Small & round in favour

10 March 2000

Small & round in favour

Mini round balers and the

wrappers which go with

them have provided one of

the few growth markets for

machinery salesmen, as

more farmers seek a share of

the baled horse feed market.

Mike Williams reports

IT was the Italians who first came up with the idea of developing equipment for making and wrapping mini-sized round bales.

The machines were designed to harvest hay and silage on small farms lacking the finance and tractor power for a full sized round bale system. This is still the big market for minibale systems in Italy.

The UK is different. Such machines are used to produce handy sized packs of high dry matter silage for horse feed. It can be assumed that this accounts for most of the 100 or so mini balers sold in Britain and Ireland each year.

"The market for good quality horse forage is big in this country and still growing," says Richard Halsall, sales manager at Nutri-Mech UK, distributor for the Wolvo range of mini round bale machinery. "It was Nutri-Mech which brought the mini round bale concept into the UK when we launched the Wolvo baler in 1996, and it has filled a gap in the market.

"Horse owners are willing to pay a premium for forage in small round bales because of the handling advantages. A price of £7 to £9 a bale is certainly not unheard of, and most of the demand for these balers comes from farmers and contractors who are diversifying into the horse feed market."

Grass is baled up to a day earlier than normal hay to produce a 60% to 65% dry matter. It is also a good source of fibre horses need in their diet, but the moisture content reduces the dust and waste associated with feeding hay and helps produce a highly palatable feed.

Mini round bales of forage weigh about 30kg, and the size and weight are important factors. Several bales can be transported in a Land Rover or the back of an estate car, and they can be moved about the stable yard on a handbarrow. They can even be rolled on a level surface, avoiding the need for a tractor and loader.

Work rates with a mini baler can be as high as 1.5t of hay bales an hour, according to CAEB, which builds the Mountainpress MP550 baler distributed by Rekord Sales. Baling rate with a Wolvo R500/Z baling forrage in first-cut grass yielding 80 to 90 bales an acre is said to be 50 to 60 bales an hour.

Like the Abbriata and Wolvo balers, the CAEB is a fixed chamber design using net wrap, but, unlike its rivals, twine wrapping is an option. Rekord Sales claims to have sold about 60 CAEB balers during the past two years, and most of the customers also bought a bale wrapper.

Minimum power for the CAEB and other mini round balers is a compact tractor of 20hp or less, and the drawbar is designed to allow the baler to work in a fully offset position to avoid the problem of straddling the swath with such a small tractor.

As well as operating conventionally in the field, all the mini models can also be used as stationary balers. This is popular with some contractors who use the high output of a big baler to harvest the grass, but switch to a mini baler in the winter to re-bale the material before selling it to their horse-owning customers.

The biggest competitors for mini round balers and wrappers in the horse feed market are conventional balers. Bales produced are smaller and lighter than mini round bales, which means they share the same attractions of easy handling in the stable yard, and many farmers and contractors already have a conventional baler, which avoids the cost of a new round baler.

Some wrappers designed for mini round bales will work with conventional bales, but there are also some specially developed wrappers for small square bales.

Telefsdahl introduced a wrapper for conventional bales three years ago, and was probably the first company to offer a machine of this type, according to their UK distributor, Danagri-3S. Although it will also wrap mini round bales, most of the UK customers use it for conventional bales, which come apart in small wafers and are easier than round bales to feed in small amounts, the company claims.

Richard Halsall of Nutri-Mech is more cautious. "Forage aimed at the horse market can be difficult to bale with a conventional high density baler because of the high moisture content, and there are only a few balers which do the job well and make a good, dense bale. &#42

Wolvo R500 mini-balers are imported by Nutri-Mech UK.

Rekord Sales distributes the CAEB Mountain Press mini round baler.

Small and round… Wrapped bales produced by the Mountain Press mini baler await collection.

Model & Bale size (cm) Bale weight (kg) Minimum Price

distributor diameter hay or haylage hp £

Abbriata M50 50 18 to 25 (hay) 18 6,590

D W Tomlin

CAEB MP550TPL 55 20-25 (hay) 16 7,450

Rekord Sales

Wolvo R500/Z 57 30-35 (silage) 15 7,650

Nutri-Mech UK

Mini Wrappers

Model & Bale type Film Price

distributor round (R) or square (S) size (mm) £

6010 R 250 2,995

6020 (self loading) R 250 3,995

D W Tomlin

CAEB AV550 ATP R 250 2,300

Rekord Sales

McHale Mini-Linkage R or S 250 or 500 3,900

McHale

Telefsdahl 404BS R or S 250, 360 or 500 3,995

404EH (self load

+ electro-hydraulic) R or S 250, 360 or 500 9,000

Danagri-3S

Wolvo Mini 4k R or S 250 or 360 3,600

Wolvo FW500 R 250 or 360 3,050

Nutri-Mech UK