overshot hay stacker for sale

According to the dictionary, the jayhawk is a fictitious bird. But the Jayhawk at the Wykoff, Minn., home of Marv Grabau swoops through the air, bearing a 600-pound load of hay.

Marv’s Jayhawk is an overshot hay stacker, a piece of horse-drawn farm equipment patented in 1915. Manufactured by the F. Wyatt Mfg. Co. (which evolved into what is today the Hesston Corp.) in Salina, Kan., the long and leggy Jayhawk is a clutch-driven creature that stumps almost every onlooker. Measuring 12 feet wide, 30 feet long and 12 feet high with an 80-inch rear axle, the Jayhawk has a “head” (or “sweep”) originally used to lift hay into bins or cribs. “The head trips like a trip bucket on a tractor,” Marv says. “When it gets up so high, there’s a lever that dumps the load.” The sweep could hold approximately 600 pounds of loose hay as it swept overhead.

The Jayhawk dates to an era when cut hay was left in the fields, and later mounded for storage. “You had your hay windrowed with the old-fashioned dump rake,” Marv explains. “This sweep, or head, would push up, and when the sweep or head was full, you’d go over to a basket or crib – sometimes they had a crib, sometimes they didn’t – and stack it up inside. This particular stacker is 12 feet high, so you could get stacks of hay approximately 12 feet high. Then you’d pack it down and form a top on it like a bread loaf to help it shed water. You just kept moving around in the field, making these stacks until you were done.”

Last August, Marv loaded the stacker onto a trailer and hauled it to Spring Valley, Minn., for the annual Laura Ingalls Wilder Fest tractor show. An unwieldy critter, the Jayhawk fought the process. “It took me three hours just to load it onto the trailer and tie it down, plus the hauling time to town,” Marv says. But it was worth the trouble. “The Jayhawk was the center of attention,” he recalls. “They had about 95 tractors there and 34 implements, and this one drew the most curiosity.

Although the Jayhawk is a deceptively simple conglomeration of steel and cables, chains and wood, Marv invested nearly 40 hours in its restoration. He had to find new rear wheels because the original ones had been removed to allow a tractor to push the stacker. “When they converted it for use with a tractor, it was just a convenience,” he says. “I don’t know if they hooked it to a loader-type tractor or not. A mechanical lift on the front of a tractor is like a fifth wheel on a truck. That’s why they had to get rid of the rear wheels.”

Marv used two tractors with trip buckets to hold the raised sweep up as he worked to loosen the gears. “I had no one to show me how,” he says, “so it was all experimental.” Replacing the 8-foot wood tines on the head involved study and patience, as well as a search for the metal “teeth” that cover the ends of the tines. “The teeth keep the head from digging into the ground and breaking the tines,” he says. “They’re factory metal.” When Marv got the stacker, it had just four tines on it. He needed eight more, and found exactly that number in Waverly, Iowa. The formidable-looking tines now stand supported by a hay bin Marv built to accompany the stacker in the field.

The Jayhawk’s glory days ended in the middle part of the last century when mechanized implements and changing haying methods made the hay stacker obsolete. “After the 1915 horse-drawn model,” Marv says, “it was called a ‘Stackhand’ farm stacker. It was the same as this, only it was self-propelled, more or less. The reason they didn’t (sell well in the north) was that the weather here is so humid that hay rots more easily, so it was better to have it in a hay mow.”

Hay loaders and balers served farmers in a slightly different capacity than the Jayhawk. “The hay loader was the other thing that would’ve come after the hay stacker,” Marv says. “I’ve got a dump rake and the old side-delivery rake here, and the horse mower. I have a chain of command of haying pieces.” Several other restoration projects await, but for now, Marv is simply pleased to be able to display his haying equipment, including the flightless Jayhawk.

1913DavidsonAg. Engin. 269, Field hay stackers are divided into two classes, the plain overshot and the swinging stacker. The first has a row of teeth, corresponding to the teeth of the sweep rake, on the end of long arms hinged near the ground. The hay is left upon these teeth by backing away the sweep rake. By means of a rope and pulleys the teeth are raised to a vertical position and the load of hay allowed to slide back onto the stack.1919U.S. Dept. Ag.Farmers’ Bulletin 1009.4, The overshot stacker . . is so called because the hay is carried up and over the stacker frame and delivered at one point on the stack.Ibid 5, The “overshot” stacker is in general use in the Middle West, and can be used for large or small stacks.[1929AmSp 5.56 NE [Cattle country talk], The “stacker” might be of the “over-shot” variety which shoots rather than piles the hay into stacks: the “stack-horse” (or horses) pulls, and an enormous wooden fork “shoots” the hay up.]1958AmSp 33.271 eWA [Ranching terms], Overshot stacker. A fork-like arrangement, used in conjunction with a buck rake, which throws the hay backward onto the stack.1975Independent–Rec. (Helena MT) 5 Oct 15/1, [Caption:] The arm of the overshot stacker worked like a big catapult to toss hay onto the stack. This picture shows a horse-powered overshot stacker being used.1984DoigEnglish Creek 223 nMT, An overshot stacker worked as its name suggests, tossing a load of hay up over a high wide framework which served as a sort of scaffolding for the front of the haystack.1986KlinkenborgMaking Hay 25 wMT, A hundred and fifty horses . . [were] used to pull Case or McCormick and Deering mowers or push buckrakes or draw haywagons or work the Mormon derricks or overshot stackers or beaverslides.

