Spread-a-Bale, Straw-Spreading Machines
Reduce your labour & straw costs by 50%. Improve health & safety for your labourers and livestock.
Spreading straw for livestock bedding can be a laborious task tieing up tractors and manpower. The patented Spread-a-Bale system has been designed & developed by farmers for farmers. It saves you time, money and hassle because it tackles and solves the problems you face every day.
How Spread-a-Bale Helps Farmers
- Spread a bale in under a minute
- Cut straw costs by up to 50%
- Cut labour costs by up to 75%
- Quick start/detach – 1 man, 1 tractor
- Truly self-loading
- Doesn’t tie up machinery
- Healthier for labourers & livestock
- Straw is teased, not chopped, making bed softer & minimising dust
4 Easy Steps To Better Straw-Spreading
Spread-a-Bale Model Selector
| Model | Mini |
Midi |
Maxi |
| Front Self-loading minimum Loader Lift Capacity Required | 1,750 kg | 2,500 kg | 3,000 kg |
| Side Mounting minimum Loader Lift Capacity Required | 1,600 kg | 2,000 kg | 2,200 kg |
| Round Bale Diameter (Max) | 1.5m | 1.5m | 2.0m |
| Rectangular Bales (Max) | 1.8m Long 1.2m Wide 1.0m High |
2.5m Long 1.2m Wide 1.0m High |
2.5m Long 1.2m Wide 1.3m High |
| Auxiliary Hydraulic Maximum Oil Flow Required | 55 Litres/Minute | 55 Litres/Minute | 55 Litres/Minute |
NEW IN! The Spread-a-Bale M Range – Mini, Mid & Maxi
The boys at Spread-a-Bale have been hard at work over the past year developing their new M range, which has improved the Spread-a-Bale in almost every area. Choice has been simplified to mini, midi and maxi sizes, but versatility has increased. It’s now stronger, more efficient, more reliable and more flexible than ever before. Highlights include stronger side arms, new gearbox, side mounting options and smoother flow of more materials. If you want to get technical, here it is in detail...
New rotors
New rotors now handle many different types of material: wet & dry straw, flax, hay, haylage, woodchips and sawdust. Better balance, vibration reduced. New drive couplings
New side arms
New ergonomic design is significantly stronger than previous models. Removable arms make transport and shipping easier.
New head assembly
The new head assembly is stronger than previous models
New main body design
The new main body design has increased strength but no increase in weight.
New ram design
The new ram design has improved machine strength and overall performance.
New belt drive system
Now has a gearbox and smaller motor. The gearboxes can be interchanged for specialist applications, thus improving material flow. Increased torque eliminates belt slip. Overheating of the hydraulics has been eradicated due by using the gear box not the motor to produce variable speeds. The new drive roller now has a larger circumference to improve the grip on the belt and the drive shaft into the gearbox is now bolted onto the roller. If it wears out, it can be replaced easily and cut cost and time on replacement parts. To aid extra torque, the new drive roller has substantially more support from both sides.
New belt design
The new floor roller system allows for the belt to run around a larger drive roller. Extra rollers are put into the floor for the side-mounted option to ensure smooth flow of material. The last roller to the head has a small 15° incline to ensure the last of the bale drops smoothly to the rotors, aiding a clean spread. This same incline also helps to load the bale or material.
New side mounting
The new range now allows side-mounted from either left or right or conventionally from the front. Front-mounted comes as standard.
Improved hydraulics
You now only need a maximum of 55 litres to power the hydraulic system. The system operates in the same manner as before with the control block automating all functions.
One man operation
The Spread-a-Bale still only needs one person to operate, the Spread-a-Bale is self loading from the stack, floor or trailer.
Unique rotor unblocking feature
If a rotor block occurs, simply put the machine in reverse and the rotors will spit the material back out of the rotors, ready to re-present the material for better flow and spread.
User Testimonials
‘Spreading straw for the pigs has been transformed from a job which used to take a couple of hours every other day and now takes a matter of minutes. It used to be hard physical work. One important benefit is that it doesn’t tie up a tractor. It takes a matter of seconds to fit it to the telescopic loader, it’s self-loading and it doesn’t chop the straw so there’s no dust.’
John Leadingham, 2000 pigs at Turriff, Aberdeenshire
‘We looked at a number of machines before choosing Spread-a-Bale. It’s hydraulic, so there’s far less to go wrong. It saves us a lot of time and money. It now takes us about 20 minutes to straw up eleven pens, each of them about 40 feet by 45 feet, whereas it took a lot longer manually. It doesn’t chop the straw when spreading, so it makes a better bed for the cattle, as chopped straw tends to turn into a ‘mush’ too quickly. That better utilisation probably saves 30% on straw usage.’
Dave Etherington, 200 beef cattle at Sledmere, Yorkshire
‘The machine is hydraulically driven rather than pto-powered. Because it uses no fast moving parts it eliminates the risk of stones being ‘fired’ at cattle or buildings. Our old bale spreader used to tie up one tractor all the time, and a second one when it needed loading. The Spread-a-Bale is quickly connected and disconnected from the tractor or loader, and is also ‘self-loading’, which optimises tractor/manpower usage. Running costs are much lower than its predecessor and we get the work done three times as quickly.’
Nigel Armstrong, manager of 280 dairy cows/followers at Nottingham University
‘We’re really pleased with it. It’s a good machine. We used to put round bales in the pens with a front end loader and then spread them manually. Now we use big square bales and distribute 12 to 14 bales a day. Spreading them is such a quick operation that the time it takes is actually more dependant on how close the bales are stored to the yards.’
Father and son David and Chris Andrews, 1,400 beef cattle at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
