Got back from Ga farm Expo. Drove down rom SC to South GA. The farmers have really planted a lot of cotton. Don't know how that will work out since soybeans are high, but I don't know the price of cotton. OTH it has been dry in the area and the cotton has stood the dry weather well, yields look good. At least one farmer has one of those JD pickers that puts out a round bale. I think the demonstration round bale at the JD display was 6 x 6 feet, weighs about 5,000 pounds. Takes a big tractor with FEL to handle it.
The most interesting new hay equipment can only be used in large fields, which leaves me out. Effort is to cut down on trips across the fiels. One rig is a v rake with a pto shaft going through it and a caddy to attach a round baler to(that's the rig I saw, but I see no reason whay it wouldn't work with a large square
baler or a small inline square baler.) So set up is a tractor, a rake, and a round baler, all in line. Long hydraulic hoses through rake from tractor to baler, and electric wires to baler controls.
The other rig which I didn't see in the field was a hitch going from the round baler tongue out the side and off to one side of the baler with a v rake hitched to it, with hydraulic hoses along the hitch to the v rake, and other hoses to the baler and to a cylinder to swing the tongue in and out. I think it needs 3 sets of outlets on the tractor. Theory of operation is to rake one windrow, then go back and bale that windrow while raking another, and so on.
KEH
