Bigbaler in action

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33454, 8 February 1974, Page 7

Bigbaler in action

The New Zealand Agricultural Engineering Institute has its Bigbaler produced by Howard Rotavators of England.

The Bigbaler turns out a bale of hay or other similar material about sft square and about Bft long. In Tama ryegrass straw, oats and lucerne the bales when weighed had ranged from about 950 to 11501 b, Mr J. S. Dunn, principal research officer at the institute, said last week. The deputy-director of the institute, Mr E. M. Watson, and Mr Dunn spent half of a morning at Howards stand at the Royal show in England last July and as a result the institute was able to purchase one of the machines for testing under New Zealand conditions. One of the jobs that the machine was being put to last week was baling wheat straw and there it turned out 40 bales in about two hours and a half — about eight or nine tons to the hour. In Tama straw it was producing about 24 bales an hour. To ensure that the bales made were uniform and the strings in the right position, Mr Dunn said it was important that the material 10 be baled be assembled in the right sort of swath. This needed to be about sft

wide, which was the width of the bale chamber. In England he said it was considered that the finger wheel rake was not the most suitable implement for this purpose, but in working with the machine since it had arrived they had found that the finger wheel rake had been quite satisfactory putting two swaths together. But in meadow hay or lucerne it was recommended that the twin rotor or the waffler type of hay turner should be used. The tractor driver has to briefly stop the machine and trip the knotter mechanism when a gauge on the front of the baler indicates, on the basis of pressure on a plate at the back of the chamber, that the bale is of appropriate size for tieing. The tied bale is then forced out of the rear door of the chamber onto the ground. Very high tensile polypropylene twine is used to tie the bales. Mr Dunn said that for optimum operation of the machine the crop being handled needed to be fit or else there could be “binding” between the twine, material being baled and the frame of the machine. Unless the material and the twine were running freely there was likely to be trouble. A gripper is made by Howards for moving the bales in the field and also

for stacking them and then loading them out again for feeding. Mr Dunn said that with the gripper attached to a Jones front-end loader on a Leyland 270 tractor it had proved easy to put the bales where it was wanted to place them. Using the gripper oat straw had been put into a not very convenient barn. It had been possible to place bales right up into the apex of the roof because of the way it was possible to angle the gripper. A counterbalance of similar weight to the bale was supplied for fitting to the tractor. It was a metal box that could be filled with sand, shingle or other suitable material. It sat in a frame on the three point linkage. It had its own stand to facilitate loading it on the tractor and then depositing it again. An old converted lorry chassis had been used as a trailer. Loads of eight bales weighing four to five tons had been put on to it in four or five minutes — and it had been possible to load in the paddock, travel 300 to 400 yards to the barn

and unload and return to the paddock to begin loading again in about 18 minutes. Mr Dunn said that normally the big bales were stacked three bales high in the open or in a shed. For a more stable load, bales in the bottom layer on the

trailer could be rolled over in the paddock before loading as they tended to be shaped rather like a loaf when they were deposited on the paddock. On the bigger type farm, perhaps feeding out about 100 bales of hay of conventional size a day, Mr

■ Dunn said he foresaw the - big bale system with com- > plete mechanisation of bal- : ing, loading, stacking and I feeding out saving both labour and time. , When the strings are cut : the big bales break up eas- ■ ily into slices for feeding • out.