6 Best Bale Wrap Applicators For Hobby Farms to Protect Your Harvest
Choosing the right bale wrap applicator is crucial for hobby farms. We compare 6 top models to help you efficiently protect your harvest and preserve feed.
Getting your hay cut and baled is only half the battle; the real challenge is preserving that nutrition until your animals need it most. For a hobby farmer, fighting the weather to get perfectly dry hay can feel like a losing game. This is where making haylage, or "baleage," becomes a game-changer, and a reliable bale wrapper is the key to making it work.
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Why Bale Wrap is Crucial for Small-Scale Haylage
Making haylage is the process of baling forage at a higher moisture content (40-60%) and then wrapping it in airtight plastic. The wrap creates an anaerobic environment, allowing fermentation to preserve the feed, much like making sauerkraut. This process locks in nutrients far better than dry hay, resulting in higher-quality feed that animals love.
The biggest advantage for a hobby farmer is the forgiving weather window. You don’t need three to five perfect, sunny days to cure hay. You can often cut in the morning and bale and wrap that same afternoon, working around a day job or unpredictable summer storms. This flexibility is invaluable when you’re managing a farm on the side.
Furthermore, wrapped bales can be stored outside, freeing up precious barn space. The plastic protects the feed from rain, snow, and sun, drastically reducing the spoilage you’d see with unprotected dry hay. For a small operation, minimizing waste means maximizing the return on your hard work and acreage.
Enorossi Manual Dispenser: Top Hand-Held Option
Let’s be perfectly clear: this isn’t a machine, it’s a tool. The Enorossi Manual Dispenser is essentially a handle that holds a roll of bale wrap, allowing you to walk around the bale and wrap it by hand. It’s the absolute simplest and cheapest entry into making baleage.
This option is for the farmer with just a handful of bales per year—maybe five to ten. If you have a small flock of sheep or a couple of goats, and you’re just trying to preserve a small patch of high-quality forage, this tool gets the job done. You can hire a neighbor to do the baling, then spend an afternoon wrapping your winter feed yourself.
The tradeoff is your own physical effort. Wrapping a 600-pound bale by hand is hard work, and getting a tight, consistent seal takes practice. It’s slow, it’s tiring, and it’s not practical for more than a dozen bales. But for a micro-farm, it’s a viable way to protect your harvest with almost no capital investment.
Tube-Line Econo-Wrap: Best for Small Tractors
Inline wrappers are incredibly efficient, and the Tube-Line Econo-Wrap brings that technology down to a scale that fits a hobby farm. Instead of wrapping each bale individually, an inline wrapper pushes bales end-to-end into a long "tube" of plastic. This method uses significantly less plastic wrap per bale, saving you money over the long run.
The Econo-Wrap is specifically designed for smaller tractors. It doesn’t require massive horsepower or high-flow hydraulics to operate, making it compatible with the compact and utility tractors common on smaller properties. You can power it with a modest 40-horsepower tractor without a problem.
This is the right choice if you’re producing 25 to 100 bales a season and have a suitable tractor. It represents a smart step up from manual wrapping, automating the process and saving on supplies. The continuous tube of bales is also easy to feed from; you just open one end and take what you need, resealing it to protect the rest.
Tanco 1320 EH: Versatile Standalone Wrapper
The beauty of the Tanco 1320 EH is its independence. This is a trailed wrapper with its own power pack—a small gas engine that runs the hydraulics. This means you don’t need a tractor with hydraulic remotes to run it. You can tow it into place with a farm truck or even an ATV, fire up the engine, and start wrapping.
This versatility is a huge asset for hobby farms where equipment is often multi-purpose and may not be perfectly matched. The Tanco can also handle both round and square bales, a feature many other wrappers lack. If you produce small square bales for easy handling but also have a few round bales from a custom operator, this machine can handle both.
For the farmer who values flexibility above all, the Tanco is a fantastic solution. It’s a significant investment, but it uncouples the wrapping process from your tractor availability. This allows one person to run the wrapper while another uses the tractor to bring more bales, dramatically speeding up the workflow.
