Wisconsin bans square bales of hay.

[G2theD]

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture today is banning all square bales of hay, forcing farmers to only use the newer round bales.

Farmers were quick to complain that their cows would no longer have their 3 square meals a day, where as the WDOA insisted that from this day forward all cows deserved a well-rounded diet.

[Kaleva]

1. The round bales make haying a 1 man operation

You needed a crew to handle the square bales

[G2theD]

2. I learn something every day!

[moniss]

8. That was true way back

but ever since the '70's there have been machines that make square bales a one man operation if desired.

[Kaleva]

13. How do one unload the trailers holding the square bales with one man?

Assuming one is using a kicker baler.

If you were using a drop baler, then the guy could come back with a machine that can pick the bales off the field and stacks them neatly on a towed trailer. When the trailer is full, the guy brings the load to where ever needed and uses a lift to remove the bales from the trailer and stacks them. I don't know if that's the case and I'm guessing.

[moniss]

19. Bale handling equipment

pictures are all over the intertubes. Bale pickup/stacking equipment has been around for decades now. I don't know how many still use a kick baler and plain wagon. There are more efficient, less labor intensive means to handle square bales. Back in the '60's my uncle used to tow 2 empty wagons out to the hay field and run them full with his kick baler. Then he would tow them back and bring 2 more empty wagons and then fill those. It depended on how much hay was cut and in the right dryness for baling. You don't want it too green if you are putting it into a haymow in a barn. Fire hazard and it can mold real bad. About an hour and a half before afternoon milking he would be back at the barn and he would pull up a wagon load of hay to the elevator and set each bale on the elevator. It was connected to a long conveyor track in the haymow and there was a movable diverter on the track that made the bales fall off the track to the haymow below the conveyor. If he felt like it he might even go up into the mow and straighten out the bales into a nice stacked condition. He would do a wagon before milking and one after. Then the next morning after morning milking he would do one more. Then he would go have breakfast. He would finish off the last wagon after that if he had one. Remember that he was the one cutting the hay also so he might go cut hay, if the weather forecast looked good, and then bale it about 48 hours later. So he spaced his labor accordingly. He had a big pull-through building also that he could just pull loaded wagons into if it looked like rain or if he wasn't in a hurry to unload. The man worked like nobody I ever saw. He was 6 feet and one inch tall and weighed just under 300 pounds. He was solid muscle and his hands and arms were massive. Here's a video of some various round and square bale handling equipment in action. Also a video of a small bale picker/stacker which was new in the early '70's.

[Kaleva]

21. My Dad made about 10000 bales a haymaking season

He had a kicker baker and behind that he'd tow a trailer that held about a 100 bales. He had 3 hay trailers. We only used all 3 trailers when baking at the hay fields a couple of miles away because he'd have a full load before I got back to him with an empty trailer.

It took a couple of weeks to make the make all the hay and we usually were done by the 4th of July.

Your uncle's setup was the same as my Dad's except in handling. My Dad would be out in the field baking, I'd be bring the loads in uding the pickup and unloading while my younger brothers would be in the lift stacking the bales as they dropped.

I can recall when my grandfather farmed and he had loose hay. The rails at the top of the hay loft used for that are still there. Now that was labor intensive as you needed people up in the loft to operate the trip rope and to pitch fork the loose hay to the sides

[moniss]

29. Putting up loose hay

brings back memories of my family farm where Great Grandpa put it up with the track etc. Still might be there to this day. Even though they had purchased tractors they still kept the horse team as "back up" and I even remember one was called Buttercup. I really like watching a good team work. The farm in later years still had some of that old horse-drawn equipment laying in the weeds. Now in the Midwest we prize that stuff for "yard" art.

[msongs]

3. maybe too cuz stacks of square bales fall on ppl and kill them nt

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Imagine a round bale rolling over you.

[Tetrachloride]

4. farmers outside of Wisconsin might believe it

but this

https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q=wisconsin%20department%20of%20agriculture

real abbreviation is different

Wisconsin cows care about a good milking machine and ground corn.

