Pictures from Australia

[Brian]

One of the people we met last year was Allan and Carol Cook and their son Stephen. Allan showed me a New Holland Self Propelled baler in his shed, I had seen them many times at Boreham House and at New Holland in Aylsbury, on film but never in the flesh. Allan promised to send me some pictures when they had it out of the shed and here she is.

[JC]

One of the farmers here has two of those, with cabs. He's had them for 30 years that I know of, probably longer. They still bale hay. He doesn't use them as much now, because he mostly puts up one ton bales. He has a lot of hay ground and he used to do custom haying, too, so he's put lots of bales through them.

[henk]

Never seen one before. What a nice machine.
A cab would be a useful option for all that dust.

[Brian]

Allan used to run a fleet of these in Canada and the US on haying contract. From what he has said it was the biggest operation in that part of the world with a big fleet of these. Some had Ford engines.

[JC]

The ones here had Ford industrial gas engines, if I remember right. They seemed like a good idea. I'm surprised that more people didn't have them.

[Les bryant]

I have seen one in Feilding NZ Cheers Les

[Brian]

In the films there was another self propelled piece of equipment that went with the baler. A New Holland Stack Liner. We had a few of the trailed versions here but I never saw a self propelled one. Must have been a great job chasing the baler all day, picking up and loading single bales then building the stack.

[Bensdexta]

Which New Holland baler is it based on? What vintage 50's, 60's 70's?

[Dandy Dave]

I have never seen any around my area here. I could see where these would be useful out in the Mid West U.S.A. All the farmers here had bailers that hooked onto the tractor. Most of the farms in this area back in the 50's and 60's averaged around 100 acers and had a 30 cow barn. We had 283 Acres, but only about 150 of that was tillable. Dandy Dave!

[ford5000y]

That is a lovely machine, except of course for the red paint

It looks rather simple, from its looks it looks like a trailed baler with the drawbar and pto linkage removed and with a small engine placed at he back for power, and, of course, wheels.

The front tyres look worn but still OK. It looks better than the front tyres of my grandfather's ford 4000, which looked as if it has been used as a chopping board!

[Kiwi Kev]

It looks rather simple,

Nothing wrong with simple.
That's why our Fordsons are still going after 50-60 years.
Kiwi Kev

[Les bryant]

When I worked for Trotters of Levin they had New holland stack liner,they carry about 70 bales.They have petrol v4 air cooled motor. Cheers Les.

[JC]

I remember running one of those V-4 Wisconsin powered ones, 30+ years ago. Now they're called Harobeds. Almost everyone around here has one. They've changed a little, with air-conditioned cabs and computer controlled stacking!

[brockwood]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z25K8BOSEXU quote "Its really good on the road 40kph, it has full variable speed, can turn on itself, never have to get out and move bales, 96 strokes a min, hydraulic pickup, perfect position to see windrow and knotters, no tractor needed, long chamber, mint A/C and will happily bale 600+ bales an hour all day. And its so rare its actually going up in value" Hi we had three of these in our area one still about trying to arange a display of it at our lockal rally the above is a link to aus utube clip of one working and a qoute from the poster also one has to remember when these were currant the average tractor round hear anyway was 45 hp had no powerstearing only did 25kp and had crash gears b

[Brian]

Great video! The baler was basically either a New Holland 68 or 78 which were the best balers we had in our area. They had no rival until the Claas Dominant and Markant came along. New Holland lost the market and never really got it back after they introduced the "sweep arm feeder" instead of the chain and tine feeder they had used in the earlier model.

The NH 268 was the first baler that enabled the building of round bale stacks here with our heavy grass and straw crops as the carriage never managed to transfer the crop to the left side of the bale chamber and caused mis-shaped bales that dropped the string. They went back to the earlier version pretty quickly but the damage to sales had been done and it was at the time of the 6Y Series Fords as well so our company name was mud. We started to sell more and more of the Dominant but even that had problems after Claas went away from ZF gearboxes and started to make there own. I remember having a pile of new gearboxes in our yard with broken teeth on the crown wheels and being told by the Claas Warranty Specialist that they were not going to pay out under warranty as Claas gearboxes did not fail!!

I began to wonder then about the myth of German engineering!

[DaveP]

When I was a kid we had a NH baler, pretty sure it had a 2 cylinder Wisconsin on it. I remember the solid metal wheel to start it. Always thought why would the PTO not be used....... oh well.... I was thankfully not involved with starting the Wisconsin.

[Dandy Dave]

The balers had an engine on them because many of the tractors back then did not have enough power to run, and pull the baler at the same time. Take a Ford 9N for instance. Enough said. Dandy Dave!