The local JD dealer threw a little hay clinic/supper the other night... was a pretty nice deal. They had some stuff for sale out there on display with a 'show special' price on it (not that special from what I could tell) and after our brisket sandwiches they had the Deere baler guru they'd flown in from Iowa give a talk about care and feeding of the Deere round balers. He was a Deere baler guru in the Ottumwa, Iowa plant for about 30 years or so, before he left to work for Ambraco, the company that makes the Deere net wrap and one of the largest and oldest netwrap manufacturers out there. In addition to a ton of information on fine tuning, care, and feeding of the Deere netwrap mechanism on the Deere round balers, he gave a presentation of their new "B-wrap" option.
What is B-wrap?? It is a new netwrap system that works in Deere 7, 8, and 9 series balers. You have to install a special kit (about $700-800 bucks or so) with a special sensor, but once the baler is equipped, B-wrap can be installed in place of regular net, or swapped back out for regular net, in about 5 minutes-- about the time it takes to load a new roll of net. B-wrap is basically a special roll of netwrap that has breathable film bale sleeves attached to the netwrap itself. When the baler starts the netwrap cycle, a turn and a half of netwrap enters the baler and wraps the bale in the standard way, as the wrap continues to feed, the breathable film sleeve that is attached to the next turn and a quarter of wrap feeds in with the net and completely encapsulates the bale across the width of the net with a waterproof, breathable sleeve of material. As this layer attached on top of the net passes the special sensor, a metal "tag" (looking sorta like metal duct tape) triggers the sensor, which then "times" the point at which to cut off the netwrap... another turn and a half of netwrap is wrapped over the plastic film, velcro-like "sticky patches" pull loose from the roll, and the net is cut off automatically in the usual manner. The remaining film and sticky patches wrap the bale and the velcro patches lock the net in place to itself (since there is no hay sticking through the net to assist in locking the net in place.) The bale is then ejected in the usual manner.
The cost is about $6 a roll for a 68 inch bale. This compares to about $2-3 a roll for regular netwrap. They advertise it as "barn kept hay without the barn". Evidently they have been working on this for a number of years, they even experimented with feeding Tyvec house wrap (waterproof film) into round balers with net to "waterproof" the hay bales, but unfortunately the problem is with regular plastic film is when the hay inevitably sweats (as all hay does after being baled) the moisture released condenses on the inner surface of the plastic and causes a layer of slimy white mold to form on the outside of the bale touching the plastic. B-wraps film, while consisting of a plastic membrane inner and outer layer, has a layer of "fuzz" in between similar to Tyvec (I tore a sample off some of the waste section he pulled off the roll to demonstrate how it works) and this membrane has micro-pores in it that wick moisture from the bale side to the outside of the wrap, which then evaporates away. It locks out moisture from rain, snow, and ice that falls on the bale from the outside. He demonstrated this with a clear plastic cylinder with a seal in the middle of it, into which a piece of the membrane film was placed and the top and bottom half of the cylinder was locked back together. Colored water was poured into the top and would sit on top of the film several inches deep, yet when the bottom half of the closed cylinder was pumped up with a small hand air pump (like a blood pressure cuff pump) the air would bubble through the film and colored water and out the top of the open cylinder. He said that the film isn't ENTIRELY waterproof, of course, as anything with small pores wouldn't be... If it rains continuously for days, the film will get SLIGHTLY damp on the underside by the hay, but as soon as the rain stops and the wrap dries off, the moisture will be wicked right back out through the film and evaporate, keeping the hay fresh.
He said that experiments they've done, baling hay in the same field, on the same day, with the same baler, alternating between the B-wrap and regular netwrap, and storing bales side-by-side, that when they feed a bale of regular netwrap hay and then bring in another identical bale of B-wrap hay, the cattle will leave the regular netwrapped hay to get to the B-wrapped hay, because it's "fresh as the day it was baled". despite being stored side-by-side with the regular netwrapped hay from the same field. He said they have YouTube videos of this as well.
He went on to explain that B-wrap isn't for EVERY bale... first cut stuff that's not as good, would probably just be wrapped with regular netwrap. BUT, high value, or high-storage loss hay like alfalfa, sorghum-sudan, corn stalk or straw bales, peanut hay, etc. are excellent candidates for B-wrap net. Second or third cut hay that is harvested at precisely the right time and is of excellent quality and desired to be sold at a premium is also a good fit for B-wrap. Since the regular netwrap and b-wrap and easily interchangeable, it's easy to switch between B-wrap for the best hay, and if some gets rained on or part of the field is weedy or something and not as desirable and not worth the cost of B-wrap, it's easy to switch over to regular netwrap again for that part of the field.
The other drawback other than cost is the fact that due to the dimensions of a standard roll of netwrap, which will do about 120-150 bales or so (depending on bale size and number of wraps), a roll of B-wrap, due to the additional thickness of the film and velcro patches attached to the basic netwrap that makes up the roll of B-wrap, is only capable of wrapping 35 rolls of hay, and the B-wrap costs the same per roll as regular netwrap.
It was a really interesting presentation. He discussed one of their "beta testers" they had worked with in Georgia, who was baling several thousand rolls a year of peanut hay, which is quite vulnerable to storage damage from moisture and such. He couldn't sell the B-wrapped hay at a premium because nobody knew what it was and they weren't willing to pay extra, so he just sold it at the same price the first year and added a few rolls onto every load, and told them "store this side by side with the regular netwrapped hay, and then feed two of them side by side and tell me what you think". After his customers saw the difference the B-wrap made, they started specifically asking for more B-wrapped hay and agreed to a higher price for it.
Anyway, it's really interesting some of the technology that's coming out. He said the cost is the biggest holdup on it for now, but he said he could remember going out 20-25 years ago talking about how farmers needed to switch from twine to netwrap, and guys balking at $2-3 dollars per bale cost of netwrap over a buck's worth of twine on a bale..."but how many folks use netwrap now?? Most everybody!... This is the coming thing..."
It was pretty neat.
Later! OL J R
Yall heard about "B-wrap"??
0 commentaires:
Enregistrer un commentaire