Baling finally done

This year baling my field has been a nightmare.  Earlier I had mentioned the problems the first day of baling with my John Deere 510 baler.  Yesterday started out bad.  Almost immediately one of the small belts started migrating over and under the wide belt next to it.  I dumped the small bale.  I remembered last year when I cleaned the baler I saw twine wrapped around some of the baler's rollers.  I thought it was from twine accidentally sucked into the baler.  Now I wondered if it was to help keep the belts from migrating on the very smooth rollers.

I crawled into the baler and wrapped some twine around a roller between the wide and next small belt.

I tried again, and again the small belt started migrating.  I dumped that bale and crawled into the baler and wrapped twine around a few more rollers.

In the back I noticed the brackets for most of the belts - to hold them from migrating - were worn through (most likely due to friction from the bets over the many years) and it was possible for a few belts to migrate out of their bracket.  But that was only one spot in a baler with a half dozen rollers. Still it may be good to close the gap.  Curtis welds and I checked if he was available.  Not at the current time.

I tried making another bale. The belt started to slip but then I started going around a corner and went off the windrow and the belt slipped back into the correct position. I was able to make a bale.

Then on the next bale the belt didn't slip, but looking back I noticed the area under the right wide belt had much less hay than the rest of the bale.  Can this be why a wide belt twists?   I then remembered the manual talking about weaving when beginning to pick up hay.  I hadn't need to do it before.  I started picking up hay on the right side of the baler and then the bale went to being consistent all the way across.

From then on I weaved while picking up hay until the bale was a decent size in the baler.  Then weaved occasionally after that.  This worked.  I did have a few times later in the day when one or the other side ended up with a little less hay.  No belt twisting but wrapping the bale with twine wasn't as good.  I never noticed this until I dumped the bale from the baler.  If I suspected that one side seemed less I would pick up hay on that side until the bale looked consistent.  However, with all the dust floating in the air and landing on the tractor's window, the light on the dust at times made it difficult to see into the baler from the tractor.

The hay by now was very dry as the air was dry and the temperatures were in the mid 90s.  The hay would break down when baling, especially when rotating to wrap twine around the bale.  I usually had plenty of chaff left after dumping a bale.

Later I was able to adjust the drive speed/gear in relation to the PTO speed and reduced the amount of chaff.  The speed adjustment reduced the amount of loose hay in the baler but not under the belts and that usually was what got ground up when rotating during twining.


I had a number of twine issues.  A roll of twine has two ends sticking out of the roll: one to the baler and the other to tie to the next roll of twine.  When I finished one roll and started a new roll, there was just enough resistance in the new roll to break the twine.  I was partway through twining a bale and had to start over after I re-threaded the twine through the baler's stays and tube.

Then for a while whenever I cut the twine when done, the twine would shrink back inside the tube where I could not reach it.  I would have to crawl under the baler and push a wire through the tube.  Finally the spring-back quit.

My routine was to always tie the end of the twine to the grill guard.

Tying the twine was because last year the twine slipped from the tube while picking up hay and a lot of twine got sucked with the hay into the bale.  It took me over a half hour to pull the twine out of the bale when I fed the bale to the cattle.

Well, once again the twine got sucked into the bale.  I always tie the twine after cutting but apparently must have forgotten once.  This Winter I will find out how much twine got sucked into the bale.

A number of times the bale didn't want to come out of the baler when the back door was opened.  I would have to close and reopen the door several times.  If that didn't work, then put the tractor in gear and make a quick start.  One bale was especially hard to get out.  I ended up breaking the hydraulic that open/closes the baler.

Broken baler door now resting against the bale.

There is a bolt holding the hydraulic arm to the baler door.  The bolt came out enough that the hydraulic arm came off the arm. 

I had to unhook the tractor, put on a bale spear and use that to lift the baler door up so I could use a new bolt to reattach the hydraulic arm to the baler door. 

I don't know if the old bolt (now with stripped threads) had a nut.  But I put a nut on this new bolt.

