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Article as printed in the Farm Show

Square Bale Feeder Mounts On Pickup

Todd Whatley and John Sparks work on a 10,000 acre cattle ranch located in the Arbuckle Mountain region of Oklahoma. They found themselves feeding more and more big square bales to cattle but didn’t have what they felt was a good way to do it.

“People feed big square bales the same way they used to feed out small square bales. They start and stop their pickups, constantly getting in and out to feed out by hand. Or they have one person driving and another rides on the back of the pickup flaking off the hay,” says Todd Whatley.

“I heard one story about a man who put his pickup in low gear and walked alongside, flaking off hay. One day, the man stepped into an armadillo hole and by the time he recovered, the pickup had run into a ravine.”

“Other farmers are chopping up the bales in a grinder or shredder and then taking the hay to the field.”

Whatley and Sparks decided to come up with a new solution. The “Bale Buddy” mounts on any 8-ft. pickup flatbed or you can mount it on a trailer.

“When we designed it we tried to solve all the problems involved with the feeding of big square bales. It holds big square bales up to 20 by 48 in. and up to 8 ft. in length. Safety arms mount on front and rear of the bale. You take all the strings off the bale and head to the field.

“The Bale Buddy pushes the bale off one side of the truck so hay flakes off onto the ground. You can feed out a couple flakes at a time or feed it all out at once. Two models are available: The basic unit simply moves the bale off to the side of the pickup and lets gravity drop off four or more flakes of hay at a time. For more precise control, you can fit the basic model with a Flaker unit that has a motorized paddle which pulls the flakes off. Makes it possible to precisely feed out any bale, even those in poor condition.”

Both models are powered by motorized winches that move the bales out to the side of the truck. If you just have the base unit installed, a gooseneck hitch can still be used without removing the bale unit. If you have the Flaker unit installed, it must be removed before you can hook up a gooseneck.

“We’ve conducted a worldwide patent search without finding anything similar. It works great and we think it will revolutionize the feeding of square bales to livestock. The big advantage is the simplicity – it can be operated by anyone – man, woman or older child.”

Article as printed in the Southern Oklahoma Report
‘Bale Buddy’ is ranchers’ right hand

When Scott Sparks fed cattle during the winter, he had to hitch the team up and fill the wagon with feed. The process also required several cowboys to saddle up and ride along to herd the cows toward the feed.

In the 1950s, his sons, Wendell and Bill, decided to use pickups for the same job, which enabled them to go from four men riding, to two men feeding.

Wendell’s son, John, introduced truck-mounted cube feeders to the ranch in the 1980’s. The cube feeders allow one man to do what used to be a two-man job.

But all that changed last summer when drought conditions forced farmers and ranchers to consider abandoning machinery and returning to the way their fathers and grandfathers worked.

“Around the first of August in ’98, I realized we were going to have to start feeding cows,” said John Sparks, managing partner of Sparks Ranch near Hennepin.

Common practice among ranchers is to allow cattle to graze in pastures in the winter time while supplementing their diets with protein supplements called cattle cubes. When grass is sparse, grass hay is added to the mix to provide filler.

With little or no grass to feed cattle or make hay due to the drought, ranchers faced the prospect of trucking in hay or selling their cattle.

Another alternative for those buying hay was to buy alfalfa hay, which has the protein cattle need already built in, removing the need to supplement.

Luckily, alfalfa farmers in Kansas were having a good year and had an abundance of hay to send to needy Oklahoma farmers. But the best way to get it here was in large 4- by 4- by 8- foot bales.

“The best way – the most feasible way – to get through the winter was to buy this Kansas hay,” Sparks said.

Sparks, who owns about 800 head of cattle, had a machine to load and unload bales those size, but nothing to help feed it to the cattle efficiently.

He faced the prospect of having to abandon the efficient machine-assisted method of feeding cubes by truck-mounted feeders and revert back to the two-man method of one man standing on the back of a truck forking hay down while the other drives.

“I kept thinking, ‘All we have to do is get that bale off the side of the pickup,’” Sparks said.

It occurred to him that if he could somehow reverse the action on the winch already mounted in the back of his truck, he might be able to turn it into a pulley that could pull the bale across the bed of the truck and over the side.

Sparks and his foreman, Todd Whatley, went to work on the idea. Two weeks later, using material available at the ranch, the first Big Bale Flaker prototype was born.

“The key to this whole thing working was that winch that was already in the back of the truck,” Sparks said.

The Big Bale Flaker uses the power of the winch in the truck to pull the bale across two base rails. As the bale begins to hang over the side of the truck, the weight of the alfalfa hay causes it to break off in the flakes.

The invention allows one man in one truck to feed alfalfa hay from large bails. The unit completely folds down in the bed of the truck when it is not in use, and it can be mounted on trailers, flat-bed trucks and regular 8-foot pickup truck beds.

“I tried to build it where anybody can operate it,” Whatley said. “If you can drive a vehicle, you can feed hay with it.”

Sparks said he was originally thinking along the lines of building two units for use on the ranch.

“Todd got a little more excited than that,” Sparks said.

Their invention worked so well, they decided to market it. They did a worldwide patent search and found the Big Bale Flaker is the only one of its kind. They have since applied for and received a patent.

“It’s been a learning experience, I guarantee it,” Sparks said.

The Big Bale Flaker has opened up a whole new world for feeding cattle, according to Sparks. Ranchers have known the benefit of alfalfa, hay for years, but many weren’t willing to go through the hassle of feeding it.

“It’s just as convenient to feed alfalfa hay now as it is to feed cubes,” he said.

“Right now, it’s just letting people know something like this is out there,” Sparks said.

And response has been good, according to Sparks, who said they have received calls from across the nation.

“I think the reason this has not been done before is because nobody is really that concerned with the person, the cowboy, man, woman, or child who had to be out there feeding those cows in the wintertime,” Sparks said. “I didn’t want to go back to feeding from one pickup, but I also didn’t want to go back to being cold and wet. This was invented by cowboys trying to stay warm and dry in the wintertime.”