What I built over vacation

[farmboy weldor]

These are pictures of a hay wagon my brother and I built over my christmas break, and there's also another in the works... Its approximately 9 feet wide, i think 17 or 18 feet long, i forget how tall.

We just built the rack and floor, not the running gear itself. The running gear was an existing John Deere gear... hope you enjoy the pics

Mike

[burninbriar]

I like you're choice of running gear.
Are you using a regular square bailer with a thrower on it? I always liked the regular bails over the round bails. Too much waste with round bails and what isn't wasted is not really good quality hay. In my opinion.
When I was farming, if we started out the winter feeding square bails and switched to the round ones, the cows would not eat it.

[N20Silverado]

I like you're choice of running gear.
Are you using a regular square bailer with a thrower on it? I always liked the regular bails over the round bails. Too much waste with round bails and what isn't wasted is not really good quality hay. In my opinion.
When I was farming, if we started out the winter feeding square bails and switched to the round ones, the cows would not eat it.

What is wasted in a round bale?

[farmboy weldor]

we use both, round and square, most round bales are stored outside so the 4 inches or so on the outside of the round bale is usually rot or bad hay, but with new wrap instead of twine there is less waste, plus we store ours in our barn so theres very little to no waste.

Yes we are using a John Deere square baler with a kicker on it...

[burninbriar]

When I was farming we never had a kicker on our bailer, everything loaded and unloaded by hand. A lot of work but you really got to know you're neighbors and friends during hay season.
The large round bails were relatively new then and the big selling point was that you needed no barn and of coarse the labor factor. We bought round bails if we didn't get enough of our own hay.
Back to you're wagon. What size tube did you use on the racks and are they removable?

[N20Silverado]

When I was farming we never had a kicker on our bailer, everything loaded and unloaded by hand. A lot of work but you really got to know you're neighbors and friends during hay season.
The large round bails were relatively new then and the big selling point was that you needed no barn and of coarse the labor factor. We bought round bails if we didn't get enough of our own hay.
Back to you're wagon. What size tube did you use on the racks and are they removable?

We always stored our hay indoors. No waste.

[farmboy weldor]

The racks are made out of a combination of 1 1/2"x1/8" and 1"x1/8" square tube. The verticals are 1 1/2" and the horizontals are 1x1. The sides are bolted down to cross tubes on the floor which are 2x2 square tube 1/4" wall, and then the back of the wagon is bolted to the sides in four places. The floor is 2x2's set across some 6" channel we had left over from another job. we bolted the floor to the gear in 2 places on opposite sides then chained the other two "free" corners to allow for some flex.

[burninbriar]

If this is what you do on vacation, you must one go getter when you're working.
How many bails can you usually get on a wagon that size unstacked?
If I remember right, we used to get about 200 bails stacking a wagon that size with no racks. We have a lot of steep terrain so we had to be careful not to go to high.

[farmboy weldor]

We figure about 150 bails, but were not totally sure on the bale count, sometimes we'd count and get up near 200 and then sometimes its down to 125, really depends on how it fills up and the person operating the baler. I'm known for cramming the wagons as much as they can take. we used to stack them in the wagon to hold more but now we only do that if were going to park the wagon inside to save space.

Oh yeah my brother and I do quite a bit of fabrication, numerous truck beds, dump wagons. Last summer he and I built the dump wagon, which was about 8 ' wide and 16' long, 4' sides. And a 30' sprayer, with a 1000 gallon capacity.

Overall Its good fun and we're starting to get orders from locals who want some more hay wagons.