Hay price is way down!!!!

The price of hay is down around here. I know it is the plentiful season but it is cheap even for then. I had a fellow call me wanting me to buy his hay in the field. He had a deal with a guy and had mowed the hay. The buyer was supposed to rake and bale the hay giving the owner so much a ton for the hay. The buyer bought some hay already baled for about half of what he agreed to pay for the mowed hay.

The hay is second cutting alfalfa and orchard grass hay. Real clean too. I offered $25 a ton for it. He jumped on the offer. So I baled it today. 30-35 acres made 74- 1500 LBS. round bales. I already agreed to buy the rest of the cutting for this year. Not bad just three semi loads and only 8 miles away.

Even with grain cheap I like having plenty of hay around. You have a lot of options with livestock if you have the feed. In the drought year of 1988 I had baled a lot of hay the year before and was carrying a lot of year old hay. That enabled me to buy cow/calf pairs when the pastures ran out. Having that hay enabled me to buy them and that profited us enough to pay the farm off in 1989. So I like the barns full. It is like money in the bank to me. It will be there if you need it.

We had our first and second cuts pre sold, $65 big bales and $4 small squares

Glad it is that way.

I get all the hay land to cut I want for free been that way for over 10 years,have turn down right much this year and I'm still cutting and baling about 2X what I need might be able to sell some if not I'll just unroll it in the pastures this Winter to fertilize the fields and give the cows and goats a place to lay down.

The drought forecast is not good,hay will go up,just be ready to sell when you make a good profit.

Hay is in short supply here. What I have sold off the field I have jumped the price ten bucks a bale to my regular customers. And I get calls every few days from folks on the hunt. I'm putting some extra in the barn , second cut looks poor , if I don't need it , I can always sell it this winter, like money in the bank . Bruce

Our barn has never been so full, not in the last 40 years at least. I baled some extra ground last year, as well as getting some from the local horse palace that was not up to snuff for their cutured palates.

With our lack of rain, I am not worried about carrying extra hay over at all. Pastures are not responding even when rotationally grazed.

I did just see some first cutting offered for $2/ small square on CL.

Find it hard to get a decent price for it here-- lots of 2 -4 year old hay still sitting along along fence rows. Most of it is not good.

We had an excellent first cutting.....then it quit raining. Prices are starting to creep back up. Just sold 230-60lb small squares (all alfalfa) for 4.50/bale and the lady wants all I can get her. Pretty happy with that since I was struggling to get $20/4x4 round bales a month ago. Do still have half of those. Good quality stuff is going up here.

Last year was very bad for hay here in the NE. People were chasing it hard. I still sold pretty much to regular customers, and still made my annual donation of hay to a home for autistic kids. This year is not much better. Very, very dry, so second cut is looking doubtful again. I am selling small squares for $6.75 picked up in the field, and have made my annual hay donation.

like Bruce and many others we have had almost no rain or snow this year,, less than 1.50 inches for the whole year so far,, hay here is at a premium,, 120-200 plus a ton is what I am hearing,, I have not finished my hay deal yet but its all sold and out of the field,,well what little I have about 200 ton,,, over 150 ton short of what I had last year, I just finshed loading it out yesterday, one of four semis I was loading
cnt

TF that is the way it is here. Rain and hay, had one field that usually makes 30 to 35 rolls . First cutting was 43 rolls. Good hay year two years in a row. Want be any high prices around this area. Lots of last years still in the barn.

Jeff didn't cut one field for third cutting last year because he didn't need it. Could have sold every bale of it if he had baled it.

Our first cutting was light because of the dry weather. The rains came at just the right time for the second cutting and we had a very good second cutting. We just had 4 days of rain, so the third cutting is off to a good start.

I agree with you JD. A barn full of hay or an extra row of bagged round bales, whether you need it or not is just like having money in the bank.

What's happening here is farms are being developed many with 21 acre lot minimums so there is usually about 15 to 18 acres the new home owners don't use and if they have a farmer cut and bale
the hay they get a huge real estate tax break.Also with several farms around that used to pasture cattle the fences went bad and now can only cut hay on the land so there is a huge surplus of hay land compared to pasture land around.