Round Baler Chains and Bearings: Service It Every Net Wrap Roll

By the XES Netting team — bale net-wrap manufacturer · Updated August 2, 2026 · ~12 min read

This guide is for anyone running a round baler who wants chains and bearings to last a decade instead of a season. Everything below comes from operators reporting real bale counts, cross-checked against chain and bearing engineering — with links to both.

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Why the net wrap roll change is the right service interval

Service schedules written in hours fail on a baler, because nobody watches the hour meter during hay season. Schedules written in bales fail too — you'd have to remember the number. But there's an interval you already observe, on a fixed cadence, that puts you on the ground beside the machine with your hands free: changing the net wrap roll.

Two operators arrived at this independently, in different threads, years apart:

"I try and spray about every roll of net or at least 150 bales."

— Russ In Idaho · AgTalk thread 717347

"Auto-oiled on my JD 568. Applies a qt of oil to all chains every 200 or so bales (1 roll of wrap)."

— tbeck, Culbertson MT · AgTalk thread 717347

One does it by hand, one has it automated, and both peg the cadence to a roll of net. That's roughly every 150 to 200 bales — comfortably inside any manufacturer's daily lubrication guidance, and it happens whether or not you remember it's Tuesday.

The best argument for doing it by hand, though, isn't the oil at all:

"Imo they make a mess. I use chain lube every time I put a roll of wrap in. Plus you can hear the baler running while oiling and catch a problem earlier"

— Lumangear, Cresco IA · AgTalk thread 1150746

"Keep a can of chain lube on hand, it's pretty easy to run around the baler real quick, then you can look at everything and check bearings."

— centralmnangus, Ft. Ripley MN · AgTalk thread 1150746

The inspection is worth more than the lubricant. A hot bearing, a chain running slack, a belt tracking off, net wrap creeping on the roll — all of it is visible and audible in the ninety seconds you're already standing there. That's the real case for tying service to the roll change.

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Should you oil round baler chains? The real answer

This is one of the most genuinely contested questions in round baling, and both camps argue it with conviction:

"Nothing. Making them wet attracts dirt and wears them out faster. We do spray some oil on them at the start of each year to get them loosened up."

— ntexcotton, north central Texas · AgTalk thread 717347

"Never put a thing on ours ever… all it does is collect trash."

— Direct Injected, southwest Missouri · AgTalk thread 717347

Against operators who oil religiously and report chain lives several times longer. Somebody has to be wrong — except that the engineering says both camps are right about different things, and the disagreement dissolves once you know where chain wear actually happens.

Where a roller chain actually wears

Per the ANSI standard governing power transmission roller chain, ASME B29.1, a roller chain is a series of roller links and pin links in which the pins articulate inside the bushings. That articulating pin-and-bushing joint is where essentially all chain elongation comes from. The rollers turning against the sprocket teeth wear comparatively slowly.

The clearance in that joint is roughly 0.001 to 0.003 inch. So:

• A light, thin oil wicks into that clearance by capillary action and lubricates the joint that's actually wearing. Chain manufacturers typically specify SAE 30 to SAE 40 non-detergent oil for standard temperature and load conditions.
• A heavy or tacky spray cannot get in there. It stays on the outside of the chain, where it does nothing for wear — and where it becomes an adhesive surface that collects crop dust and silica-bearing field dirt. That mixture is an abrasive paste sitting exactly where the plates and rollers move.

Which means "making them wet attracts dirt and wears them out faster" is a completely accurate description of what happens when you use the wrong product. The don't-oil camp isn't wrong about the outcome they observed. They're describing tacky-spray failure and correctly concluding that it's worse than nothing.

One operator worked out the same mechanism from the seat, without the engineering vocabulary, and stated it about as clearly as it can be stated:

"I bale crop residues mostly. I think in those conditions it is possible that wet chains just have abrasive stick to them that much worse."

— Gearclash, Sioux County NWIA · AgTalk thread 1150746

That's the whole thing: wet chains have abrasive stick to them. The answer isn't less lubrication — it's lubricant thin enough to go where the wear is instead of sitting on the outside collecting grit.

