This has been our experience. When you are making over-ripe trash hay, you can run old equipment that might run untouched for
the next 5 years and when it breaks (speaking of hay equipment), you get nice brown, nutrient free and sometimes moldy hay. Who
cares if it's $1 or $2 hay - IT WILL SELL.....
But if you invest in your fields, spray for weeds, cut at the right time to balance yield and quality - IMHO, you risk losing
much more $$$'s by not having more reliable equipment and in some cases two, i.e. balers.
If your beautiful weed free second cutting is on the ground, raked in to windrows and your baler goes down - you lose $$$'s when
you wait for a day or two or a week for parts and a fix. So you're 500 square bales that would bring $X each is now $X. If
that $X was $4 and now you've got $2 per bale hay - you've just lost $1,000 and you still have to fix the baler!
Moreover - most farmers I know have a full time day job. Only so many hours in a day - so when your baler conks out at 5 pm
after work - just as you are getting started and you can't get to it until the next evening to fix and then the next evening to
bale, it's doesn't pencil out making quality hay - and quality hay sells and sells for a higher price. Good quality hay WILL
pay for a LOT of newer/better/more reliable equipment.
It pays to invest. You have to spend $$$ to make money.
YMMMV
Bill