Looking to purchase a conventional baler to do about five thousand bales of wheat straw a year, have been using an international 440 'till now. Love bales produced by Deere 459, but they are a bit pricey for a few bales of wheat straw once a year. New Holland 945 seems reasonable value, any views? Would like more dense bales than the international gives me at the moment.

Personally i would spend the extra on the John Deere 459, wide pickup very useful wide swaths, hydraulic bale tension control, central lubrication and almost completely gear driven, if you do go down the john deere route be sure to check the pitman arm on the main gearbox as the splines can suffer a great deal of wear and this will cause the pitman arm to slap around causing damage to the plunger, other than that i found it a fantastic machine that never ever missed a beat, used to bale in excess of 55'000 bales of hay and straw a year with it. The JD dosnt seem to come up all that often but they are about and some at a reasonable price

 NH 945 good machine as long as you dont get a friday afternoon model!!

 Hi i Have a John Deere 224T baler that i use to bale a few acres runs fine and raley has problems. I have no experience of the 459 but based on what i have seen using my baler it should be a good machine.

mrsheen:

NH 945 good machine as long as you dont get a friday afternoon model!!

That sounds a bit like our NH 575 it was a good baler and did no end of bales in over 15 years of service with us but it had bits that were missing etc like part of the safety mechanism which caused us to have to replace both needles.

 I guess a Welger AP830 is probably out of the price range. You can bale some very dense bales with this baler, they also go like stink when behind a big enough tractor, nice wide pickup and no belts or chains all shaft driven even pickup. The cost would not be justified on small jobs though, and most sledges struggle to keep up so I think you might want to rule out this fantastic baler.

 

if you can get a claas markant 65 very good machine me have had it since new and hasnt let us down once , simply give it a service every year before we start and grease her up every couple of hours. ours is about 8 years old now ,wide pick up .pushs them bales out all day every day. we do ab out 10,000 bales a year so it does its fare share of farm work id say.only problem you dont see many around but its worth looking around fo one normaly pick a good one up for around 2000-4000 might be worth contacting ur local claas dealer they might shine some light on it for you

theres nothing wrong with new holland balers, as long as you stay away from haylage then the knotters can start to act up, my friend has 2 940's and bales hay and straw with them he wouldnt part with neither of them for anything else , but i have to mention the welger ap 630 cracking baler

old 376 hayliner aint a bad bit of kit , old i know but plenty of cheap parts around and simple to fix

The first baler that i bought was a NH 370, hadnt been used for years but was stored undercover, put new bearings on the plunger and went on to pop out over 15'000 bales of hay in its first season with me and never missed a knot. Kept it as a back up baler when i bought a JD 459 until some little pikey knicked it of the field headland one night.

 

As small square balers go i had never seen an "in line" till i came to canada but those Case-IH or hesston are monsters and eat up 30ft swaths just fine...Need a high legged tractor but man are they fast...I put my old 7600 on one last fall for a neighbour and did 8000 flax bales and i was very impressed with the speed and reliability..???

Funny that! When i made enquiries into them recently, every user or should i say past users, said they were shite. Go through shearbolts by the bucket load! Thats the 139 Agco massey!

 

The IH inlines are by far the most popular baler here as agco in this area is a dead duck as brands go mainly because we have no local dealers and they're notoriously expensive?

Although we're pretty much all grain we're playing with 240 acres of alfalfa that by choice gets baled in small squares (for horse market)...3 cuts hopefully, Otherwise gets baled into big squares for dairy and poor quality goes in rounds for beef....For the first years we're kind of crop sharing with a hay merchant neighbour.....Our land, all his machinery,with the exception of putting a tractor on a mower/baler or stacking when we can untill we see if it pays and justifies buying a whole set of equipment....He only has 1 IH inline on a jd 7400 and covers 000's of acres all raked 25ft too ,I rented one too to bale my flax and both are 10 year old machines but boy i had the tw20 and the 7600 on there and i could'nt break a bolt,not a missed knot and very constant bales..?

Very good looking bales too..??