And running truly dry isn't the answer either, for standard chain. Bare metal articulating under load with no oil film wears far faster than a dirty but lubricated joint. There's exactly one chain type that's designed to run dry on the outside:

"I went to O-ring chain a few years back. Won't use anything else any more."

— Gearclash, Sioux County NWIA · AgTalk thread 717347

O-ring chain seals lubricant permanently inside each pin-and-bushing joint. The dirt can't get in and the oil can't get out, so the exterior genuinely doesn't need to be wet. It costs more per foot. In a dusty, high-residue operation it is the one purchase that makes the whole debate go away.

The used motor oil question

Used motor oil is free and gets used constantly. One operator reported excellent results with it. Another had a specific objection worth hearing:

"think about all the fines and cuttings that are in used motor oil. I went to a seminar once and they ran it through a small screen, it was eye opening."

— Direct Injected, southwest Missouri · AgTalk thread 717347

He's right that used oil carries suspended metal and combustion particulate. It's also true that used oil is thin enough to actually reach the joint, which is more than a tacky spray manages. If you're going to use it, filter it. Fresh SAE 30 non-detergent costs very little and removes the argument.

One operator split the difference in a way that fits the mechanism exactly — cutting the oil until it's thin enough to wick in but not sticky enough to build a grinding paste:

"We used them on our last 2 or 3 balers. They work good and help extend chain life. We used 50/50 diesel and oil. Keeps them wet without collecting dust/dirt too bad."

— twraska, Wallis TX · AgTalk thread 1150746

Oil the chain warm

Several operators apply oil at the end of the day rather than the start:

"We have gone to using 80/90 quart bottles with pointy caps and when finished with a field or for the day we oil while the chains are warm and the oil has time to soak in"

— Angus8335, Galena IL · AgTalk thread 1150746

There's a mechanism behind that: a warm chain has expanded slightly, which opens the pin-to-bushing clearance and lets oil draw deeper into the joint by capillary action. As it cools it contracts and holds the oil where you want it. End of day beats first thing in the morning.

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What operators actually got: 4,000 to 50,000 bales

Here's every chain life reported in these threads, sorted by outcome, alongside what that operator does. Read the pattern, not any single row.

This is not a controlled trial. Crop, dust load, climate and bale weight all differ. But three things in the ranking are hard to ignore:

1. The two best outcomes both use light, non-tacky products. The 50,000-bale operator names a chain-and-cable lube — a penetrating, thin product — and pairs it with correct tension. Another operator described a similar approach: blow the chains off after each cutting, then use a dry-film lube where "the chain is not oily after the lube dries" (Jim, driftless southwest Wisconsin). Lubricated joint, dry exterior.
2. The worst outcome has an auto-oiler. Cobb runs a factory oiler and gets 4,000 to 5,000 bales out of chains and sprockets — worse than the man who does absolutely nothing. More oil on the outside is not better.
3. Doing nothing beats doing it wrong. Direct Injected's 10,000 to 12,000 bales with zero lubrication outperforms the heavily oiled machine. That's the whole debate in one comparison.

Note also the difference between changing chains and needing to. Cobb replaces chains and sprockets together every 4,000 to 5,000 bales; tbeck reached 13,500 with "sprockets still as new." That's the tell. Chain manufacturers are unanimous that a worn sprocket destroys a new chain, because the teeth have worn to match the elongated pitch — so a new chain contacts them at the wrong angle and wears fast. If you've put two or three chains on the same sprocket, replace the sprocket.

Finally, the honest experimental proposal from the same thread, which is better methodology than most of what gets published:

"The only way to know what works best for you is to not oil one set, record the amount of time the baler runs before chains need replaced and repeat with oiling the next set."

— oldskool · AgTalk thread 717347

The same operator adds the dose of proportion that the whole argument needs:

"Chains are close to the cheapest wear items on a baler, putting 10 sets on instead of 5 over 30000 bales is small potatoes in the big picture. Greasing the baler twice as often will pay off better than oiling chains in the long run when you don't have to replace $1500 items."

— oldskool · AgTalk thread 717347

That's the right frame. A chain is a cheap part; a roller assembly, a gearbox or a burned baler is not. The reason to get chain service right isn't the cost of chain — it's that a chain that breaks at speed takes sheet metal, downtime and sometimes a bearing with it. Spend the attention on grease and tension first, lubricant brand last.

