Ask on any cattle forum which bale processor to buy and you will get forty confident answers pointing in four directions. Underneath the brand loyalty there are really only four decisions that matter, and three of them are about matching the machine to the bales and the job you actually have — not to the brochure.
This guide is written for cow-calf and backgrounding operations running round bales, and it is built from two things: several hundred first-hand accounts from working producers on AgTalk, and the published university research on what round-bale feeding methods actually cost. Where those two disagree — and on one important point they do — we say so.
First: a bale processor is not a tub grinder
This is the most common and most costly buying mistake, and it usually starts with a salesperson. In one AgTalk discussion, a north-east Colorado feedlot operator described going shopping for a tub grinder and being talked into a Haybuster instead — on the promise that it would chew up net wrap the way a grinder does. It did not. He came back the same evening to report the rotor was tangled solid around the paddles and bolts, and that he doubted he could run five bales before it filled.
He is not alone. Two other producers describe buying or borrowing a processor expecting grinder-quality feed and getting something quite different:
As mentioned have tried to grind hay if custom grinder can’t get here, doesn’t work to grind the hay, mostly pulls it apart.
— Farmer · AgTalk thread 1173914
A long-time cattle feeder in western Iowa has clearly watched this happen for years:
Theres a big difference in tub grinders and bedding grinders-all the years of feeding cattle I for the life of me can not figure out why no one knows the difference between a tub grinder and a bale processor??????????????????
— garvo, western iowa,by Denison · AgTalk thread 1192118
The practical distinction:
| Bale processor | Tub grinder | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Tears the bale apart, throws it out | Reduces material through a screen |
| Typical particle | Long and variable; roughly 2–4 in. at best with a second rotor or a slow feed | Short and uniform, screen-controlled |
| Net wrap | Wraps around the rotor; must be cut off by hand | Generally processed through |
| Best at | Bedding, windrow feeding, filling bunks | Making a TMR ingredient |
If your actual goal is short, mixable hay for a total mixed ration, a processor is the wrong tool and you want a grinder or a custom grinding service. Several producers run both: a processor for daily bedding and windrow feeding, and a custom grinder once or twice a year for the mixer. That is a legitimate answer, not a failure of planning.
Chain versus roller feed: the decision that actually matters
Once you know you want a processor, the real fork in the road is how the machine rotates the bale over the rotor.
- Chain, apron or slat floor — a conveyor under the bale turns it. Common on Haybuster, on the Vermeer BPX9010, on Bale King's chain models and on Fair.
- Feed rollers — two powered rollers spin the bale. Common on Highline and on several Bale King and older Vermeer units.
Producers are genuinely split, and the split is not random — it tracks what they feed. A north-west Iowa operator who moved away from rollers:
Demoed a fair 2 years ago, sent our Vermeer down the road. Chain feeds dry bails better for us. Got by with our Vermeer with tough bails for a long time. Got a different guy to bail for us that knows how to put up a dry bail. The trade off was rollers on the Vermeer undermine the dry bail and it wouldn’t roll in the processor, took way too long to bed cattle.
— Yafigures, NWIA · AgTalk thread 1090123
And another Iowa operator who went firmly the other way:
Local dealer brought a vermeer with a chain. I hate it... slow, has to be just right on the chain, will dump material out over the side, way more maintenance in the long run, did I mention slow.
— Iowa-beef · AgTalk thread 1142101
Both men are describing their machines accurately. The reconciliation is that rollers need the bale to grip and rotate. When a bale is very dry, short-stemmed, soft-cored or has already been undercut, it stops rotating and simply rides on top of the rotor. A southern Saskatchewan producer, blr, put the mechanism plainly in a separate discussion: the chain turning the bale works a lot better on odd shaped bale and the way it feeds is less stress on the tractor.
One genuine warning about short material, from a producer who demoed a roller machine on chopper-head cornstalks and gave it back:
It is like the bale is too big for the processor. The bale sits on top of the 2 square turning rollers that should push it into the knives but they don’t. I even pushed on the bale with the loader to make it feed and it didn’t. I tried turning the rollers the opposite way and rotating them each direction since they are hydraulic. No luck. Once the bale is loose inside it just rides on top.
— Mmac, Northwest Iowa · AgTalk thread 1134782
Two fixes come up repeatedly for that symptom and both are free: drop the rack (the adjustable bar above the rotor that limits how deep the flails can bite) all the way down so the machine takes a bigger bite, and rock the bale by reversing the feed back and forth. Longer-stemmed material also rotates far better than short-chopped stover.
Net wrap in a processor: what actually happens
This is the section dealers gloss over, and it is worth getting right before you buy rather than after.
