OT: winter baling with pics

I thought someone might like to see it is possible to winter bale with the right baler. Its a NH 852, 30+ years old, working in -5 to -20 C or a bit above and below 0 F. The bales are very heavy with the snow, so I'm making them smaller - approx. 4 1/2 feet dia.   The swaths were snowed on twice and melted out in Oct and in Nov it snowed again and stayed.   I had to wait for it get cold enough so the ground and swaths froze. Otherwise, it would stick inside the baler and not turn.   

Anyone else with experience like this?

Can't say as I've seen it done before so it's interesting. Are you going to feed them out this winter ? They won't keep when it warm's up I wouldn't think.

There is a lot of unthrashed grain in the north. Many counties declared it a disaster so the insurance would kick in (if you had insurance).   To make things worse, we had a bumper crops thru much of western Canada. Most farmers are going to burn the swaths in spring just to get it off the field. That's a big loss.

I'm baling oats and using it to bed cows.   A bale processor chops and spreads the bales but you can see a cloud of white mixed in as it blows it out the machine.

Didn't Clint Eastwood have a line in one of his movies about having to improvise?

Improvise, adapt, overcome.

Heartbreak Ridge.

Edited by littlemarv - 08 Dec 2016 at 11:50am

Um yeah it can be done ; but  Why? Truly don't get it   

If you run that through a grinder and bed with it I bet the cows pick thru it and eat a bunch.

Sometime you do what you have to do. I get it. Never done it but I'm sure I've done something that others considered crazy. when your gambling with Mother Nature and she's dealing you have to play the hand your delt.

Some 2016 Crops were lost here in Illinois too. Here is a link to someone who bailed downed corn.
http://springfieldil.craigslist.org/grd/5879909101.html

I understand now Ron , sorry to hear that ! Youve got a good baler for it those old NH are tough !!

I remember lots of electric fences going up so cattle could winter on crops that had gone down or had been poorly combined. Also to munch off winter wheat that had a good stand. I also remember my dad making us boys pick corn that had gone down - never did it in the snow but there were some *&^% cold days. Mainly on the turn rows.       

I was wondering if you could take the baler through a car wash or a steam cleaner when you are done to try and get some of that snow and ice out of it. That is amazing I have never seem that but my grandfather talked about a year he square bales some hay like that. He said they only baled enough to feed out each day to some young stock said the feed wasn't much good but they picked it over and got by. Would have lost the cows otherwise for lack or feed.
They will definitely pick it over and eat alot more then you think. Cows love to pick over garbage feed if they can stand on it while they eat. Sometimes I put really bad hay out in their yard and some of them will fill up on it and not eat their good hay.
Like you said you have to make the most out of what you have. I was just wondering if you could run some of that through pigs as it is oats wonder if they could find the oats and get feed out of it. My mother always talks about the year the potatoes where all hollow hears when she was a kid and they fed them to pigs to get a crop.