6 John Deere Small Square Baler Features That Lead To Big Performance

Efficient haymaking is a critical component of success for many American farmers. In order to realize this success, farmers need the proper equipment, conditions, and strategy in place in order to create solid, stackable, and transportable bales every time.



John Deere offers a wide variety of hay balers ranging in size and style, but the John Deere small square baler is ideal for those looking to produce bales to feed a couple of horses, or enough to support their own farm with enough left over to share with the neighbors. While their moniker indicates production may be limited, Deere’s square balers include a number of features that offer up big performance. Let’s take a look at six of these features and how each simplifies the baling process.

Deep-Flighted Auger Feeding: By continuously moving hay away from the pickup to the pre-compression chamber, the deep-flighted auger adds to the overall capacity, produces higher-quality hay, and allows minimal crop contact with pickup teeth, minimizing leaf loss. The hay turns in the auger housing, enabling the feeder forks to fold each charge as it enters the bale case.

Accurate Knotters: The knotters of the small square balers are driven by the shaft and gears, providing a positive drive for dependable and accurate functioning. The positive meshing of knotter gears is easily maintained with spring pins and washers on the needle lift shaft, which has a large diameter to increase strength for reliability.

Uniform Bales: Deere’s small balers uniformly distribute hay into the bale case, producing bales that are easy-to-handle and can be simply stacked. These balers use feeder forks which can be adjusted to five positions to match the feeding requirement to the hay conditions. The forks are spring-loaded for protection and are timed independently of the knotters.  

Full-Width Feeding Pickup: the pickup teeth and narrow, flanged strippers on the small square balers extend to the flare on both sides of the pickup, enabling full usable pickup width for feeding wide windrows. The belt drives used to power the pickup are extremely reliable and eliminate the need for slip clutches.

Quiet, Dependable Operation: The plungerhead runs on three precisions roller bearings located in the high-load area, providing quiet operation and minimal wear. The compression charge is on the downstroke of the pitman arm to help eliminate slapping of the plungerhead and a safety stop is positioned to stop the plungerhead at the crank, eliminate potential danger to the plungerhead face.