire eye and now has a prosthetic.
For that reason I hate wire-tied bales - plus, as others mentioned, they’re hard to carry, impossible to open without wire cutters.
After the above incident, the minute I open a wire-tied bale, I fold over the ends to make them a bit safer.[/QUOTE]
Oh my goodness. How horrible. 
When we bought our baler I told hubby that he HAD to get a twine baler. I DETEST wire. It is hard to carry bales with, especially if you can’t find your gloves, and I don’t know how many time I have been ambushed by the sharp ends of the wire after I cut them.
Twine is multi-purpose around the barn and is easier to dispose of. Our trash collectors would cringe when I had a zillion bags of wire to dispose of.
I have not bought hay because it was wire bales, (there was hay with twine available)
NO MORE WIRE BALERS. :winkgrin:
I’m having a rough day, hope somebody gets the Mommie Dearest…
anything wire can do twine can do better. Most balers will switch over. The ones I have seen, well o.k. limited expierience, all 4 of them.
going back to my rock now:cool:
I’d say twine because there are so many other uses for it once it’s been cut off the bale. It always seems to be in need at the barn.
I hate wire too, for the reason noted above with regard to eyeballs. I’ve had several near-misses.
I’m in Louisiana, and the only time we find wire is on the big alfalfa bales, which we almost never get since the compressed bales seem to be popular around here. I hate those plastic strips, too. I always cut my hands.
So yeah, twine.
Twine, definitely. I’ve only handled wire bales a few times and absolutely hated them- hard to carry/throw/stack without gloves and/or a hay hook, and you always have to have wire cutters handy.
Sisal twine is also $35 a bale (it was $15 just a few years ago). I imagine wire is a whole lot more expensive and harder to get- TSC twine doesn’t work well in our baler, but at least I can get it on a Sunday afternoon if I need it!
I’ve never seen a wire baler in person and I just can’t picture wire feeding through the needles and knotters in the same way. Are modifications necessary to use twine?
Sisal twine.
Though I do admit to missing wire for fixing stuff. But I just grab some of the short pieces of broken electric fence wire that I tend to ‘fold up’ and throw in the grain/tack shed…
I really dislike plastic twine. Almost MORE than wire.
Twine for sure
Wire is jjust downright nasty. I retrieve the wires off of my bales and pray that they won’t take my eyes out! Hate it! Not to mention that the wire cuts my fingers and doesn’t play nicely with the other components of the periodic bonfire.
[QUOTE=pintopiaffe;4300789]
Sisal twine.
I really dislike plastic twine. Almost MORE than wire.[/QUOTE]
:yes: I totally forgot about sisal twine. I’ve gotten plastic twine forever. I really can’t remember the last time it was sisal. Wonder why that is?? Cheaper?
I like both twine and wire, but like wire a tad bit better.
You don’t necessarily need wire cutter if you have a wired bale. If you look at the corner of the bale, you will find where the wire was twisted to close from the baler, and just have to un twist the wire to get the bale opened (great fall back if you mis place the wire cutters or just don’t have any hand). If you find the twisted wire on one side of the bale, the other side is generally the same place on the other wire.
Wire bales also stay formed longer if you open a bale, only use a few flakes and then have to close the bale and save for later. The twin just doesn’t keep the bale as neat and tidy as the wire does when you have to close the bale after you pull a few flakes from it. Twine is handy to have around, but at times so is wire.
If you are worried about the sharp points of cut wire, just bend the ends down into the hay… or back on themselves.
And, if I’m moving a lot of wire bound hay, just use a pair of gloves and your hands will stay fine, twine just feels (to me) like it is going to break and loosens up on the bale when moving it from stacking in truck to truck to storage area.
Plastic doesn’t break as easily in the baler or when the bales pop out of the baler or during field pick-up or when stacking, etc. - Probably is cheaper too. Hmph…
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