Net wrap does not vanish in a bale processor. It winds around the rotor shaft, the flail pivots and the bolt heads, and it accumulates until you remove it. That is normal, expected, and not a defect. The relevant question is only how often you deal with it and with what tool. A Saskatchewan producer's reply to the panicking Colorado buyer is the calibration most people need:
There are thousands apon thousands of bale processors out there being used every day. There is twine and net wrap wrapped around every rotor. We do 50-70 bales or every second day before cutting it off the rotor. It’s no big deal. Use a hot knife or a grinder.
— johndeere1, Central Saskatchewan Canada · AgTalk thread 1192118
The tools, ranked by the people who do it weekly
An angle grinder with a cut-off wheel is the clear winner among high-volume users, and it beats the tool most often sold for the job:
Cut off wheel on a grinder. We own a hot knife. Its a joke compared to a cut off wheel. We cut off once a week. 250 bales. Takes only 5 mins or so.
— JD1992, North Central Nebraska · AgTalk thread 1192118
There is one refinement worth copying, because it prevents the job getting worse each time:
Same take a cut off wheel on a grinder but before you do I take a hand held torch and burn where u cut so there is no frayed ends to get sucked into the grinder.
— southcentralnd, SW North Dakota · AgTalk thread 1192118
Searing the cut ends stops loose tails being drawn back in and re-wrapping. Other tools in use: a plug-in hot knife, a sharp utility knife with fresh blades, and a torch. A knife is quiet and cheap but slow through a thick mat.
The other approach: take the wrap off first
Many producers never let wrap reach the rotor on hay bales. The technique that avoids climbing in and out of the cab:
Back up to the bale. Lift it up 1 foot. Cut net wrap on left side, pull it over to right side. Finish loading the bale (I have a rope tied to the svc handle so I don’t have to crawl back into the tractor). Remove net wrap.
— Hick, Sw mn · AgTalk thread 1192118
The most common working compromise splits by what is in the bale — take the wrap off hay that cattle will eat, leave it on straw and stalks destined for bedding. A producer running three to four thousand straw bales a winter through a Highline explains both the routine and the reason:
Well put 3-4000 straw bales through a winter. Hammer 50 bales, grab a 18mm olfa knife. 5 mins to cut it, 5 more to pull it out. Forget about those little bits stuck in the hammers.
Most of the straw we use wouldn’t make it into the tub if you took the wrap off. Hay bales we take it off.
— vbfarms88 · AgTalk thread 1192118
That is the physical reason behind the split, beyond the obvious one about cattle eating plastic. Dry straw and stalk bales are held together by the wrap; strip them early and they slump before they reach the machine.
If you want the full picture on what happens when wrap does go through machinery and into feed, we cover it in grinding bales with net wrap on and net wrap in a vertical mixer.
Does a bale processor save hay? The honest answer
This is where the forums and the research part company, and it is worth being straight about because it is usually the argument used to justify the purchase.
Two experienced producers in the same discussion cite two different land-grant universities and reach opposite conclusions. One:
Kansas State did some research comparing different hay feeding methods, and processed onto the ground had less waste than feeding in rings or unrolling.
— Beefbiz, all over Iowa · AgTalk thread 819307
The other:
NDSU did a study and said the processor is the most expensive way to feed a cow and cone feeders are the cheapest again I bet hay quality would make all the difference.
— buckmaster, ND · AgTalk thread 819307
We went and read both bodies of work. The second producer is right, and the first is remembering something that the Kansas State extension material does not actually say.
The North Dakota State University Dickinson Research Extension Center study (Landblom, Poland, Ringwall, Lardy, Gilbery and Wachenheim) is the only head-to-head we found that puts a bale processor directly against the alternatives. It ran 144 crossbred cows averaging 1,320 lb, in twelve lots, for 58 days, comparing three methods: rolling bales out, shredding with a PTO bale processor, and a tapered-cone round bale feeder.
| Method | Hay fed per cow per day | Wintering cost per cow (100-head model) |
|---|---|---|
| Rolled out on the ground | 30.9 lb | $97.99 |
| Bale processor | 29.9 lb | $107.44 |
| Tapered-cone bale feeder | 26.3 lb | $85.36 |
The processor did beat rolling out on hay used — but only by about 1 lb per cow per day — and it was the most expensive of the three overall, because the machine's ownership cost swamped that small saving. Against a cone feeder it lost on both counts. The authors' conclusion is blunt: rolling bales out or shredding into windrows increased hay consumption and winter feeding cost without enhancing cow performance.
Two caveats, in fairness to the machine. The authors state plainly that waste was not physically weighed
— it was inferred from an energy-balance calculation — and they explicitly caution the reader not to draw early conclusions from this preliminary investigation.