Real farms have green grass pastures. most places are factories

[Kaleva]

14. Many family farms have hundreds of cows.

Think of the size the pastures would have to be in order to handle such a number. Then think of the time spent herding up all those cows twice a day brining them into the milking parlor.

As a kid, I'd often go looking for my Dad's 20 or so cows that were somewhere out in the pastures before dawn using a flashlight. When I found the cows, I'd roust them up and herd them to the barn for milking.

[gab13by13]

6. Now the cows won't get a square meal.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. I see round bales all the time. Round balers were invented...

in 1966 and had the advantage of one farmer being able to push one around with a tractor instead of dealing with the square ones, which needed a (usually pissed off) crew.

They also resist rain better and can be made heavier without hassle.

But, some smaller operators still have the square bales.

[IjustDontlikeRepugs]

9. In the early eighties

Me and 2 of my friends would haul about 30,000 square bales of hay each summer. (We worked for a contractor). We were paid 25 cents per bale to get it from the field to the barn. Depending on that distance, we could each make $10 to $15 per hour which was good back then. I loved the job.

[csziggy]

10. Most horse hay is square bales

Or more accurately, rectangular. That allows portioning a few flakes of hay (rectangular bales are packed sections of the time making "flakes&quot per horse for stalled horses.

Plus, round bales allow one dominant horse to claim all of a bale and horses waste far too much of it. When I tried feeding round bales, I had to get at least two bales for three horses. The top mare would claim one and the other two would share. If I had four or five per pasture, I had to get three round bales. Then they would waste 50% of the hay by pulling it out of the middle and spreading it around.

I even had one mare foal on the scattered hay from a round bale!

Now the people that run my farm carry flakes of hay and put them in as many different piles as there are horses in the pasture. Fortunately none of my mares are as dominant and share better - when I had a very dominant mare, she'd try to claim two or more piles so I had to put out at least one pile more than there were horses. and spread them very far apart.

[roamer65]

11. Onion?

[G2theD]

12. I actually came up with the idea in my own sick noggin.

[roamer65]

15. LOL.

45 years ago I would have agreed with a ban. I hated small square bales when I had to help do them on the family farm.

[G2theD]

16. I'm so glad I didn't grow up on a farm

It’s would have really stunted my drug abuse.

[MissB]

17. Ha!

[a kennedy]

18. This IS a joke right???

[DFW]

20. I heard the trapezoidal lobby is soliticiting funds for demonstrations in the streets of Madison.

And you know there won't be too many Republicans there, because they can't spell trapezoidal (or even tell you what a trapezoid is).

[eppur_se_muova]

22. And don't get me started on Daylight Savings Time !

We tamper with Nature at our own peril.

[GumboYaYa]

23. LOL, when my kids were little we frequently vacationed in Door County, WI.

One regular activity was to take a ride on the fire boat. The captain always told that joke. It is one of my favorites. Thanks for posting, it reminds me of when my now adult children were little kids.

[Paladin]

24. Wisconsin has kept Ron Johnson in the Senate since 2010.

Why wouldn't square hay elimination sound plausible, at first glance?

[G2theD]

25. Seems like a few people here fell for it.

Which means it is believable in some sense. I mean, really, we’ve all seen weirder things out of Republican state legislatures.

[Paladin]

26. We're burdened with a whole bunch of outrageous shit, these days.

Just yesterday, trump was supporting "Eric" in a state with multiple "Erics" on the ballot. No last names from trump, no clue as to which fucking "Eric" our drooling idiot ex-president was behind. Why wouldn't square hay elimination look for-real, without further inquiry?

[G2theD]

27. He just wanted better odds of being right.

What a maroon.

[Paladin]

28. Yeah, I know. Playing to his brain-dead base. (nt)

[AllaN01Bear]

30. mwuahehahahaha

[Baggies]

31. Look at those bunch of cows

Look at those bunch of cows.

No, herd.

Heard of what?

Herd of cows.

Of course I’ve heard of cows.

No! A cow herd.

What do I care what a cow heard? I have no secrets from a cow.

——————

My only cow joke. I’ll stop now.