"Poor Man's" Bale Handler Transports, Stacks, Unrolls

"Poor Man's" Bale Handler Transports, Stacks, Unrolls BALE HANDLING Bale Handling (31B) 22-3-25 "It does a lot more than commercial front-end loaders that sell for thousands of dollars yet I spent only about $300 to build it," says Otto Mackey, Okemah, Okla., about the home-built round bale handler he built to mount on front of his 1992 Belarus 805 tractor. It consists of a pair of 1 1/2-ft. long steel lift arms that mount on front of the tractor. The arms are hinged just in front of the radiator and are raised or lowered by two 3 by 10-in. hydraulic cylinders. To transport and stack bales, a pair of 8-ft. long steel arms attach to the lift arms. Made from 2 by 4-in. sq. tubing, the long arms are fitted with a 4-ft. bale spear. A pair of steel rods runs from the lift arms to the frame sup-porting the bale spear to hold it level with the ground at any height. A homemade bale unroller and a 20-ft. rope wick can also be attached to the lift arms. "It'll stack 1,000-lb. bales two high with no problem," says Mackey. "If I made the arms longer I could stack bales three high. I had been using a 3-pt. mounted bale spear but I couldn't stack bales with it. It takes only about a half minute to attach the bale handling arms so I can use the same tractor to mow and rake my hay. A front-end loader takes about an hour to mount and makes the tractor awkward to use for other jobs. The lift arms are completely out of the way so I can leave them on the tractor all the time. "The unroller consists of a freely rotating steel cylinder. To unroll bales I simply lower then drives ahead. the unroller and then drive ahead. If the bale is flat I raise the unroller at the same time. I also mounted a section of plywood on top of the arms to haul sacks of feed. "I use the rope wick to control johnsongrass in peanuts and soybeans. I can adjust its height on-the-go by simply raising or lowering the lift arms. I pin the rope wick directly onto the lift arms or remove the unroller cylinder and pin the wick onto the unroller arms. I can also pin a 4-ft. wide bucket onto the lift arms to scrape manure, dirt, etc. I use a rope to dump it. The bucket is off an old loader that I used several years ago on my Ford tractor." The lift arms attach to the tractor with steel brackets that bolt to the side of the tractor. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Otto Mackey, Rt. 3, Box 130, Okemah, Okla. 74859 (ph 918 623-1473).

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