Their model also priced hay at $42.50/ton and the processor at $15,000, so the ranking is sensitive to both.
The Kansas State side is easier to settle. The K-State Research and Extension Wildcat District release "Hay! Cut waste, Cut Costs" compares feeder types and does not evaluate bale processors at all. Its figures — just under 50% waste with no feeder, 25% or more when unrolling, 16–21% for an open-bottom ring, about 12% for a sheeted-bottom ring, and around 5% (as low as 2%) for a cone or basket design — are about feeder geometry, not processing. Oklahoma State work summarised by the Noble Research Institute points the same way, with 5.3% waste for a modified cone versus 20.5% for an open ring.
So: do not buy a bale processor to save hay. If minimising hay waste is your single goal, the evidence says buy cone feeders — they are dramatically cheaper. We compare the designs in round bale feeder types compared and how to reduce round bale feeding waste.
Where a processor genuinely pays for itself
None of the above means a processor is a bad machine. It means it earns its keep somewhere other than the hay-waste column.
-
Bedding economy. This is the strongest and most consistent claim in the corpus:
when bedding is run through a bale processor it will go about twice as far.
Fluffed straw covers far more pack per bale than a flake peeled off with a loader. - Labour and time. Bedding a pack by hand or with a loader is a long job; a processor turns it into minutes from the seat.
-
Frozen and muddy ground. As one Nebraska producer noted,
If grounds frozen a bale processer will save you feed, if it’s muddy you waste half of it unless you blow it in bunks.
Ground conditions decide whether windrow feeding is smart or wasteful on any given day. - Filling bunks. A blower model puts feed where you want it without a mixer wagon.
- Stretching poor or stemmy hay. Chopping reduces sorting, which is exactly why the machine helps most with the hay you would otherwise fight over.
- Spreading residue. Several producers use one to lay bedding and organic matter directly onto fields.
If you are feeding on the ground either way, note that windrowing has its own best practice — blow into a pile or a short windrow that gets cleaned up in a day rather than a long thin ribbon. Our guide to unrolling round bales for feeding covers the same trade-off from the other direction.
Sizing, wear parts and the failure points
A few hard numbers reported by owners, useful for narrowing a shortlist:
- Bale capacity. Rated maximums cluster around 2,000–2,500 lb. Baleage bales over a ton are the usual thing that kills an older machine — the buyer who started one of these discussions was upgrading for exactly that reason.
-
Structural weak point. Watch where the frame meets the hitch. One owner's first machine
broke out where they have it fishplated,
and explained why:Seems when u drop a bale in that’s where most of the stress is.
Inspect that area hard on any used unit. - Flail and hammer life. Reported service life varies widely by design and crop — one owner running both brands reported needing new hammers roughly every 3,000 bales on one machine, while on his roller machine hammers ran down to 3 in. and still worked, at something closer to 10,000 bales per set. The NDSU cost model assumed flail replacement every 2,500 bales at $250 including labour, which is a reasonable budgeting figure.
- Weathered bale bottoms. Bales stored outside lose their bottoms, and that wet material is the number one cause of plugging in blower machines. One long-term owner noted his older unit plugged on two-year-old bales in damp weather and that the manufacturer shortened the output chute on the successor model to address it.
- Tractor. Expect to want meaningful PTO horsepower; the NDSU model assumed a 110 hp tractor for winter feeding.
One health caution worth knowing
Blowing dusty or mouldy bedding over the top of housed cattle is not risk-free. A dairy producer in the corpus reported recurring pneumonia in heifers that his veterinarian attributed to mould in the bales combined with blowing bedding over the animals. If you bed occupied pens with a blower, bed with dry, clean material and ideally move animals or direct the discharge away from them. Our guide to what causes dusty hay explains where that mould load comes from.
A demo checklist before you sign
Nearly every disappointed buyer in this corpus bought without demoing on their own bales. Do not skip this. Take the machine home and run it on the worst bales you own, not the best.
- Bring your actual bales. Dry ones, weathered ones, frozen ones, and — if you feed it — baleage. A machine that shines on fresh hay can stall on two-year-old stalks.
- Time a bale, twice. Once on a good bale, once on a bad one. The spread matters more than the average.
- Deliberately try to stall it. Load a bale slightly crooked. See whether reversing the feed clears it, and how long it takes to dig out if it does not.
- Find the rack adjustment and use it. If the dealer cannot show you how to change the depth of cut in under a minute, that is a data point.
- Ask to see the rotor. Specifically, how you get access to cut wrap off it. Some designs make this much easier than others; one shortlist above was decided on precisely this point.
