modern roto-baler?

It looks like this company has reinvented the roto-baler, for a pretty steep price!

https://tractortoolsdirect.com/showroom/tx31-mini-round-baler-by-ibex/

yep....several companies are making the little ones, mostly they are made over seas somewhere and shipped here.

A toy version of a round baler. I had rather go with a square baler for ease of handling and stacking. The only advantage to these would be weather resistance if left outside.

Fellow not far from me has one of the small round balers makes a bale about the size of a
Roto Baler and puts up a nice looking bale.Its pretty simple but works well definitely not
a toy but a serious machine.I'd love to have one but I think he paid over 10K for it
so I don't see one in my future soon.He gave me about 75 of the bales because he thought it wasn't up to the 'quality' of the hay his horses needed my goats thought it was OK.And it does far less damage to the hay than a square baler.

If someone want's the real McCoy I have a white top Roto-Baler available, I'll take less that what they're asking for those.

I'm surprised DR hasn't started marketing mini balers yet. I can see that being handy in steep terrain. Less chance for a roll over

Hockeygoon wrote: If you want a "toy" round baler watch this one:   https://vimeo.com/43045827   No tractor needed - just a good pair of shoes.

these small balers were originally designed for baling pine needles. used in the landscaping industry. then they caught on to bale hay and straw too. there is a dude in PA that re-designs a new Holland small square baler to make smaller square bales, pulled behind a 65 HP plus tractor it can usually pump out about 30 bales a minute. these are really loved by the horse people as they can be hauled to shows easier and the little kids can handle them easier for feeding. 1 bale will feed 2 horses at each feeding.

That girl was impressive. There's no way I could work like that. As far as the small rolls go, not everyone has a tractor to handle a big roll. But with that said, I agree with Hubert, I rather have square bales in that case.

I bought one of these IBEX TX31 mini round balers back in June 2019. I did this after a lot of research into balers, and after the farmer down the road once again let me down. We had been share baling our fields, we have horses as do they, after waiting many weeks we were informed he didn't really need any hay. Great.

So we decided to divorce ourselves from that arrangement and find another solution, looked at lots of used balers, but not interested in buying someone else problems.

We have a Ford 2110 and a Boomer 40.  We found an inline square baler, very compact lightweight and lower power requirements, in Japan, very expensive. Then we found a lot of mini round balers, the most expensive being the Italian ones, which cost more than twice the IBEX and lacked hydraulics.

So we decided to roll the dice, we needed everything but the tractor, so we ordered the IBEX TX31 baler, a 4 wheel rake, a two tine teder, and a high speed drum mower, the entire package was delivered to our farm for under $11,000

I made 1,000 bales, about 40 pounds each, The last week of June 2019. We were 4 weeks behind the other locals here.

All 4 pieces of equipment are more than satisfactory, the baler works just fine and does the job. Unlike the expensive Italian model, it has it's own hydraulic system for opening the door.

The baler is so interesting, I started creating a wifi enabled wireless control system for it, to  add a lot of functionality and supervision to the baler, including bale moisture content.

The baler works with a very low power tractor, it is no issue for our 40 hp tractors.

I've got about 18 or so videos on it and the automation project.

Oh, and we started second cutting, baled 200 today set at higher density, 60 lbs a bale




Edited by ibexowner - 06 Sep 2019 at 12:07am

Actually......
the baler shipped encased in angle iron, so much angle that I easily built a hay spear for my loader in an hour.
 I use the spear to load the bales on the trailer, and unload them and stack in the barn. As far as manually, you just pick them up with your hands on each end where the spear would enter. My mom loaded 100 by hand last night cause I wont let her use the spears, she keeps running them into the ground and bending them. Shes 86. The horses are hers, once she cant bale she cant ride.







Edited by ibexowner - 06 Sep 2019 at 6:01am

Am I wrong or is this allis roto baler everyone talks about and is comparing here is only available used as a vintage piece of equipment, and that it weighs over a ton at 2300 pounds ?

By the way, one of the issues we took into consideration on other used balers was weight, we have hills, there is no way our compact tractors could hold back those heavy square balers, we can slide on some of the hills with the ibex if the rear tires get on cut hay going downhill and trying to stop, its like ice.


Edited by ibexowner - 06 Sep 2019 at 8:16am

PaulB wrote: On top of all that, the Roto-Baler has s completely automatic after you stop motion to finish the bale.

So will the IBEX once my wifi enabled automation add on is completed. Plans are to market it.

Seems like a crazy amount of money to spend to make a small bale of hay when balers in working ready to go to field condition can be had for less than $2000.