43 in stock across 17 Indiana and Ohio dealerships, from $7,970 to $599,700.
Condition beats count. Belts commonly last 10,000 to 15,000 bales, so a machine near or past that is likely due for a set, which is a real expense to negotiate. More important is what was baled. Dry grass hay is easy on a baler, wet baleage and cornstalks are hard on belts, bearings, and the gate. A 20,000 bale machine that made dry hay and was stored inside can be a better buy than a 6,000 bale baler that lived on wet wrapped bales outdoors.
Hay and forage equipment gets used hard in short windows, and in Indiana and Ohio those windows are narrow because rain arrives when the hay is down. Buying used here rewards anyone who knows where these machines wear, since a baler or mower conditioner that looks straight from twenty feet can still need thousands of dollars in belts, teeth, and driveline work.
Match capacity across the whole chain, because the slowest machine sets your pace. A 9 or 10 foot mower conditioner, a rotary rake or twin basket rake, and a variable chamber round baler will handle a few hundred acres of grass and alfalfa comfortably for a beef operation. Once you are past that, or once you are custom baling, a 13 to 16 foot mower conditioner and a high capacity baler with net wrap start paying for themselves in windows you would otherwise miss.
Think in drying days rather than acres. In the eastern Corn Belt, first cutting often gets three good days if you are lucky, so the honest question is how many acres you can cut, dry, rake, and bale before the next front. Conditioning aggressiveness, swath width, and tedding capability move that number more than raw machine size does. A wide swath laid out to nearly full cut width dries dramatically faster than a narrow windrow, which matters more in June than horsepower does.
Disc mower conditioners cut faster, handle down and tangled crop better, and are far more tolerant of ground speed than sickle machines. Sickle bar conditioners use less horsepower and leave a very clean cut, and they still have a following in clean alfalfa, but they plug in heavy crop and demand more knife maintenance. For most buyers today, a disc machine is the better purchase, and used disc mower conditioners are plentiful.
Conditioning style should follow the crop. Rubber or steel rolls crimp stems and are the standard choice for alfalfa and other legumes, where leaf retention decides feed value. Flail or impeller conditioners are more aggressive on grass and handle heavy grass hay well, but they are harder on legume leaves. If you run mixed stands, intermeshing rubber rolls with adjustable pressure and gap are the safest all around choice. Check roll condition closely on a used machine, since worn or chunked rolls do not condition evenly.
The cutterbar is the expensive part. Listen to it run with no load and feel for rough bearings and gear noise, because a cutterbar rebuild can cost as much as a used machine is worth. Look for oil weeping at module seams, check the oil level and condition, and look at the discs and skid shoes for wear, cracks, and welded repairs. Rock hits show up as bent stub shafts, out of plane discs, and knives that no longer overlap correctly. Turn each disc by hand and feel for play.
Then check the driveline and the rest. Inspect the PTO shaft, guards, U joints, and the slip clutch or shear protection, and look at the gearbox for leaks. Examine the header suspension springs, the swing tongue if equipped, and the tires. On the conditioner, check roll gap and pressure adjustment, look for chunked or glazed rubber, and confirm the rolls turn together. Finish by looking at the frame around the hitch and pivot points for cracks and past welding.
Bale count is useful but it is not a verdict. Belts on a variable chamber baler typically go somewhere in the range of 10,000 to 15,000 bales before they need replacing, and much longer in easy, clean conditions. What matters more is what those bales were: dry hay is gentle, high moisture baleage is heavy and hard on belts, bearings, and the gate, and cornstalks are abrasive and rough on the pickup. Ask the seller what they baled and how they raked, since raking dirt into the windrow wears everything.
Open the gate and inspect every belt for cracking, glazing, frayed edges, missing chunks, and bad lacing. Look at the rollers for wear grooves and check every bearing by hand for roughness. Inspect the pickup tines for breakage and the stripper bands for wear on the bottoms, which is the sign the pickup needs rebuilding. Check the chains, sprockets, and slip clutches, the belt tension arm and springs, and the net wrap or twine system, which is a frequent source of frustration and a common thing sellers leave broken.
The bale package should match how the hay gets used and sold. Small square bales still command a premium in the horse hay market across Indiana and Ohio and remain the right choice if you sell retail, but they require labor at the worst time of year. Round bales dominate beef and stored forage because one person can handle them, and net wrap sheds water better than twine and speeds up the bale cycle noticeably. Large square bales suit dairy, commercial hay, and anyone shipping by the truckload.
On a used small square baler, check the knotters and the needles first, since knotter problems will cost you more time than any other part of the machine. Look at plunger knife clearance, the flywheel and shear bolt system, the pickup teeth, and the bale chamber tension. Run it if at all possible. A baler that ties reliably is worth substantially more than one that ties most of the time, and a demonstration in the field tells you more than an hour of inspection in the lot.
