Home-Built Bale Lifter

Home-Built Bale Lifter BALE HANDLING Bale Handling (31B) 22-3-35 Here's a bale lifter I modified for my dairy farmer friend Alvin Elegeer. He'd been feeding small square 90-lb. bales by hand to his 50 cows until he recently started getting 3 by 3 by 8-ft. bales weighing 1,000 lbs. out of Kansas. Bigger bales meant he needed something to handle them with. So I picked up this old scissors-type lifter from a local salvage yard for $15. It was manufactured by Boschman Equipment, Milwaukee, Wis., and is rated at 1,200-lb. capacity. I made jaw extensions for the grab out of 36-in. long pieces of 3 by 2-in. angle iron and put a 9/16-in. bow in the extensions to accommodate the bales. I also reworked the Woods stationary crane on Alvin's 90 hp Deere tractor so it would swivel the bales right into the barn. I cut off the existing chain hook and welded a 1-in. dia. pipe as a bushing for the through bolt. The swivel is a ball bearing that came off a jib hoist. Alvin is real pleased with the way the bale lifter and swivel crane work for handling bales. I've got only $30 in materials since much of what I used was scrap I had on hand. (Doug Garvin, 5114 Deerfield Dr., Fairview, Pa. .16415; 814 833-0419)

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