|
Eastern NE KS | In the early 70's we ran a Hesston Stankhand 30. It does have a flail but it does not chop the forage. It was more of a vacuum.
The machine was not gentle to dry alfalfa but put it up with a little more moisture and it was great at building solid 3 ton stacks. Grass stacks weighted 2t or so.
We had a stack yard get hit with 110 mph straight wind for about 15-20 seconds. The yard had about 200 stacks before the wind. After it looked like one 4-5' tall stack as hay peeled off and filled the walkways between the original stacks.
The good news is we also have the stack mover with the slicer attachment. When feeding we removed the original stacks first then moved and fed the tops that now had stacked itself in the walkways. We lost very little prairie hay. The hay behaved like a snow drift.
The tractor used was a 4020 with a cab and a swamp cooler that was worthless in high humidity summer days.
We stacked a lot of stalks for cow feed. The stacker was excellent at this job. The flail/vacuum lifted anything loose but also cut the stalk about 4" above the ground make a stack with little dirt.
Stacks didn't tolerate fast travels; tractor speed was ok.
Edited by Doug61 3/21/2026 15:24
| |
|
Related to the square bale post down below
