How to Make Straw and Bales in Farming Simulator 25
If you plan to get into livestock farming in Farming Simulator 25, straw is something you simply can’t do without. It’s essential both for bedding in animal barns and for boosting the quality of feed mixtures. While you can always grab ready-made straw bales from the shop, this guide is for players who want to produce their own straw and bales from scratch.
Straw is produced as a byproduct when crops like barley, wheat, and oats are harvested. After the combine threshes the grain, the leftover stalks can be chopped and dropped behind the machine as windrows. To make this happen, you need to enable the straw swath (windrow) option on your combine harvester before starting the harvest.
If this option happens to be turned off, you can toggle it back on by pressing the ; key before you begin harvesting. Once the harvest is done and straw windrows are laid out across the field, you have three options for collecting them: making square bales, making round bales, or picking them up directly as loose chopped straw.
Baling is generally the more practical route since bales are much easier to transport and stack. The downside is that when you eventually want to use that straw, you’ll need an additional piece of equipment to shred the bales back into loose form. Collecting the straw directly as chopped material skips that step, but requires a silo for storage and a front loader for handling.
Making Square Bales in Farming Simulator 25
To turn your straw windrows into square bales, head to Shop > Vehicles > Baling > Square Balers and pick up a baler. Different models produce bales in different sizes, so keep that in mind when shopping, choose one that matches the trailers and storage you plan to use.
To start baling, first open the machine using the X key. Lower the pickup reel with the V key, then start the baler itself by pressing the B key. Just drive over the windrows and watch the bales come out. The option to change bale size is available on some balers. To adjust the size, you can press the L key. Keep in mind that larger bales are also heavier.
A new mechanic introduced in this installment is consumable baling twine. When you first buy a square baler, it comes fully loaded with twine, but the supply gradually drops as you produce bales. Once it runs out, the baler stops working. To refill, go to Shop > Vehicles > Baling > Consumables > Square Baler Twine, purchase the item, bring it next to your baler, and press the R key to reload.
Making Round Bales in Farming Simulator 25
Alongside square bales, you can also produce round bales in Farming Simulator 25. For this, visit Shop > Vehicles > Baling > Round Balers and choose any baler that fits your needs.
Unlike square balers, which can churn out bales continuously, round balers need to eject the finished bale from the chamber once it’s full before continuing. When the chamber fills up, the machine will sound an alert. Press the Y key to open the back and release the bale, then press Y again to close the chamber and keep collecting.
Round balers also got the new consumable mechanic. Each round baler comes preloaded with netwrap, which is used up as bales are formed. To top it back up, head to Shop > Vehicles > Baling > Consumables, buy the Round Bale Netwrap, place it next to your baler, and press the R key to refill.
Picking Up Straw as Chopped Material
Forage wagons (loader wagons) are versatile tools that can collect several types of material, including hay, grass, alfalfa, and straw. You can grab one from Shop > Vehicles > Forage Harvesting > Forage Wagons.
Simply drive over the straw windrows and the wagon will scoop them up. Lower the pickup with the V key and activate it with the B key. Once the wagon is full, you can either dump the straw anywhere on the ground with CTRL + I, or unload it directly into an animal barn using the I key.
If you choose to dump straw on the ground with CTRL + I, you can always come back later with a front loader and transfer it to another trailer or storage area.
Transporting Your Finished Straw Bales
To collect bales from the field and move them around, check out Shop > Vehicles > Baling > Transport, where you’ll find trailers and bale stackers built specifically for this purpose.
You can stack the bales wherever you like on your farm. Just keep in mind that to load and unload square or round bales, you’ll need a tractor or telehandler equipped with a front loader attachment.
The shop also offers two automatic bale-collecting trailers that do the hard work for you. The Arcusin self-loading trailer handles square bales in the 180 × 240 cm range, while the Anderson self-loading trailer collects round bales between 125 and 180 cm. Both will automatically gather bales from the field and unload them wherever you choose.
One last tip: since straw bales can’t be turned into silage, bale wrappers are of no use here. Wrappers only come into play if you’ve baled wet grass, in that case, wrapping the bales lets them ferment into silage, which you can then feed to your animals.