Raking and tedding equipment is cheap compared to the mower and the baler, and it has an outsized effect on hay quality. A tedder spreads a swath to speed drying, which is valuable in the humid conditions common through an Indiana and Ohio June, but it costs leaves in alfalfa if used too aggressively or too dry. Rotary rakes handle heavy crop gently and form a uniform windrow. Wheel rakes are inexpensive and fast but they pick up more dirt and ash if run tight to the ground.
Inspect rakes for bent tines and arms, worn cam tracks and bearings on rotary units, and gearbox condition. On wheel rakes, look at wheel bearings, the tine condition, and the frame at the pivots. On tedders, check the driveline, the gearboxes at each rotor, and whether the rotors are in plane. These are simple machines, but a rotary rake gearbox rebuild is not cheap and worn cam tracks show up as skipping and uneven windrows.
The best time to buy hay equipment is late summer through winter, once the season is over and before spring urgency sets in. Buying in April, with rain forecast and hay ready, is how people end up with the wrong baler. Get any purchase inspected and serviced during the off season, since parts availability is better and shop schedules are open. TRULAND stores run inspection programs for balers and mower conditioners, and a pre-season inspection is the practical way to avoid a breakdown during a three day window.
Budget for wear parts as an operating cost, not a surprise. Knives, guards, and sections, belts and lacing, pickup teeth, bearings, chains, and driveline components all consume money every season. Store equipment inside if you can, because sun destroys baler belts, tires, and net wrap systems faster than use does. Kuhn hay tools are among the brands supported at TRULAND stores, and keeping a common brand across your hay line simplifies parts and service.
External sources are provided for reference. For anything specific to your machine or your operation, call the store nearest you.
More equipment
Condition beats count. Belts commonly last 10,000 to 15,000 bales, so a machine near or past that is likely due for a set, which is a real expense to negotiate. More important is what was baled. Dry grass hay is easy on a baler, wet baleage and cornstalks are hard on belts, bearings, and the gate. A 20,000 bale machine that made dry hay and was stored inside can be a better buy than a 6,000 bale baler that lived on wet wrapped bales outdoors.
For 200 acres of grass and alfalfa on a beef operation, a 9 to 10 foot disc mower conditioner pulled by 90 to 110 horsepower covers it comfortably, cutting the ground in a day when the weather is right. If you take three or four cuttings, custom cut for neighbors, or want more margin against short weather windows, step to 13 feet with 130 horsepower or more. Wider swath capability matters as much as width for getting hay dry.
For round bales, generally yes. Net wrap covers the bale in two or three turns instead of twenty or more, which cuts baling time significantly, produces a tighter and better shaped bale, and sheds rain far better on bales stored outside. The tradeoffs are cost per bale and the fact that net must be removed before feeding, which is more of a chore in winter. Twine still makes sense for bales fed quickly or stored inside.
For most buyers today, disc. Disc mowers cut faster, handle down, lodged, and tangled crop without plugging, and tolerate higher ground speeds, which matters when the forecast is short. Sickle bar machines use less horsepower, cost less to buy, and leave a very clean cut in standing alfalfa, but they need more knife and guard maintenance and they slow you down in heavy crop. Sickle machines still fit small acreage and light horsepower tractors.
Typically late May into early June, with the exact date driven by the season and by what you are cutting. Alfalfa quality peaks at bud to early bloom, and grass quality drops fast once seed heads emerge, so the calendar matters less than the stand. Waiting for perfect weather usually costs more in feed value than getting rained on costs. Many producers accept a compromise cutting in early June rather than harvesting overmature hay in late June.
Run the cutterbar with no load and listen for bearing and gear noise, since a cutterbar rebuild is the largest risk on these machines. Check for oil weeping at module seams and check the oil condition. Turn each disc by hand for play, look for bent stub shafts or discs out of plane from rock strikes, and inspect knives and skid shoes. Check the PTO shaft, U joints, slip clutch, gearbox for leaks, conditioner roll surfaces, roll gap adjustment, header springs, and frame welds.
A typical small to mid size variable chamber round baler making 4x5 or 5x5 bales needs roughly 60 to 90 PTO horsepower, and more if you are baling heavy or wet material or working hills. Larger high capacity balers making 5x6 bales, and machines with pre cutters, want 100 horsepower or more. Weight and braking matter too, since a finished wet bale is heavy and a light tractor on a slope is a real hazard.
Hay tools are a good used category because they run limited hours per year and much of what wears is replaceable. A well kept used mower conditioner, rake, or baler at half the price of new is often the right call for an operation under a few hundred acres. New makes more sense for custom operators and large acreage, where downtime during a three day window is expensive and current baler capacity and net wrap systems noticeably increase output.
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