How many of you shocked or stacked bundles? We bound our oat hay till 1974, so I got in on a little of that. Old binder still sits on the fenceline.

I did it for hire as a kid. That was in the mid 1960s in west central Ks. Have not seen that in at least 40 years.
We made shocks out of what we called “feed”, which was forage sorghum about 5-6 feet tall.

I used to see binders converted to windrowers years back.

We see shocks the Amish make NW of Sauck Centre, Minnesota.

Dale06, I think my Dad was the last to use a binder in our area. He would have my uncle help ride the binder, and hire high school kids to shock, we all pitched in there too. Then in September he'd start bringing the shocks in and build stacks. I'd get off the school bus and crawl on the stack, took about 2 to 3 weeks to bring them all in. We switched to a swather and square baler in the middle 70s.

300 savage, what part of the world were you shocking?
In our area, people transitioned to small square bales, now they’re all large round bales.
I don’t think most kids today would shock, or handle the small square bales.

Eastern Montana. My Dad was a holdout. We bound the oats and put up grass hay loose. We got a square baler about the time larger ranchers were getting round balers. I made, stooked, stacked, and fed small square bales till 1989 when we leased the place out. Still made a few hundred after that for the folks who lease the place. Small squares are handy during calving.

Did not live there, but can remember visiting Mom's relatives in KS and shocking milo.
They called Shocking, what I think you are calling bundling.
Only thing they had to feed it to were grandaunt's milk cows.

The binder cut the grain, tied the bundles, and dropped them into a basket with a trip. The operator, who rode the binder, tripped the basket as it got full, trying to put the piles of bundles in a line. Two man job, one on the binder and one on the tractor. We called this binding. A bundle of oat hay weighed around 12 lbs. Shockers then went into the field and made the shocks, with the heads of the bundles up. A good team of shockers could do around 8 or 10 acres a day, and it wasn't bad work, but tedious. Set two bundles up, leaning against each other, then put the rest around that foundation, ended up with sloping sides of straw and a rounded top of heads. A shock had around 12-15 bundles and was pretty weatherproof. Dad would leave the shocks in the field till mid-September when wheat harvest was over, and bring them in with the hay basket on the loader of the old Farmall M. It was labor intensive, but the machinery cost was cheap, and it worked for our 60 cow operation. We "modernized" to small square bales after we quit binding in the early 70s.

As a graduate of Wichita State, I have to explain to everyone what a shock is when they ask about our mascot, WuShock.

G23

G23, for several years in tbe late 60s/early 70s we hired Canadian custom combiners. They called the shocks "stooks." Then the name "stook" came to be used for the 6 bale arrangement of small square bales. I wore out an Agratec bale stooker, but it took two balers and about 20 years.