Claims
- 1. The method of gathering crop comprising the steps of:
- delivering loose crop into a wagon,
- physically separating the interior of said wagon into a compacting chamber and an accumulator chamber,
- compacting the crop in said compacting chamber,
- delivering loose crop into said accumulator chamber during said compacting step,
- maintaining the delivered crop in the accumulator chamber spaced from the crop in the compacting chamber during the compacting step, and
- delivering accumulated crop from said accumulator chamber into said compacting chamber upon completion of said compacting step.
BACKGROUND
This application is a division of my copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 195,709, filed Nov. 4, 1971, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,744,228.
1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to hay wagons and particularly to methods for compacting and transporting bulk hay and the like.
2. Prior Art
As is well known, hay is an essential feed for livestock and, consequently, hay production is an important agricultural activity. Hay is produced during the summer and is stored for feeding to the livestock during the winter. In many parts of the country, hay is packed into bales, weighing approximately 50-100 pounds, which are packed into barns, sheds, or the like, for storage and are removed, as needed, for delivery to the livestock. However, in other parts of the country, particularly in parts of the West, where mountainous terrain and heavy snows may make it difficult or impossible to deliver the hay to the livestock in winter, it is customary to store the hay, without baling, in stacks in the field. Historically, this has been accomplished by manually loading the hay from the field onto a wagon and, when the wagon is filled, from the wagon onto a stack. Obviously, much time and effort is required for such an operation. Furthermore, hay is frequently gathered in a race against time before an oncoming storm, since hay which is gathered and stacked or baled, when wet, is subject to rotting and spontaneous combustion. The latter is especially dangerous since it can cause fires which may destroy the hay and spread to adjacent buildings and fields. If the hay is gathered dry, it is less susceptible to such rain damage, even if the hay is simply stacked, since the rain normally penetrates only the outer layers of the hay stack, which can be subsequently dried by the sun. However, some possibility of such rain damage still exists. Moreover, repeated wetting and drying of the outer layers tends to make the leaves become brittle and crumble away, leaving only the stems and greatly reducing the nutritional value of the hay. Baled hay is much less susceptible to such damage since the compaction of the hay during baling causes the hay to be much more dense and less permeable to the rain. Unfortunately, bales are conventionally secured with wire or string which is inedible by livestock. Moreover, where access is difficult or impossible for delivering bales to the livestock, access is frequently equally difficult or impossible for removing the wires or string from stacked bales.
These disadvantages of the prior art are overcome with the present invention and a hay gathering methods are disclosed which provides most of the advantages of both stacked and baled hay, while eliminating most of the disadvantages. Moreover, the technique of the present invention greatly reduces the time and effort required for hay gathering operations.
The advantages of the present invention are preferably attained by providing bulk hay methods for loading the loose hay from the ground into the wagon, compacting the hay on the wagon, and unloading the compacted hay to provide a compacted stack which is self-contained and requires no inedible securing means.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide improved methods for gathering hay.
Another object of the present invention is to provide methods for compacting a wagon-load of hay.
A further object of the present invention is to provide methods for providing a compacted stack of hay which is self-contained and requires no inedible securing means.
A specific object of the present invention is to provide bulk hay methods for loading loose hay from the ground into the receptacle, for compacting the hay in the receptacle, and for unloading a compacted stack of hay from a receptacle.
These and other objects and features of the present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description, taken with reference to the accompanying drawing.
US Referenced Citations (4)
Foreign Referenced Citations (1)
| Number |
Date |
Country |
| 951,698 |
Mar 1964 |
UK |
Divisions (1)
|
Number |
Date |
Country |
| Parent |
195709 |
Nov 1971 |
|
Patent Grant
3973377
