Made-It-Myself Front Bale Spear

Made-It-Myself Front Bale Spear HAY & FORAGE HARVESTING Bale Handling (5) 30-1-3 Dan Krueger, Shawano, Wis., needed a front-mounted bale handler that could handle the weight of heavy silage bales. Krueger, who does custom bale wrapping using a Vermeer bale wrapper behind a Deere 2555 tractor, decided to build it himself. "Most of the time farmers bring their bales to the edge of the field where we wrap them. However, sometimes we have to haul them there ourselves. The wrapper can carry two bales and I can carry another one on front. It'll lift bales up to 5 ft. high and has a capacity of more than one ton." The loader is built from square tubing and is equipped with a pair of commercial bale spears. It pivots just above and in front of the tractor's axle. A big 4 by 8-in. hydraulic cylinder is used to raise or lower the loader while a pair of 2 by 16-in. cylinders are used to tilt the spears. A pair of roller chains doubles the lift height. The chains attach to the bottom of the cylinder and extend up through two sprockets mounted on a hinged metal arm and then back down to the lift bar. As the cylinder is extended it shoves the hinged arm up, causing the chains to double the arm's lifting action. A 3-ft. high metal backstop keeps the bale from rolling back onto the tractor. "It's a simple idea but it works well," says Krueger. "I didn't want a big loader on front of the tractor, but just something small that wouldn't obstruct my vision as I travel from field to field. It's quite a bit lighter in weight than a commercial front-end loader so it doesn't cause the tractor to jump up and down as it travels over bumpy fields. It lifts high enough to load bales onto a wagon or a flat rack. Some of my neighbors like it so much they want me to build more of them." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dan Krueger, W8398 Oak Ave., Shawano, Wis. 54166 (ph 715 526-3995).

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