neat tractor story I heard today

Today I was working for a man, I don't know if he wants his name shared, so for the ease of storytelling, I'll call him Mr. Oldman. Mr. Oldman grew up in SE Kansas. When he was 13, he was working on a hay baling crew. They were making wire tie square bales, and it was a wet year. He said they were having trouble getting hay done and the bales were very heavy. One day, Mr. Oldman was at the Allis dealer, and saw a truckload of the new rotobalers. Mr. Oldman, still 13, told the dealer that if he had the money, he would buy a new rotobaler and a WD tractor. The next time Mr. Oldman was at the dealer, the owner said "there's your rig", and pointed toward a new WD and rotobaler. Mr. Oldman said "I'm sorry, you must have misunderstood, I dont have any money". The dealer said "that's ok, you can pay me when you get the money". Mr. Oldman agreed, and began baling hay on his own. He said that the dealer had set up a kind of hopper over the baler pickup that would shake rock salt on the hay as he baled it, so he could bale greener hay. Mr. Oldman said that most farmers were skeptical of the hay, but come winter, the cows preferred the salty wet hay to the better hay they had. Mr. Oldman said he was able to pay off the baler the next summer.
Mr. Oldman then said one day after he had graduated high school, he was in the Allis dealer buying parts. The owner called him back to his office and handed him an envelope. The envelope had the money that Mr. Oldman had paid for the tractor and baler several years before. The dealer told him "son, you have no idea how many of those balers you have sold for me, consider that your commission!"

This is a true American dream for both parties. Love it.

Nice story. But , my Dad had, and I still have his
old round baler, and you would have a better chance
of riding it to Mars , than baling wet hay with
it.The pick-up is not suited to wet hay, and any
wet slugs you do pick-up , wrap and bung the baler.
Though like I said ,nice story.

I agree. I cant see any dealers giving that much of a poo now days.

Don"t remember exactly where, but I was driving in an area about 30 miles northwest of Independence, KS a few years ago and remember one two or three mile stretch where I counted 5 or 6 Rotobalers along the fence rows.

Survivors from the good old days when machines were simple, yet functional and about every small town had at least one dealership.

We were in Iowa and Minnesota the week before Labor Day.
Saw some round bales that were baled this year with one of
the balers that were mentioned in the above story. I explained
to my wife that to the best of my knowledge this was the first
round baler. We have came a long ways from this baler, but it
was ahead of its time probably. Good story.

Allis had the first large round baler in experimental mode, but gave up on it. They were trying to ground drive it and it did not work to expectations! I wonder why they did not try pto power rather than scrap the idea?

I agree, I wasnt allowed to run dads. He said too many men lost arms or fingers in them. They did run great if the Hay was right, but he said you might as well stop whem the dew started to fall. Youd eather break somthing or use up all the names you could think of to call it.

Especially considering they had pto drive on a roll-a-bar rake at the time.

I have tried to run a AC Rota baler. They DO not like wet or tough hay. They will do everything but bale it. Good dry hay in a thin wide windrow and your good to go but not green or wet hay. They will not bale it.

Its a nice story , who am I to say if it is true or not? One thing I will say is that when we used to bale with 'small squares' (For want of a better term)if there was a slightest doubt that the hay was perfectly dry when it had been baled we always sprinkled some salt on each layer of bales as the stack was built up and yes the cattle absolutely loved it!

Growing up and living in Southeast Kansas, I'd say there is definitely the possibility of this happening with the amount of them things that are scattered along the countryside here (I remember a lot of them being used up into the late 90's) However, I too have heard that they were essentially useless in wet hay.

Could a roto-baler pull a hay rack? The ones I've seen working stopped to drop every bale on the ground.

Nice story, a little far fetched about the dealer's generosity, but a nice story.

Now that's a good story!

I don't think they were designed to pull a rack. AC had a mounted bale loader elevator that mounted on the side of the tractor to elevate them on to a rack that was hooked to a tractor.

Read all about them here. They were somewhat dangerous, slow and limited in type of hay etc but AC sold a bunch of them. Farmers learned to do what they had to do to get work done with whatever machine they had as usual. We had several AC tractors, mowers, and rakes but used square balers in the heavy Texas hay back in the 50"s. AC tractors were fine machines.
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When I was in Kansas several years ago, I ask about all the AC round balers sitting around. I was told the cattlemen used them for the last cutting of hay, the bales were dropped on the ground and left where they lay. then the cattle were turned into the field and consumed them. I was told the ground and grass was very fragill and if they baled large round bales and left them the cattle feet would destroy the grass. They were still being used then. As far as the small round balers baling wet hay. The 1 I have now will bale hay with water running down the feeder chute. The 1 I grew up with would not.

I like it... and I can fathom it actually being
true.

That is a great story. I have baled some tough hay with my balers. You will have wrapping problems on the shafts but if there isn't any heavy wet slugs it will go through the baler. I even baled a large pile of leaves one time to see if it would do it. It takes a lot of leaves to make a bale!!!!

We had a 605F Vermeer baler for a while, I liked it except it would not start a bale in tough hay. If there were rain clouds coming and the hay wasn't quite fit you would hook on the rotobaler and leave the Vermeer sit.

The large round baler AC was testing was a Hawk Bilt which was a poor excuse of a baler that rolled the hay on the ground. AC was on the way out of the forage business anyway.

Jim

Good friend of mine, starting out young farmer, working part time during summer and full time winter at John Deere dealer. Needed a larger tractor as he was using his dad's SMTA gas. One day at work, truck load of new 30 series New Generation Deer's comes in. Dealers shows him a 4630, says that's your new tractor, pay for it when able. He still has it plus several other's of course. Years later he worked with me at IH dealer one winter, and then a couple years later I worked with him at the Deere dealership. He has a couple old farmalls yet, hates the two popper Deere so both of us took a lot of ribbing in good fun while we both worked at Deere. Also, I ended up working on a bunch of those two bangers which was pretty much new experience to me. What you call low man on the totem pole after working on the new IH tractors all those years.

Fast forward to the 1980s. We had a dealer IH dealer in town that sold 100 tractors a year. He let one hard luck farmer use one. When the dealer went to see about the tractor, the farmer said somebody stole it. The farmer did not have insurance for it and neither did the dealer. Rumor had it that the farmer sold it three states away.

If you could have baled it, I wonder if it would cure and keep? My uncle had one of those balers and he swore by it.

That's what the salt was for.