moving large bales -any ideas??

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VRIN

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Hiya
I have found an excellent source of large bale haylage - but my problem is how do I move them once they are on the yard?

The supplier can 'drop' one off but how can I move it?

Does anyone have any ideas or what does evryone else use - don't have a tractor or any large machinery...

Any ideas appreciated (man or woman power is not an option)
 
I have a quad with a trailer and drop a bale of haylage into the trailer with the tractor. If you have quad and trailer, maybe your farmer could put the haylage straight into the trailer? Otherwise, although I'm fairly inventive and have used ropes to load straw and hay bales before I got the tractor, I can't think how else it could be done. Haylage is very heavy!

(I cut the haylage bale open with a hay knife and fork it out to my ponies. If I didn't ration it, they'd just get very very fat!).
 
Can you not just roll them? I can roll a large round bale easily myself on flat hard ground and tip one up on it's end with a bit of effort. Two of us can roll one up a slope and flip it with little effort.
 
Takes a min of 2 people (women!) to roll & flip ours. Some particularly big bales (or ones that aren't perfectly round) take 3 women/2women & OH!
 
I just leave mine where its delivered - take all wrap off - tarp round it with rope - take off whats needed and re-cover.

But.... when we had to move some big bale hay I came up with a plan ! you need the bale on its side rather than its end and I would leave it wrapped to stop it getting dirty. Get a long pole (scaffold pole type) shove it through the middle of the bale (think of a bead on a necklace) then attach rope to each end of pole and to tow hitch on 4x4/quad. Thinking about it you could simply put rope all way through middle and attach straight to tow hitch (not sure how you would get it through though). It should then roll behind vehicle - dont ask me how you stand it back upright if you need to though !!

!
 
We break it up into sections and drag or carry it on a tarp. Can do a large bale in 3-4 trips. we then stack it neatly on pallets in the spare stable with leaky roof ( but not near the leaky bits)
 
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Pallet truck - but we don't move them very far. Delivered in loads of up to 12 which stand outside the barn, two or three people to put large rectangular bale on pallet truck, shift into indoor yard and feed from there. Don't know if it's worth looking on ebay or in local farming mags for a second hand pallet truck? Our is about to die so we will be shopping soon!
Think even rolling round bales is a bad idea - they used to do it at our old yard but riders have enough back problems!
 
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