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Are round balers adjustable for bale density? Seems to me there should be some way to adjust them. Jeff hires his baling done and half the time whoever bales the hay, the bales are baled so loose the darn things flatten when you sit them on the ground. You end up with way more bales, and it takes a lot more wrap plus they don't cure as well with all of the air in them. The guys who use New Hollands always seem to have good dense bales. Kuhn seems to make a good dense bale. Everything else, not so much. Not to mention you get charged for 90 some odd bales and in reality you have about 70 bales worth of hay.

All of the hard-core round balers I have owned had a way to adjust density.

The quality and size of the windrow along with ground speed and the experience of the operator can affect density.

Some will back off the pressure as with a less dense bale you can get away baling with a slightly higher moisture content.

Soft core balers that have the fixed drums around just can't get a hard tight center of a bale.

Older round balers just weren't designed to put that much tension on all the way through. The chain balers especially are good at baling anything, but probably won't get as tight a bale.

Newer balers can make a bale so tight you can't get a spear in.

Paul

With soft center bakers you can make a good bake that will not squat but you have to push it to the limit. When we had ours we did not go by the monitor we went by the pull on the tractor as to when the bale was full. Hardcore bakers have a density control on them but they can have issues like a leaking cylinder or broken springs that will negate the adjustment. I want our bales as tight and heavy as possible for water shed and less handling. I think you need to visit with your baker operator.

We have a variable chamber Gehl. There is an accumulator that is supposed to have a certain air pressure in it to keep the bales tight. If air pressure is low bales get a little loose. We almost never have a bale density problem. I think rrlund has a Gehl also.

Like 300jk said,the Gehls are adjustable. That's what the TDC stands for,total density control. There's a pin on one cylinder,that sits in a fork in the hydraulic valve. You can put that pin in different holes so it switches from air pressure to hydraulic pressure depending on where you want the bale to become more dense.

I can adjust the bale density on my JD 467. My understanding, it wears a baler out quicker.

Any baler that uses hydraulics, tractor or self-contained, can be adjusted for bale density. I like to make bales that you can't stick your hand in. I set the baler that way and leave it that way. Make them the same for everybody, my bales and the customers bales look just the same.
Either your guy needs to fix his equipment or he's ripping you off.

Some are adjustable some aren't.

We got a Vermeer round baler from someone. When asked why it was set so loose. they said you needed the air in the loose bale to dry em out. We told em if it was baled dry they wouldn't need to dry out. We figured out how to adjust it tighter. Got it from mushy soft(a person could stick their arm in it) to too tight(couldn't spear).

A while later the person got some hay from us(part of the deal for the baler), nice tight bales. That persons relation then got some hay from them....and took our bales over the ones baled loose with the same baler just a few weeks prior.

Most are adjustable, if it is adjusted properly and still makes a loose bale slow down, have to give the baler chance to roll the hay and compress it. If you are baling heavy hay at 5-7 mph you aren't giving the baler a chance to do its job.

All of the JD balers since the JD 530 have had adjustable density control. Vermeer has had it since the "F" series balers too. The majority of modern balers will make a good tight bale. It is all in how the operator runs/adjusts the baler. I have owned and ran Vermeer, Claus, and JD balers. You can make a good bale with any of them. You just need to know how to operate them. I really have not found any baler that will not make a good bale with a skilled operator and patience.

If your hiring the baling done by different people then you have control of the quality your getting. Tell the fellow up front that you want and need good tight bales. IF he does not do the job you want/like tell him so and do not get him back. Also if you think he is padding the bill by making more loose bales only pay him for what you think is fair. You do not want him back anyway.

I have been doing custom baling for over 30 years now. My customers are not bashful about telling me what they want and what they think of the job we do.

A lot of fellows think just running over the ground and wadding the hay into a circle makes you a good baler operator. You can make bales fast and tight. It takes properly adjusted equipment and a larger HP tractor to do it. We bale with 130-150 HP tractors. Part of that is because of safety on the hills we have. Second it takes power to make tight bales at any kind of speed. 80-90 HP on a 5x6 baler and you will be pulling it pretty good. If you have a drum baler it takes even more HP to really make tight bales.

Also some people actually think that having hay loose allows it to cure better. I say BS on that but I have a couple of neighbors that still twine tie. They make loose bales and only have maybe 4-5 wraps of twin on the hay. When their hay sets out side it is totally rotten in six months.

So the short answer is your baler guys are not doing you a very good job.

With the cost of Round balers coming down you can buy a pretty good used baler for $5000-7500 with mesh wrap. It does not take long to actually pay for a baler with it costing $10-15 a bale to hire it done. ( This is with fuel added in)

P.S. If your wrapping silage bales you really want mesh wrapped bales. They just wrap easier.

(quoted from post at 12:53:40 06/10/18) I can adjust the bale density on my JD 467. My understanding, it wears a baler out quicker.

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I've baled 25,000 4X5.5 bales with my JD 467 at maximum hyd pressure & it's not worn out yet because I baled 142 bales with it a few days back. 467 I traded for this one to get netwrap had 30,000 bales on the monitor at max hyd pressure .

Baling bales at less than maximum height(diameter) which is 6' limits the wear.

Even with the old non adjustable Hesston I had, PTO speed, ground speed and window size all affected the bale density. Fast PTO, slow ground speed, and small windrows increase bale density.

That's what you get by going with a cut-rate operator to bale your hay. They're going to use the cheapest piece of %$#@ baler they can get their hands on, won't know how to run it, or maybe they will know how to run it and are just running it loose to charge you for an extra 20 bales.

Sound to me like the guy doing the baling is charging by the bale and wants to make a lot of bales hence a bigger paycheck