I then had to use the bale spear to "pull" the bale out of the baler.  This resulted in a bale with hole in the side and some hay puffed out.

I hooked up the tractor to the baler and went out to bale more.  I forgot the rope used to cut the twine from the tractor.  When I looked for the rope I found the end of it on the baler lever.  The rest was broken off when it was sucked into the baler.   I had to find a new rope.

In the afternoon I had the left small belt slide under the wide belt next to it.  I had to dump the bale (and re-bale it).  After I fixed the belt by sliding and maneuvering it back into place I set off to bale.  I forgot to close the baler's door and went around part of the field for a while before I noticed a bale was forming.  Then I noticed the door wasn't closed. 

For a while it seemed as if every bale had some sort of problem.  Off and on I doubted I would get all the hay baled on Friday.  But in the evening the problems disappeared and I made progress.

I was down to three windrows left and enough time to bale everything before dark.

I counted my chickens before they hatched.  I baled one row but shortly after I started on the second (right) row I noticed extra hay coming out the front of the baler.  I stopped and looked.  The bale was not uniform and the left side under the belt was much less than the rest of the bale and belts.  The left belt was very slack.  Then I saw where the belt was twisted.

I had 2/3 to 3/4 of a bale and I decided to try to twine it.  I got much of the bale twined before it appeared the belt was starting to catch in the baler.  So I dumped the bale.  The bale didn't want to come out, but since I was near the house, I got a crowbar and pried the bale out enough that when I drove forward the bale fell the rest of the way out.  I think I have enough twine to hold the bale together.

Some hay jammed between the brackets and a roller.  Was the reason for the problem?

I had to take the belt apart.  Then I pulled the belt out of the baler.  Then I had to rethread the belt back in the baler over and under rollers and through brackets.  Then wire the belt back together.  It was dark by the time I was done.  So much for finishing all the baling by dark.


The 20% chance of rain on Saturday was for the afternoon.   After 9 am Donna called me to warn me that blue rain clouds were to the West and coming.  So much for sleeping in.  The last two rows made 1 and 1/2 bales and I had no problems with it.  I then went around the field picked up odds and ends of missed hay, mostly on the corners.  I also went by some funky bales that had loose hay around them due to being poorly twined or misshapen or both.

One bale was so bad that I decided to re-bale it.  The twine was barely tight and the bale was very misshapen.   Since things had been going well the rain clouds were going north around the ranch - like what usually happens in the Summer.

The bale only partially unrolled.  Other parts clumped together and other parts were just a thick loose mess.  I tried spreading the hay out, picking up some with the baler, then spreading out more hay.  Two times I had thick clumps that jammed in the baler's intake.  I had to stop and pull all the hay out I could so the intake would work again.

Yesterday I had to use a rag to clean the back tractor window each time I got out as the dust collected on the window.  There was no wind yesterday and I wished for a breeze.  I got a breeze today and regretted it.  When spreading the hay or unclogging the baler the hay would blow into my face.

Then the hay to be re-baled was already broken down and short and often as the baler's twines would spin to pick the hay up off the ground and into the baler's rollers the hay would blow to the side of the baler.  Back and forth and back and forth - over and over - before I finally got all of the former bale into the baler.

When things looked bad then more rain clouds would form or drops started to fall.  When things got better and started working again the clouds went around and the drops stopped.  Mother Nature would cruelly keep the pressure on.

Now I started with almost a half bale in the baler.  Once I re-baled the former bale I ended up with a little over three-fourths of a bale.  At the end of the re-baling a little of the former bale was on the ground due to the pieces being so small the baler couldn't find it up, but it wasn't all that much.  Where did almost three-fourths of a bale go?  Was the former bale so loose it wasn't a true full bale?

I haven't done an extra count but I think I ended up with about 50 bales.

I am so glad I am done as baling oat hay, barley hay and peas was a nightmare.

Once I finished baling I parked the tractor and baler and went in the house to eat breakfast.  It was now after noon.  I was tired and laid down just after 1 pm.  I woke up at 4:45 pm after a hard sleep.  I was that tired.