Product: Food Dispenser
Cows That Eat Elephants   (+18, -1)  [vote for, against]
make animal shaped hay bales

Hay usually gets baled to form either large round rolls or similarly sized cubes, but if farmers were to choose the Animal Baler option, they could cover the countryside with giant creatures, all made out of straw.

The machine itself is by necessity mechanically complex, but perfectly capable of forming and baling up the cut hay into the simple shapes and forms needed to constitute a variety of large creatures.

Now after the fields are harvested, we can look forward to large straw elephants, lined up in neat rows, or any number of other animals being either randomly placed, or arranged to create towering structures.

The next great event occurs when the animal bales get fed to the hungry cows....
-- xenzag, Jul 19 2013

http://www.youtube....outube_gdata_player For bigsleep [xenzag, Jul 20 2013]

Hay there http://www.cornwall...3.html#.UevTqmt5mSM
now available in Grazing Elephant [xenzag, Jul 21 2013]

Tessellated elephants http://michael-lapa.../tessellations.html
Solve the transportation problem [scad mientist, Jul 24 2013]

Found my needle!... didn't find any elephants though. http://www.bing.com...hay+art&FORM=HDRSC2
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 24 2013]

Cows that eat dinosaurs http://kotaku.com/s...to-eat-h-1728189064
not machine made, but same visual outcome [xenzag, Sep 03 2015]

Hmm, a 3d printer in hay.
-- not_morrison_rm, Jul 20 2013


Actually yes.... with hay and baling cord I believe you could make just about anything. Won't be able to portray a lot of detail, but large shapes easily achieved. My initial idea was to create pyramids instead of cubes or rolls, but that wasn't halfbaked enough for me.
-- xenzag, Jul 20 2013


What you really need is some free range grass.
-- not_morrison_rm, Jul 20 2013


//"Cows that eat elephants are easier to raise, with wild green, dairy haystacks."// very good..... Clearly a sponsorship deal by the makers of Fairy Liquid is on the cards (lost on those living in the colonies of course)
-- xenzag, Jul 20 2013


Dinosaurs. There will be dinosaurs.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 20 2013


You mean Dinostraws :-)
-- xenzag, Jul 20 2013


No, haydrosaurs.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 20 2013


Could this thing make corn dollies?
-- pertinax, Jul 20 2013


I hate to sully your idea but a business could be made of offering to bale hay free and then forming it into company logos to be placed along the highway.
-- Voice, Jul 20 2013


Fixed link... Thanks for pointing out.
-- xenzag, Jul 20 2013


Large Hay-Drawn Colliders? (ducks)
-- csea, Jul 20 2013


//Large Hay-Drawn Colliders? (ducks)//

Sp.: Colleiders.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 20 2013


If the hay bales were bovine shaped would that then make them cownnibals?
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 20 2013


+ This is so wonderfully whimsical! I live in rural area where there are hay bales in the fields all the time. This would be so much fun and great photo ops, too.
-- xandram, Jul 21 2013


Farmers might be reluctant to take up this fantastic idea for fear of over complicating the task of shipping the baled hay at the end of the season, so there might be a need to apply a little 'marketing' by allowing toe-dippers to begin with Tetris-style shapes.

Hours of extra fun when the time comes to load the bales on to a truck.

There might evolve an annual competition to see who could load a truck quickest, or who could fit the most complicated shapes into a defined volume.
-- Tulaine, Jul 23 2013


Bovine-shaped hay bales could also be fed to elephants, providing the old *vice-versa* twist to this idea.
-- Canuck, Jul 24 2013


With careful design, transportation of elephant shapes does not need to be a problem. See tesselated elephants link. I actually found several different patterns for elephants.
-- scad mientist, Jul 24 2013


yes - just yes
-- DenholmRicshaw, Jul 24 2013


Objection! Those elephants are not tessellated in enough dimensions.
-- Voice, Jul 24 2013


This idea is excellent
-- hippo, Sep 03 2015


Have any of you actually bailed hay? "Mechanically complex?"
-- nomocrow, Sep 04 2015


I have flung it up into the upper level of a barn using a pitchfork. Does this count?
-- xenzag, Sep 04 2015


//Dinosaurs. There will be dinosaurs.// See last link [max]
-- xenzag, Sep 04 2015


I never saw this, I don't think. I love it. Buns a plenty for you.
-- blissmiss, Sep 04 2015


My initial reaction was eww! prions, but no, a very elegant medium of imagination.
-- wjt, Sep 05 2015


Hmm, I came up with this idea but thought to check previous submissions. Wouldn't have thought to look in the Food:Dispenser category. If the animal shapes are too complicated they could at least replicate city skylines by tweaking the normal rectangular shapes.
-- AusCan531, Jan 07 2018


// cubes //

Cubes are good. We like cubes.

// a business could be made of offering to bale hay free and then forming it into company logos to be placed along the highway. //

Oh no ... yet more Rentisham's advertising....
-- 8th of 7, Jan 07 2018



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