Development of farmer’s idea

Press, 2 September 1977, Page 15

Development of farmer’s idea

A machine that both loads and unrolls the large round bales of hay or straw looks to have considerable promise.

It is the brainchild of a former Mid-Canterbury farmer, Mr B. H. Macpherson, who has sought the help of Taege Engineering, of Sheffield, to develop it further. Most of this further developmental work has been done by Mr Joe Holliday.

The machine which has now been built looks a pretty useful one and a big advance on the prototype built by Mr MacPherson, which is lying in the yard at Taeges.

The MacPherson bale unroller depends on a series of rollers driven off its own wheels, with a clutch on a counter shaft. These rollers are the principal parts that he has patented and there are four of them. A revolving peeler with metal pegs on it, to be replaced by channels, can be applied to the bale to help start it unrolling, but a bale will largely unroll itself without the help of the peeler. It is operated hydraulically from the tractor like the loading fork, which enables the bale unroller to also load itself without the assistance of another unit like a tractor with a front-end loader. And the fork can be detached for use in

recovering the bales from the paddock at hay making time. To avoid damage to it during loading, the peeler can be lifted clear of the incoming bale.

WTiat seems to be one of the bale unroller’s special virtues is a feeder on the front, which is springloaded for safe operation and which works in a cam so that it deposits small heaps of hay or straw, which would be equivalent to about two or three slabs of a conventional rectangular bale. The advantage of this type of feeding out is that the sheep and cattle do not seem to trample the m ferial, which means that wastage is reduced very' considerably.

Mr Holliday says that the machine can handle a round bale of any shape, bales which have both soft and hard centres and has a gentle action with

lucerne. A bale can be unrolled in about three or four minutes.

Where a bale is placed correctly on the machine it feeds out very well indeed. Mr Holliday has, however, been looking further into its operation where the bale is placed the other way round.

In use the unroller carries two bales into the paddock — one sitting on the rollers ready for unrolling and another on the loading arm or fork.

The only links between the tiactor and unroller are the hydraulic controls. Mr MacPherson is planning to offer the basic machine, with the loading fork, feeding attachment and peeler as extras, but with these Mr F. C. Taege puts the likely cost of the machine to the buyer at between $4OOO and $5OOO, which considering the amount of use it would be put to in a season is not so high these days.