- Check throw distance against your pens. If you have to bed a wide pack from one alley, throw distance is a real specification, not a brochure number.
- Confirm dealer support and parts. Two producers in the same county ruled out otherwise-good brands purely on local support.
- Inspect the hitch and fishplate on anything used, plus flail wear and any welded repairs around the feed opening.
Where XES fits
We make bale net wrap, so we will be straightforward about the interaction between our product and this machine: net wrap and bale processors require a routine. Wrap does not disintegrate in a flail rotor, and any dealer who suggests otherwise is overselling.
What good wrap does change is the part either side of the rotor. Wrap that holds its edges and does not shred when you cut it comes off the bale in one piece instead of a dozen tails — which is exactly the difference between the two-minute job described above and a long one. Consistent, well-formed bales also feed far more reliably, especially through roller machines, and bale shape is largely set at the baler by how evenly the wrap holds the outer shell together through storage and handling.
If you are weighing wrap against twine for a herd you feed with a processor, the practical points are in net wrap vs twine and how many wraps per bale. And whatever machine you buy: collect the wrap. Cut it off in one mat, put it in a bin, and keep it out of the feed and out of the field.
Frequently asked questions
Is a bale processor the same as a tub grinder?
No. A bale processor tears a bale apart with a flail rotor and throws it into a windrow, bunk or bed pack. A tub grinder reduces material through a screen to a short, uniform particle. A processor will not produce grinder-quality feed for a total mixed ration, and it will not chew up net wrap the way a grinder does.
Do you have to take the net wrap off before using a bale processor?
Not necessarily, but most producers remove it from hay that cattle will eat and leave it on straw or cornstalk bales used for bedding, because dry bedding bales fall apart without it. Whatever you choose, wrap accumulates on the rotor and must be cut off periodically — typically every 50 to 250 bales.
What is the fastest way to remove net wrap from a processor rotor?
Experienced high-volume users overwhelmingly favour an angle grinder with a cut-off wheel, reporting roughly five minutes for a week's accumulation. Searing the cut ends with a hand torch before pulling the mat off stops frayed tails being drawn back in. Hot knives and utility knives work but are slower.
Does a bale processor reduce hay waste?
Not reliably. The NDSU Dickinson Research Extension Center head-to-head found a processor used slightly less hay than rolling bales out, but more than a tapered-cone feeder, and it was the most expensive method overall once machine ownership was counted. Buy a processor for bedding, labour and bunk filling rather than for hay savings.
Should I buy a chain or roller bale processor?
Choose a chain, apron or slat floor if you feed dry, weathered, frozen, short-stemmed or odd-shaped bales, since it turns awkward bales more reliably. Choose feed rollers for speed and lower long-term maintenance if your bales are consistent and well formed. Demo both on your own worst bales before deciding.
How much horsepower does a bale processor need?
It depends on model and material, but a 110 hp tractor is the figure NDSU used for winter feeding in its economic model, and producers report larger machines working a tractor hard in tough or damp bales. Blower models and dual-rotor chopping attachments increase the requirement further.
Why won't my bale processor feed the bale?
The usual cause is that the bale has stopped rotating and is riding on top of the rotor — most common with dry, soft-cored or short-chopped material in roller machines. Drop the rack fully for a more aggressive bite, rock the feed forward and back, and check that the flails still have a sharp hooked edge rather than being worn smooth.
The bottom line
Buy a bale processor if you bed pens, fill bunks, feed on frozen ground, or want to stretch stemmy hay and cut the labour out of daily feeding. Those benefits are real, well documented by the people doing it, and the bedding economy alone convinces most owners.
Do not buy one because it will replace a tub grinder — it will not — or because it will save enough hay to pay for itself, which the best available head-to-head research does not support. Match the feed system to your worst bales rather than your best ones, demo before you sign, and go in knowing that net wrap on the rotor is a five-minute weekly job, not a defect.
Sources: Landblom, D.G., W.W. Poland, K.L. Ringwall, G.P. Lardy, T. Gilbery and C.J. Wachenheim, Effect of Hay Feeding Methods on Hay Waste and Wintering Costs, Dickinson Research Extension Center, North Dakota State University · Powell, W., Hay! Cut waste, Cut Costs, K-State Research and Extension, Wildcat Extension District · Wells, R. and D. Lalman, Hay Feeder Design Can Reduce Hay Waste and Cost, Noble Research Institute · Buskirk, D.D. et al., 2003, Large round bale feeder design affects hay utilization and beef cow behavior, Journal of Animal Science 81:109 · producer accounts from AgTalk, quoted verbatim and attributed. Accessed August 11, 2026.
