Cattle Producer Impressed by Speed, Appetite of Vermeer K-Baler
| Dean Hansen learned about farming while growing up on his dad's farm. Instead of participating in sports after-school, he'd go home and join his dad in the fields. "I really enjoyed it." | |
 Today, Hansen operates his own 700-acre farm with his wife, son and daughter. "We run 300 acres of row crop split between corn and beans. The rest is pasture, alfalfa and hay to support the 110 head of cattle we raise." Farming has changed since Hansen and his wife started in the mid '70s, but one thing has not. They still use a Vermeer baler. "I used to run a custom hay operation all over the countryside. It helped pay a lot of debts. I've worked with Vermeer balers for over 20 years. Before I bought this last one (a K-Baler), I looked at Deere and New Holland. The price was a little cheaper on those, but they weren't built the same. And when you add on all the extras, the price was about the same as a Vermeer." Hansen cracks a smile when he talks about his newest Vermeer baler. "It's a unique machine. I've never seen anything with an appetite for hay like that thing. My son will say the same thing. One day last year, we were trying to beat a rain to what I call rabbit hay. We were square and round baling at the same time. My neighbor helped me unload the square bales and when we got back, my son said he found out he could bale at the high side of second. That's got to be right at 8 mph! It was new seeding so it was real smooth. That baler just gulped it down. It's an amazing machine. Whether it's a green wet hay or a dry hay, it starts the bale and it just goes. It's great." Hansen's son has taken over much of the baling responsibility. "He took tractor safety school a couple years ago, and now he runs it most of the time. We run 400 to 600 bales for our own use and another 500 to 600 bales custom. I'm looking at it to create a job for the young man. It makes a decent cash flow. He got a couple custom jobs last year and we're going to try to get our foot in the door a few more places this year." What does Hansen like most about his Vermeer? "It's the weight of it. It just has more iron. It's a heavier built machine. The dealer support is great. If I need something, they always have it. And it's easy to work on. If you need to work on it, you can get it apart. You don't have to fool around with gib keys and all that." Hansen says the difference between a Vermeer bale and any other bale is most evident on the scale. "I don't know if you can actually go down the road and say this is a Vermeer bale and this is a Deere. But you can see the difference when you take those bales across the scale ... I made some third crop new seeding last October and sold 33 bales of rabbit hay to a dairy operation. They weighed 2,400 pounds. I can even tell on the tractor when I pick up a Vermeer bale. They're just heavier." Hansen says the higher density bales mean better product, less trips to and from the field, less on-ground surface area for spoilage and less time feeding hay. "I have the Hay Saver Wheels, the Equal-Fill monitor and Net-Wrap on this baler. Net Wrap makes a big difference. The bales just shed water. I was really amazed. I didn't think it would make such a difference, but it really does!" "We bale everything - bromegrass, slew grass, cornstalks, nice clean alfalfa. I've tried baling different ways - tried it at 8 mph, tried running at about half that. There just wasn't a difference in the bales. If the windrow in front of you was good, you got a great bale every time." |
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