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How to measure chain wear in the field

"When it looks stretched" isn't a spec. Here's the actual one. Chain manufacturers set the replacement limit at 3% elongation for standard drives, tightening to about 1.5% to 2% where sprockets have 17 or more teeth, because a longer-pitch chain rides higher on a large sprocket and magnifies tooth damage.

Measuring it takes a tape and two minutes:

1. Find your pitch. It's stamped on the chain or listed in the parts book. Baler chains are commonly ³⁄₄-inch pitch (#60) or 1-inch pitch (#80).
2. Count out 25 links and measure pin center to pin center across all 25.
3. Keep slight tension on it. A sagging chain reads short and will tell you everything is fine when it isn't.
4. Compare to the table below.

The math is just pitch × 25 × 1.03, so you can run it for any pitch your machine uses.

While we're here — the H in "60H" that Cobb mentioned means the heavy series: same pitch and same roller diameter as standard #60, but noticeably thicker side plates and a higher tensile rating. It is not a different size and it will run on the same sprockets. If your baler came with H chain, replace it with H chain.

Why running a stretched chain is expensive

The failure sequence is worth spelling out, because it explains a comment that otherwise sounds like overkill:

"I try and change chains out, about 5,000 bales. I would rather change chains than have to do sheet metal work on front of baler when chains break."

— Russ In Idaho · AgTalk thread 717347

He's describing the end of a chain: an elongated chain rides up the sprocket tooth toward the tip instead of seating in the root, which concentrates load on a small contact patch and wears the teeth into hooks. Hooked teeth let the chain skip under shock load. Skipping fatigues the side plates until one cracks at a pin hole — and a chain that lets go at speed whips, punching through shields and taking guides and followers with it. That repair routinely costs several times the chain. Changing on a schedule instead of on failure is cheap insurance, and the same logic applies to baler belts.

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Auto chain oilers: what they fix and what they don't

Automatic chain lubrication for farm equipment is a real product category — SKF's Lincoln OCL-M was developed specifically for balers and combines, is mechanically driven off a shaft with no electrical or hydraulic connections, meters a precise dose rather than flooding, includes brushes that clean the chain while it runs, and is claimed to extend chain life up to five times.

Note the two design choices in that description: metered dosing and cleaning brushes. Both exist because too much oil and accumulated grit are the failure modes. That matches the field reports exactly.

An operator who retrofitted oilers and was candid about the result:

"IMO they don't have a large enough reservoir to work right. Even with the dose rate turned down we are usually out of oil 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through a longer day… After adding the oilers I thought the chains and sprockets wore just as fast as before."

— Gearclash, Sioux County NWIA · AgTalk thread 1150746

He bales crop residues — about the dirtiest material you can put through a baler — and he's the same operator who later moved to O-ring chain. In heavy dust, adding external oil didn't help, which is precisely what the pin-and-bushing mechanism predicts. He put the kit cost at around $500 per oiler and advised buying it outside the implement dealer network. Two operators in these threads name the same aftermarket manufacturer; we were not able to independently confirm current availability, so shop by specification rather than by that name.

One more wrinkle worth knowing before you buy:

"The one we had on a baler was adjustable but would apply different amount depending on temperature."

— Angus8335, Galena IL · AgTalk thread 1150746

Oil thins as it warms, so a fixed-orifice system doses light on a cool morning and heavy at 4 p.m. Look for adjustable, positive-displacement metering rather than gravity or orifice feed.

Verdict: an auto-oiler is a convenience feature, not a wear solution. If you'd otherwise skip lubrication entirely, it helps. If your problem is dust, it can make things worse — buy O-ring chain instead.

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Bearings: water and seals, not hours

Baler bearing life varies wildly, and the variable that separates the good outcomes from the bad ones isn't bale count. It's what gets past the seal.

"Bought my 567 with 10k bales, over 22k now. I've put 4 bearings in. It's never been washed with water since I've owned it and been rained on once since 2008. Air cleaned only. I think water is a bearings worst enemy."

