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Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot | My experience is with 3 tie machines. There is only one farm here with 2 tie, and probably well over 100, maybe 200 three tie balers in this end of the valley.
Like I said, I run NH 515's. They are okay, but you have to know 515's to keep them running. We put turbo's on them, lots of little bearing, chain changes, aftermarket updates, etc. Even then, they aren't exactly reliable. Between myself and one of my customers who runs 8, we have more parts inventory than NH. And spare balers. They still can't keep up with a Hesston, although with the turbo'd machines we can come close. There are, at times, a slight marketing advantage to the conventional side feed balers in the export market. But you have to have the right kind of hay, and a good reputation and history to take advantage of that.
Even with all of that, it still gets old running them. Lots of little issues need fixed constantly. We usually bale 1000-1500 bales/day. For a couple weeks. My customers often bale 3000/day, and they do that for weeks on end. Something always needs fixed with that much volume. Freeman balers are popular here as well, and they are built extremely well. But the Hesston's have pretty much taken over what is left of the three tie market. I know guys who never really do any maintenance, and still the Hesston's just run and run. They are more reliable, have more capacity, make better bales, and are much, much easier to run. That alone is very important, if you are running a fleet of balers finding good operators is somewhat of a challenge. So having something that is easy for a steering wheel holder to figure out is pretty important.
There is more big balers here all the time. Used to be the hay was worth a little less, and the off quality market (beef cattle guys) all wanted 3 tie. Then they figured out how much easier big bales were, and now it can be a challenge to move off grade hay in 3 tie. Dairy's definitely prefer big bales, and the export market is taking more big bales all the time. As farm size increases, more hay farmers have big enough tractors to run big balers, so being able to replace 3 small balers with one doesn't mean also buying a big tractor. For guys like myself that are smaller farmers, finding enough bodies to keep small balers going is an issue. A guy and his wife can put up a lot of hay with one baler, without additional help, with one big baler.
The NH big balers were also pretty much a flop. I can't think of anyone running them anymore. One neighbor bought the newest NH big baler, and it has a lot of good things, well built and so far reliable. Everyone else runs a Hesston, and NH will really have to be a good machine to break into that market as well. | |
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What's your favorite New Holland square baler? Any age.....
