Round Bale Hay Prices

I just wanted to see what different areas are getting for round bay hay so far this year. And just for fun, at the end of last year.

Please list your state, size of bale, type of grass/crop, cost of bale if bought, or cost of cut/rake/bale if hired out. Also included anything else you think I might have missed.

I am in Alabama and debating with my dad the cost effectiveness of continuing to put up our own hay. He says it is more effective to have it custom cut. We are mainly producing for ourselves and our cattle operation. We put up a hay from a variety of fields from bermuda, fescue, to mixed wild grass in 5x6 bales.

Thanks
Scott

North Arkansas, Great Hay year so far. 4x5 good tight bale, mixed Grass, non fertilized, $20-25 per bale in the field. We run about 100 cows and I have decided if I can buy it for this, why make it. Use the hay medow for grazing. Not sure what I will do if we have a bad year, fuel continues to go up and I can not buy it.
Tim

In Southeast Michigan and am going to be charging $40 per 4x4, 455 lb. avg bale of grass, grass/legume hay. Last year sold for $30 and this spring what I had left for off the street customers I started charging $40. Only one large customer I custom for and last year charged her $16 per roll, cut,raked, baled. This year I will charge $20, she balked at that and said she will need to shop around for a better price. When she calls me back I am going to tell her a couple bucks more. Almost not worth it for me to custom at those prices.

Still have 6-700 lb mixed grass bales left form last year. Never got a nibble at $10.00 a bale all winter. We had a pretty good hay year last year in NY's St Lawrence Valley. Last year I figured it cast me about $6.00 a bale to produce. This year will be higher. I'm plowing some land up later this year for crops since I can't seem to move my hay.

Haven"t sold any hay from this year( we don"t cut here to late June) but in February of this year I sold 15T of 900 lb round bales of clean first cutting grass hay for $140/T ($63/b) and I could have sold a lot more if I had it.

We've been selling 4x4 bales of mixed grass for 20 bucks. We'll probably try for 25 this year but there's too many nutrient miners around here deluding themselves into thinking they can do it for less for anyone to actually charge more. As far as I'm concerned right now, if I don't get 20 bucks for what I have, I'll feed it next winter and the plow will be busy come August because there's more money in winter wheat than 20 dollar hay.
On the custom end of things we were doing some on an hourly basis. The discbine and baler were at 70 per hour and the tedder and rake at 50 per hour. It worked out to anywhere from 5-6 bucks a bale if you had a crop up to 10-12 bucks a bale for half a crop and handy 20 bucks if you had fuzz...
That was work we did for one guy, who last year complained about the price... and this year rented the land out for vegetable production. At those rates I wasn't making anything but doing him a favor and he wasn't making anything because he couldn't sell the hay for 20 bucks, so this year should work out well for both of us.... If not then I think the custom rate will probably be more like 80 and 60 per hour due to fuel and parts.

Rod