— cornncows, northeast Nebraska · AgTalk thread 859463

"Nearly 14k bales on our 568 and haven't changed a single bearing. I also never wash our baler just blow it off"

— mohoff, south central Missouri · AgTalk thread 859463

And the control case, from an operator in the same thread:

"One was a baler I bought with less than 3000 bales that was power washed after every use."

— ntexcotton, north central Texas · AgTalk thread 859463

This lines up with bearing failure analysis, where contamination past a compromised seal is the leading cause of agricultural bearing failure — ahead of misalignment, ahead of overload. A pressure washer aimed at a bearing housing does exactly the wrong thing: it drives water and fine grit straight past a lip seal that was designed to keep out dust falling at one atmosphere. Once inside, water displaces grease and starts corrosion; grit abrades the raceway. Blow the baler off with air. Save the pressure washer for the tractor's paint.

The other seal threat is specific to net wrap, and one operator named it precisely:

"Net wrap is the other big bad bogeyman. I've seen some bearing failures that I'm sure were due to net tearing out the seal."

— Gearclash, Sioux County NWIA · AgTalk thread 859463

Loose net tails wrap around roller shaft ends and work into the seal lip. It's a slow failure — the seal isn't cut so much as gradually lifted — and by the time the bearing is noisy the cause is long gone. This is a real and underrated argument for keeping net tails short and your net wrap knife cutting cleanly. Add "check the roller shaft ends for wrapped net" to your roll-change walkaround; it takes ten seconds.

What good bearing life looks like when nothing goes wrong:

"made over 25,000 bales before we went in and put new bearings in them. The main bearings on driver rolls are on hex shafts and can be changed in 30 minutes… The pickups have fiber bushings that we changed at 25k"

— lacockcattleco, NE Montana, on Vermeer 605 Super M balers · AgTalk thread 859463

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When the same bearing keeps failing, stop replacing it

One operator went through five bearings in a single year on one baler, fighting each one off with a torch. That's not bad luck — a bearing that fails repeatedly in the same position is reporting a problem somewhere else. The best answer in that thread reads like a bearing manufacturer's checklist:

"Change bearing manufacture. Don't pound on bearing, tap on inner race only. Shine with Emory cloth so it slides on and off. Make a sleeve to fit over the shaft for any needed tapping. Check for bent or out of round parts. Different length belts?"

— don@nebr · AgTalk thread 872026

"Tap on the inner race only" is the single most important sentence there, and it's worth knowing why. If you drive a bearing onto a shaft by striking the outer ring, that force travels from the outer race, through the balls, into the inner race. The contact patch under each ball is tiny, so the stress exceeds the yield strength of the steel and stamps a permanent dent into the raceway at every ball position. This is installation brinelling, and a bearing that's been brinelled can fail within hours of going back to work — which is exactly what "the new one didn't last either" looks like from the seat. Use a driver sleeve that contacts only the ring you're pressing, or heat larger bearings on an induction heater. Never put an open flame on a bearing; it ruins the hardness.

Here's the diagnostic list to work through before you fit another bearing:

Two operators in that thread found causes nobody would have guessed from the bearing:

"Check that roller really well. I have seen a few start to crack and begin to flex in the middle then snap."

— ntexcotton, north central Texas · AgTalk thread 872026

The same operator traced a neighbour's chronic bearing failures to a shot relief valve in the gate valve block — the gate was loading the rolls far harder than design. If you have a pressure gauge, one operator gave a reference figure of "3700psi +/- 100… once you have a bale underway" (Supa Dexta, Nova Scotia) — check yours against your own manual, as it varies by make and model.

One last piece of practical advice, for the day it happens in the field:

"I would just make sure you have one bearing for each roller on hand."

— ajj0034, northwest Iowa · AgTalk thread 791299

And when you do replace one, several operators replace them in pairs — both sides of the same roller — on the reasoning that the second one has the same hours on it.

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The annual list most people skip

The gearbox is the item that gets forgotten, and the economics are lopsided:

"Oil should be changed in the gearbox annually." … "New gearbox through Deere is just shy of $2000. 10 minutes to change less than $10 worth of oil looks like a good investment to me."

