Short answer: Yes, you have to remove the net wrap. Vertical-auger TMR mixers shred the net into long ribbons that wrap around the auger shaft, cut mixing efficiency, force pull-stops to clear, and end up in the ration where cattle ingest plastic. The right fix is a bale processor or a 60-second knife pull at feed-out — not running it through the mixer.
Companion post. Our main piece on this topic — Cattle Eating Net Wrap: Ingestion Risk, Symptoms, and Prevention — covers the animal-health side of why to remove net wrap before feeding (rumen impaction, the "fine on Sunday, dead on Monday" cases, the prevention checklist). This post is the equipment-cost side of the same problem: what wrap-left-on does to your TMR mixer.
If the cattle-safety argument hasn't gotten you to start cutting wrap off, the $40,000-mixer-rebuild argument should.
Net wrap left on bales wrecks vertical mixers. It tangles auger flighting, eats horsepower, side-loads bearings, and welds itself onto flight edges. Cleaning it off costs more in shop hours than the entire wrap-removal labor it would have saved.
What happens inside the mixer
When a bale goes into a vertical TMR mixer (Penta, Kuhn Knight, Jaylor, Supreme, Roto-Mix, etc.) with the net wrap still on, the wrap does one of three things — and usually all three:
- It wraps around the vertical auger flighting. Net wrap is HDPE knit — it's strong, slippery, and high tensile. Once a corner catches the leading edge of an auger flight, the whole wrap unspools and welds itself around the shaft.
- It bridges between augers in twin-screw mixers. Strands stretch across the gap and form a "cargo net" that holds undigested bale chunks above the mixing zone, so they exit the door whole.
- It exits with the feed. Long strands shed off the auger and ride out the conveyor or apron, ending up in the bunk. Cows pick at the strands. The wrap they don't eat blows around the pen and accumulates on fence corners.
A southern Iowa operator put it bluntly:
"I would think it would be a lot easier to cut the net off the bale than off the augers. As soon as much net builds up on the augers it's not going to process the bale very well."
— nwokman, SC IA · AgTalk thread 889072
That's the math, simply stated. Two minutes of knife work at the bunk vs. one hour with a torch and a grinder cutting plastic off auger flighting. It's not a hard decision.
The three equipment-cost categories you don't see on the invoice
1. Horsepower draw
A clean auger turns easily in dry forage. An auger wrapped in 30 pounds of HDPE net wrap has a 4–6 inch diameter "rope" around its base trying to spin against the mixer floor. The PTO load goes up, the tractor works harder, fuel burn climbs.
Most operators don't notice this directly — they notice the cumulative effect: the mixer "feels different," takes longer to spin a load, the tractor isn't quite as snappy as it was new. By the time it's obvious, the auger is already in trouble.
2. Premature bearing and gearbox wear
The wrap-induced load doesn't go away when the wrap is sitting still. It's a constant side-load on the auger bearings and the planetary gearbox. Mixer bearings are not cheap to replace — and the labor to pull a vertical mixer auger to swap a lower bearing is significant.
3. Auger-flight damage
When you finally do clean an auger, you discover that net wrap doesn't peel off — it's been heated by friction, fused into a hard plastic crust on the leading edges of the flights, and welded into the corners. Removal usually requires a torch, a stiff wire brush, and sometimes a die grinder. Each round of that wears the flight edges down. New augers are 4 figures.
And then there's the fourth cost — the one in the feed bunk. Net wrap shredded by the auger comes out the door in 1- to 6-inch pieces and goes straight into the ration. Cattle eat the shreds, and you're back to the rumen-impaction risk covered in our cattle eating net wrap post. One action at the bunk solves both problems: cut and pull.
How to actually do it (frozen, winter, gloves on)
The argument against cutting wrap is usually some version of "it's too cold, the wrap is frozen to the bale." Real answer: it's not that hard.
- Use a serrated hook knife or a hay knife. Drag it longitudinally down the side of the bale, then circumferentially around one end. The wrap separates into one or two large pieces.
- Two-person bale prep is faster than one. Driver runs the loader; passenger grabs and discards. 30–60 seconds per bale.
- A long-handled hook tool lets you do it from the cab if you grapple bales overhead. Saves climb-downs in -15°F.
- For frozen-on wrap that won't separate cleanly, see our frozen net wrap removal guide. Angle grinder is overkill for most cases.
The two-person workflow especially is worth running through once. Most operators who think wrap removal "isn't practical" haven't tried it with a second set of hands.
When mixer manufacturers actually recommend leaving wrap on
Almost never. Every manufacturer of vertical TMR mixers — Penta, Kuhn Knight, Jaylor, Supreme, Roto-Mix, NDE — has a line in the owner's manual recommending removal of net wrap, twine, and plastic film before loading bales into the mixer. The "leave it on" workflow you sometimes hear about at the coffee shop is not a manufacturer position; it's an unfortunate folk shortcut.
If you have a horizontal mixer with reel/paddle action and no auger, you have slightly more tolerance for net wrap because there's nothing to wind it onto — but you still have the cattle-ingestion problem, and you still get strands in the bunk.
The whole-system fix
The net wrap that goes onto your bales is the same net wrap that comes off. Choosing a higher-tensile, DLG-certified net wrap like XES gives you a wrap that comes off in fewer, larger pieces and is less likely to shred into the auger if you do miss one. It's also faster to peel cleanly — sometimes the difference between operators who do the prep and operators who skip it is wrap quality, not motivation.
- 48"–67" widths for every major brand of round baler.
- 680 lb tensile strength — high enough to hold round-bale shape through freeze-thaw cycles without crumbling.
- DLG-certified UV protection — wrap that hasn't been UV-degraded peels cleanly; sun-baked wrap shreds.
Bottom line
If you've spent the money on a vertical TMR mixer, you've spent more on that one machine than most operators spend on net wrap in a decade. Two minutes of knife work per bale protects both ends of that investment — your mixer and your cattle.
The "we don't have time to cut it off" argument doesn't survive the first auger rebuild.
For the cattle-health side of the same decision — symptoms, prevention checklist, real producer losses — see our cattle eating net wrap guide.
Daisy is the growth marketer at XES Bale Nets. She reads farmer forum threads so you can find clear answers faster. Every quote in this post is verbatim with a source link — go read the originals.
Hero image: Solomix mixer wagon, diet feeder with two vertical augers — photo by Trioliet on Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
