"Unroller" Turns Big Round Bales Into Small Squares

"Unroller" Turns Big Round Bales Into Small Squares BALE HANDLING Bale Handling (31B) 34-4-2 "I needed a way to convert round bales to small square ones, but I couldn't justify the expense of a commercial unroller. So I found what I needed at auctions and salvage yards and built my own for about $2,000," says Jay Merriner, Sr., Winchester, Va. Last year Merriner used his invention to unroll 200 big round bales, making a total of 3,000 small square bales with his stationary baler. Tractor hydraulics and the pto provide power. "It lets me make small bales when I have more time," he notes. "I sell most of my hay as mulch to a building contractor who prefers small square bales. I work by myself and can easily load the round bales on, operate the hydraulic controls, and stack the small square bales without needing any help. It took several years to get the design right. "It takes only 5 to 15 minutes from the time I load on a round bale until I've got the square bales on a wagon. The great thing is that I can do the work when I have time." He uses a front-end loader to put a bale on the unroller at the end of a wagon with a conveyor floor. The bales are unrolled onto the floor, which moves the hay to double beaters that fluff the hay. The hay is then fed into a small square baler. "Another big advantage of my unroller is that I can pull it behind my pickup down the road to a neighbor's farm, and hook it up to his tractor and baler," says Merriner. A Vermeer round bale shredder, complete with loading arm and a gate that contains the bale, unrolls the bales. The conveyor and beaters came from a silage wagon. The arm tilts down to the ground for loading. A tarp helps contain the loose, fluffy hay as it's thrown off the beaters above the baler. "I use a tripod with two different sets of hydraulic control valves mounted on it to control the loading arm, the walking floor, and the beaters," says Merriner. "One set of control valves mounts on the tripod, and the other mounts on a pivoting 16-ft. long metal arm that I can move wherever I want to stay out of the dust." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Jay S. Merriner, Sr., 185 Gough Road, Winchester, Va. 22602 (ph 540 877-9470; merriner@shentel.net).

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