Attached you will find an equipment catalogue for 2 wheeled tractors (BSC) which includes hay rakes and round balers. This BCS dealer is located in Frankfort, Kentucky.
I have no idea whether this equipment performs as promoted but apparently this type of equipment is used on small farms in Europe.
Your thoughts and comments.
I first ran across this information while surfing on one of the GardenWeb forums.
Codger -- What's your land like? The reason I'm asking is way back in the days when Wife and I were trying to make do without a grown up tractor, we bought a 12HP BCS. Traction was marginal under certain conditions like sand and mud. It spun all day in snow, even with the chains they sell. The tractor itself was very impressive. Some attachments were, too. The tiller and rotary cutter were phenomenal, for instance. The sicklebar worked great, but was so light it took a superhuman effort to keep it on the ground as the weight of the engine tended to lift it into the air. The snowblower sucked! It was absolutely the most delicate hunk of junk I ever had the misfortune to purchase. And, as I found out after hitting the first mouse-sized stone, it had no sheer bolts. The auger bent up like a pretzel!
So I guess my advice would be to make a trip to the dealer and insist on seeing whatever attachments you want in action under real life conditions.
I read an article on this equipment earlier this year in the Growing for Market newsletter, but couldn't really see why someone would want to spend so much money to make small quantities of hay.
With this equipment you'll have the most expensive hay ever made. If you're determined to hay with small implements like this, it would probably be a lot cheaper and not much more time to cut it with a sickle mower and then rake it and stack it like they did in the old days. No bales, just hay stacks.
Yea but you cna't just figure the cost of the baler. That $1.75/bale figures somebody's land value, fertilizer, machinery, fuel, labor, storage, etc. etc. The actual value to have that $1.75/bale actually baled with relation to just the baler is about .10. Custom baling is about .25/bale. Figure that's for the tractor, baler, fuel, transportation, and the operator. .10 is probably being generous on the actual cost of the bale price. At .10 per bale then you're talking about making 64,000 bales before you would break even on the cost of the baler.
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