Anyone Round Bale Hemp?

I have gotten involved in a situation where a research hemp plot has to have the crop removed for testing. A friend involved in planting it has asked me to round bale it. The crop ran into some trouble due to 30 days of no rain and some kind of tainted seed situation, and so they couldn't do a traditional cutting while it was green. Since it is listed as a research plot, it has to be taken in one way or another.

This industrial hemp is really tough stuff. I tried using my disc mower on it and after one round on a 5 acre field, my turtles had completely seized up. The fibers were wrapped around them tightly. He is going to try to sickle bar mow today. Assuming he is successful, we will round bale. I think if it was green, it would be much easier. In it's dried state, it feels like bamboo.

I am nervous about those fibers getting caught up in my baler and causing damage after seeing my disc mower. I will be running an AC 7010 and a JD 467 baler.

Anyone have any experience round baling dried hemp stems? They are about 5 feet tall.

If your baler will not work in corn stakes, do not even pull it in the field.
Here some farmer are having to take weedeaters, with saw blades to cut it.
Then haul it to the edge of the field and hand feed it into silage choppers.

Here something else you can try.
Get a bush hog and cut 1/3 of the side shield off. Some were made so that it would unbolt.
It will cut and put the hemp in a windrow. I have cut hay with one.
The hemp should be chopped up somewhat and then it will feed into a round baler.

Around here the cut it with weed eaters then store it to dry in a greenhouse once dry they use tree cipppers and blow it back in the green house to finish drying tree chipper was grunting to get it done

This stuff is already dried, just in the field.  So I imagine it is just like when it sit in the barn and then dried.  Tree chipper sounds extreme but maybe the best idea.  Once they chipped it, did they bale it?  How did they transport it?

I help a farmer 35+ years ago that had a bush hog type mower that one side of the shield un-bolted. It would put the hay off to that side, not behind the mower.
That is the only one that I have seen.
Here they are chopping it into dump trucks and then hauling it to the processor.
On the tree chipper, one company is taking them and adding support equipment to them to make a processor for hemp. $35,000.  
Here is a hemp stripper that I built.

The stripper takes the leaf/bud off the stalk.
I built two for a local hemp farmer.
They are put the stripped hemp is the large seed totes, but only get 400 lbs or so in one.
You can see a video of it working on Cabin Hollow Metal Art FB page.
In 2014, they planted 35 ac here (KY), this year over 40,000 ac were planted.
From what I have seen/heard, you want to go big 50 - 100+ ac and chop it or under 5 ac and grow for the top market. Cut the buds off while it in the field, then cut the rest of the plant and hang it like tobacco. The stripping takes a large amount of labor. Maybe 3-4 times what it takes for tobacco.
These are the prices I seen at the end of Oct. I do not know what they are now.
The very high CBD buds is selling for $100 - $250+ per lbs.
The stripped leaf/bud mix is selling for $20 per lbs.
And this is with a yield of 1200 -1500 lbs per ac.
I have not seen a price for the chopped whole plant.

When I get into tough nasty thick stuff, 185 with a 6' Bush Hog brand cutter with the large gear box cutting high makes her grunt but she chops it up, just watch the drive line level on the pto cutting 2' high.

The folks here that are growing here must have not had a market or dropped contract. Acres still in the field ,black from freeze and snow. Is it still marketable in that condition? I never went to any of the local meetings but seems like the market was too far away. Is $40,000.00 supposed to come to the farmer or is that the total of finished product sales/ value? Back to the original post , if the leaves have any value I'd say harvesting by hand is the only choice but if the value is in the stems for fiber I'd be looking for a new idea "cutdishner" heavy flail mower. Good luck and if the locals start baling theirs I'll let you know what they are trying.

m16ty wrote: I'd say the best bet is a silage chopper with a row-less head. You could just use a regular bushhog and rake and bale, but you'll leave quite a bit on the ground. Everybody has went big with hemp around here this year, looks like most may wind up loosing big. Lots of people had contracts and the contracts fell though, and are having trouble finding somebody to buy it. This spring, all the talk was $40K per acre, now most people are hoping they can at least break even. My personal thought is it's a fad and the supply is more than the demand. Everybody thought they would get rich raising it, but lets face it, they will pay the farmer just enough to keep him raising it, no more. That's the way it's always been, you ain't going to get rich farming.

I have a Matthews Company Rotary Scythe. To those unfamiliar with the Rotary Scythe, it is a flail mower.  The flail is a cup blade attached to a pin not a chain 'T' flail.

Guys here at home are chopping it like silage.

calico190xt68, no they are running it straight through self propelled choppers and blowing it into hoppers, then taking it to a self contained baler that makes a larger than normal round bale, that then in turn wraps it with silage wrap. Now with that said, the same guy has started running a baler over it today, they are running right over standing plants and stripping the stalks, they are also using high clearance tractors to clear the hemp.

CALICO190XT68, AS FAR AS HOW ITS DOING, GOOD QUESTION, NOT REAL GOOD, THEY CALLED ME YESTERDAY LOOKING FOR A SICKLE MOWER, I DID NOT, SO WE DROVE BY TODAY AND THEY ARE RUNNING IT THROUGH STANDING PLANTS, DIDNT LOOK LIKE IT WAS REALLY STRIPPING IT THAT GREAT. ALSO THIS HEMP IS GROWN IN HEALS LIKE POTATOES, SO THEY MUST BE RUNNIG THE PICK UP ALL THE WAY UP. THEY ARE WRAPPING IT AND ALSO NOT MKING FULL SIZE ROLLS. I THOUGHT THEY MIGHT BALE IT LIKE THE PEANUT FARMERS IN GEORGIA DO, BUT THATS NOT THE WAY THEY ARE DOING IT. IM STILL CONFUSED ON THE WHOLE SITUATION. MOST OF THE PLANTS HERE ARE BARELY KNEE HIGH, WE WENT A MONTH AND A HALF WITH NO RAN SHORTLY AFTER IT WAS PLANTED.