This is the time of the year that Gunnison Ranchers and Farmers harvest most of their crops. The largest by far is the grass hay grown in the Gunnison Area. Farmers moved into Gunnison and tried several types of crops, but found that the growing season was too short. Potatoes were farmed a little longer than most of crops.

The Gunnison hay fields did not always look like they do today. The early ranchers had to pick a lot of rock out of the fields this was done by hand and horse drawn rock sleds. The green meadows you see driving through the Gunnison Valley are all of native grasses, timothy, brome, clover and various types of wheatgrass. The ranchers start flood irrigating their hay fields during the month of May and harvest their hay starting sometime after July 15th and finish before the 1st of October. The process has not changed much over the past 150 years. The way of harvesting the hay crop has change greatly, as I will try to explain on the next page.

In the early 1900’s hay was put up by the use of horse power. The hay was mowed with horse drawn sickle type mowers. The museum have two of these type of mowing machines on display. After the grass was mowed it was put in windrows by using Sulky Rakes. We have two of these rakes on display. After the hay is in a windrow a Buck Rake pulled by horses will bunch the hay up and take large loads of hay to the

stacker. There is a horse drawn Buck Rake at the museum. We have two Overshot Stackers located on the museum grown. There were several different type of hay stackers used up through the early 1960s’. The Overshot, Beaver-slide and Jenkins. All of these stackers were operated by a horse being hooked to a cable that was hooked to the stacker. The horse would pull the stacker teeth loaded with hay and dump it onto the stack, the horse would be lead up about 40 feet dump the hay and then led back to the stacker, this was done for every load of hay.

When automobiles and tractors were invented, machinery took the place of horses. The Allis Chambers, John Deere and Ford were popular tractors used in the Gunnison Valley. The tractor was used for mowing the hay down and pulling several types of machinery in the hay fields. The typical ranch in Gunnison had an Allis Chambers Tractor that could be converted to run backwards and used as a buck rake. A small tractor took the place of the horse that pull the hay on the stacker and dumped it onto the stack. The side delivery rake was developed to put the hay into windrows. Some of the ranchers bought old pickups and converted them run backwards and installing wooden teeth to pick up the hay, (there given name was Doodlebugs) and put it on to the stacker which would dump it onto the stack. The Sulkey Rake started to be used to rake up the hay scatterings that was left by the buck rakes. They became known by the name of scatter rakes. Most of the time there would be two or more men on the stack to move the hay into different areas of the stack. The hay would be stacked into stacks of about 28 to 30 ton of hay per stack. The stacking of loose hay became the thing of the past in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.

The use of balers and making bales of about 100 pounds, they were tide with wire or twine became very popular. The baller reduced the amount of man power and equipment needed to put the ranchers hay up.

I really enjoyed writing this article. I had the privilege to live the haying stage of the 1950’s. I was able to work for some of the ranchers running most of the equipment. I started out in 1951 and 1952 leading the stacker horse on the Mac and Marge Cooper’s Ranch 5 miles west of town. In 1954 I ran a side delivery rake and scatter rake on Mr. and Mrs. Pete Fields Ranch on Quartz Creek East of Gunnison. In 1955 I started working on the Lee and Polly Spann Ranches. In 1955 and 1956 I mowed hay and ran the side delivery rake, 1957 through 1960 I stacked hay. The Spann ranch is located 3 miles west of Gunnison. It was the greatest experience a boy age 9 to 18 years old could ever have. I know some of these ranchers are not around today, but to them and the ranchers that are still here, I would like say THANK YOU!!!

Five teams of horses and volunteer teamsters, as well as other volunteers, help with the haying demonstration at Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site near Deer Lodge on Sunday afternoon. Three men drove buckrakes (like the loaded one on the left and the empty one leaving the stack) to push bunches of hay onto the fork of the stacker. One man and his team raked leftover hay and the stacker team pulled the loads up, until the arms were perpendicular and the hay dropped off the forks onto the stack.

TWIN FALLS • Remnants of old wooden haystackers still scatter the Magic Valley landscape. But many people today wouldn’t know one if they saw it in a field.

The most labor-intensive method was to hand pitch the loose hay to the top of the stack. Men would carry pitchforks full of hay to the top, climbing the stack as it grew.

An overshot hay stacker — sometimes called a jayhawk — held a 600-pound load of hay on a “sweep bucket” that would lift and dump the hay onto the stack. The most common method used locally was the gin pole stacker — which resembled a partially disassembled tepee — that would lift, swing and lower a load of hay into place on the stack.

An alternate system my father developed for use building stacks on a farm in Grand Forks County, North Dakota, employed a hydraulic hay stacker mounted on a tractor (in our case, a 1941 John Deere A).

On a fine summer day more than 165 years ago, a rancher in the Flint Hills of Kansas hitched a team to an overshot hay stacker and, with his hired men, went to work stacking hay.

I thought I should thank everyone for responding to my letter (Farm Collector, July 2002) concerning a hay stacker. I received one letter and two phone calls.

In 1900 the company was moved to Ottumwa, Iowa, where Dain produced harvesting equipment including sickle mowers, hay loaders, hay stackers and side-delivery rakes, as well as other pieces of farm equipment such as pump jacks, farm mixers, feed mills, corn cutters and hay presses.