Kverneland 7818 C for Quality Square Bales
Many hobby farmers prefer small square bales. They’re easier to handle manually, they stack neatly in a barn, and you can move them with a dolly instead of a tractor. The Kverneland 7818 C is a specialized machine built to wrap these bales with precision and care.
This is a trailed, self-loading wrapper designed for the serious producer of square baleage. It gently lifts the bale onto the wrapping table, wraps it, and tips it off, all controlled from the tractor. Kverneland is known for building robust, reliable equipment, and this wrapper is no exception. It creates a tight, perfectly sealed package that ensures high-quality fermentation.
Choosing this machine is about committing to a system. If your operation is built around high-quality square baleage for sheep, goats, or horses, the 7818 C is an investment in consistency. It eliminates the guesswork and physical labor of other methods, ensuring every bale you make is preserved to its maximum potential.
Vicon BW 2100 C: A Reliable 3-Point Hitch Model
A 3-point hitch wrapper offers unmatched maneuverability. The Vicon BW 2100 C mounts directly to your tractor’s rear linkage, allowing you to pick up, wrap, and stack bales without ever leaving the seat. This is a massive efficiency gain for a solo operator.
This design excels in tight spaces or on hilly terrain where a trailed wrapper might be cumbersome. You can back right up to a bale, even on a slope, load it, and wrap it on the move or in a dedicated stacking area. The entire unit feels like an extension of the tractor, giving you precise control.
The Vicon is ideal for the farmer who values an efficient, one-person workflow. If you’re the one doing all the work, minimizing the number of times you have to get on and off the tractor saves incredible amounts of time and energy. This machine turns a multi-step process into a single, streamlined operation.
Anderson IFX660: For Higher Volume Hobby Farms
When your hobby farm starts to scale up—perhaps you’re feeding a larger herd or selling baleage to neighbors—you need equipment that can keep up. The Anderson IFX660 is an inline wrapper built for speed and volume, bridging the gap between hobby-scale and commercial operations.
Like other inline wrappers, it’s efficient with plastic. But the Anderson adds features designed for productivity, like its integrated "Xtractor" which cleverly pushes the last bale out of the hoop, saving you from having to do it manually. It’s a small detail that makes a huge difference at the end of a long day.
This wrapper is for the hobby farmer who is serious about production. It requires a decent-sized tractor to run effectively and represents a major financial commitment. However, if you are putting up 100+ bales a year, the time saved and the professional-quality wrapping will quickly justify the investment.
Choosing the Right Bale Wrap for Your Applicator
The best wrapper in the world is useless without quality bale wrap. The plastic film is what creates the airtight seal, and skimping here is a classic case of being "penny wise and pound foolish." A failed wrap means spoiled feed, which costs far more than the few extra dollars for a better roll of plastic.
When selecting a wrap, consider these key factors:
- Thickness: Measured in mils or gauge. A standard 1 mil (25 micron) wrap is fine for most round bales, but for square bales with sharp corners, a thicker 1.2 or 1.5 mil wrap provides crucial puncture resistance.
- UV Protection: Essential for bales stored outside. The wrap must contain a UV inhibitor to prevent the plastic from breaking down in the sun, which would let oxygen in and spoil the bale.
- Tack: This is the stickiness of the film. High-tack wrap clings to itself, creating a hermetic seal between layers that locks oxygen out.
Don’t just buy the cheapest wrap you can find. Ask your local supplier what works best for your climate and conditions. Your bale wrap is the insurance policy on your entire haylage harvest—it pays to invest in a good one.
Ultimately, the right bale wrap applicator is the one that fits your scale, your budget, and your tractor. Whether it’s a simple hand tool for a few bales or an efficient inline wrapper for a growing herd, the goal is the same. Protecting the feed you worked so hard to grow is one of the smartest investments you can make for the health of your animals and the sustainability of your farm.