— sandhillsam, northwest Oklahoma · AgTalk thread 791299

The rest of the yearly list, per operators running balers well past 20,000 bales:

• Belt pins. "Change pins in belts every 1000 bales or so" — Supa Dexta, Nova Scotia. Cheap, and a pin that fails takes a belt with it.
• Pickup teeth as needed.
• Blow out every guard and shield. Oil-and-chaff packed inside a chain guard is a fire load sitting next to a heat source — see our guide on preventing round baler fires.
• Grease every fitting before storage, not after, so the corrosion inhibitors work all winter. Don't over-grease sealed units — forcing grease past a seal ruins it and lets contamination in for the rest of the machine's life.
• Retract hydraulic cylinders so the rods are protected inside the barrels.

The net wrap system's own service

The wrap mechanism gets skipped more than any other part of the baler, and it's the one that will stop you first thing next June:

• Knife. Check for nicks and dullness. A dull knife gives ragged cuts and long tails — and long tails are what wind into bearing seals. If it's already misbehaving, start with our net wrap won't cut guide.
• Duckbill and feed rollers. Clean out dried net fragments and dust; check the rollers for worn grooves that let the net slip.
• Net pan. Clean it and put a film of oil on it. Rust pitting on the pan snags net during feed — a common enough failure that we wrote up the John Deere 568 net wrap pan rust fix separately.
• Brake tension. Weak and the roll overruns; too tight and the net skips or tears.
• Leftover rolls. Keep partial rolls in their original packaging, out of sunlight, off the ground, and away from rodents — see does net wrap go bad in storage.

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The roll-change walkaround checklist

Ninety seconds, every roll of net, engine running so you can hear it. Print it and tape it inside the wrap door.

Items 1 through 3 and 5 are the ones that pay. Those are the failures that end a day in July, and they're all free to check while you're standing there anyway.

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Frequently asked questions

Should you oil round baler chains?

Yes, but with a light penetrating oil in small amounts, applied often. Chain wear happens in the pin-and-bushing joint, where the clearance is about 0.001 to 0.003 inch. Thin oil wicks in; heavy tacky sprays only coat the outside and collect abrasive dust. Doing it wrong is worse than doing nothing.

How often should you lubricate round baler chains?

Roughly every 150 to 200 bales, which is conveniently one roll of net wrap. Tying lubrication to the roll change means it happens on a fixed cadence without anyone tracking hours, and it puts you beside the running machine where you can hear a failing bearing before it fails.

How do you know when a round baler chain is worn out?

Measure 25 links pin-center to pin-center under slight tension and compare to new length. Replace at 3 percent elongation — 19.31 inches for three-quarter-inch pitch #60 chain, or 25.75 inches for one-inch pitch #80. Tighten that to 1.5 to 2 percent on sprockets with 17 or more teeth.

Why do round baler bearings keep failing in the same spot?

Usually something other than the bearing. Work through installation brinelling from hammering on the outer race, shaft runout, a worn housing bore showing reddish fretting powder, misalignment, over-tight belts, torn seals or net wound at the shaft end, and a cracked roller. Fitting another bearing without finding the cause just repeats the failure.

Should you pressure wash a round baler?

No. Operators reporting the longest bearing life consistently say they never wash the baler and only blow it off with air. A pressure washer drives water and fine grit past lip seals that were only designed to exclude dust, which displaces grease and starts abrasive wear and corrosion inside the bearing.

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Chains and bearings are the two systems on a round baler that fail quietly, cheaply, and then expensively. The fix isn't a bigger service budget — it's a light oil instead of a heavy one, air instead of water, and ninety seconds of attention every time you put a new roll of net in. Do that and 20,000 bales is an ordinary result rather than a lucky one.

That routine only works if the roll change itself is predictable, which is an argument for consistent wrap. Rolls that run out early, break, or feed crooked turn your service interval into guesswork and put you at the back of the machine for the wrong reasons. Consistent-length, full-width net wrap keeps the cadence regular — and the walkaround above is the habit that turns it into longer chain and bearing life.

The XES Netting team manufactures bale net wrap for round balers and writes these guides so forage operators can find clear, source-cited answers. Every farmer quote in this post is verbatim with a link to the original AgTalk thread — go read the discussions in full.

Featured photo: ‘Giving birth’ to a bale of hay by Alan Hughes, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph / Wikimedia Commons.