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Front-Mount Bale Carrier Keeps Weight Off Tractor
Keith Mason's favorite way to move big round bales is with a front-end loader. But that puts too much stress on the front end of the tractor, damaging the tires and steering.
After a little thought, he went to his shop and put together an attachment for the front end of his tractor that handles two bales easily
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Front-Mount Bale Carrier Keeps Weight Off Tractor BALE HANDLING Bale Handling (31B) 25-4-11 Keith Mason's favorite way to move big round bales is with a front-end loader. But that puts too much stress on the front end of the tractor, damaging the tires and steering.
After a little thought, he went to his shop and put together an attachment for the front end of his tractor that handles two bales easily with hardly any stress on the tractor's front end.
His bale handler worked so well Mason patented the idea and licensed it to Besler Industries, Cambridge, Nebraska, where it's undergoing a few engineering tweaks before it hits the assembly line.
Mason's bale handler looks something like a forklift attached to the tractor frame by a parallel linkage, with two independent caster wheels on the outside that run in front of the tractor's front wheels. While it attaches to the frame, the bale carrier is actually pushed by a tongue that extends back to the drawbar of the tractor.
The actual fork and bale carrier attaches to a mast similar to that on a forklift. The fork can pick up and carry two 4 by 4 by 8 big square bales.
There are hydraulic cylinders on the mast and on the parallel linkage. The cylinder on the linkage adjusts the pitch of the mast, allowing the operator to adjust the amount of weight transferred to the tractor by the load. Also, the cylinder on the mast keys into the cylinder on the parallel linkage. This keeps the load level while the tractor bounces across the field, even in road gear, and even if the wheels on one side or the other should drop into a hole or rut in the field. The design makes hay handling safer and faster.
Mason says the new bale handler lets him use a smaller horsepower tractor for moving bales. Mounted on a 105 hp tractor and carrying up to 2 tons of bales at a time, Mason says he's been able to load up 24 tons of hay in between 10 and 15 minutes.
Cliff Kester, of Besler Industries, says the company hopes to have the bale handler on the market by mid summer.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Herb Besler or Cliff Kester, Besler Industries, P.O. Box B, Cambridge, Neb. 69022 (ph 308 697-4866).
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