cost to make hay

cjunrau

Well-known Member
was a post the other day asking fuel cost of making hay. I cut 5 acres an hour with a 4230 JD tractor. Field is so ruff that I can only go 4.5-5.5 MPH I use 25 litres of fuel an hour =$31.50 an hour. Divided by 5 is $6.30 an acres. One field I got 3/4 of a bale = $8.40 a bale. Baling and raking is about the same as cutting. so double that and you get $16.80 a bale to make hay on that field. I pay $20 a bale rent. That leaves very little profit for my time. That was this year at 21 bales. Last year with the same cost, same field I got 50 bales. So that cut the cost per bale in half or a little better. So if you have a smooth field where you can go 10 MPH baling uses a lot less fuel per field even though by the hour it still costs the same. So there is no cut and dry cost per bale. My fresh field this year I silage wrapped 30 5X5 bales off of 6.5 acres. About 2.5-3 bales an acre if it was dry hay. Smooth field but could only cut in places in A2 Quad range because it was 5 ft high. Mostly wild mustered and oats. where it was not as tall could go faster. Baling with a 2394 Case IH tractor this year and fuel cost is half of what the 4230 JD uses baling. I like having 2 tractors now as I don't halve to unhook and rehook all the time. Cut another 25 acres of barley , under seeded in alfalfa yesterday. Looks like that field will be 2.5 bales an acre and should be able to bale dry tomorrow. We have 25degrees + Celsius. and 20-30 MPH wind so it is drying fast.
 
true. But when you drive so slow you have to much time to think. Is it really worth renting this field?
 
If I was only getting 3/4 of a bale per acre I would NOT be baling it. Clean it up with the batwing mower later for next year or skip renting it again. Also your fuel cost is twice as high as the States.
 
I'd park that 4230 in the very back of the shed and forget about it. 25 Liters is about 6-1/4 gallons per hour. I used to burn 5 gallons per hour plowing with 5-14 F-145 semi-mounted plow, 4020-D, 4320, 4230 with M&W turbo, made no difference. 4020 gas burned 7 gallons gasoline per hour running 4th gear verses running 5th gear with diesels.

I'd look for a 756 diesel Farmall, or Hydro 100 or 186. Fuel savings would pay for it in short order!
 


I agree with Dr Evil on parking the fuel guzzling 4230. My JD 4255 uses 3.2 gph pulling my JD 467 rd baler making 4X5.5 tight bales @ 6 mph. I also agree 3/4 rd bale to the acre hay isn't worth baling except in a drought yr.
 
Six gallons per hour cutting hay? My 1086 used to use 6 gallons per hour working it hard and at the factory pump setting. The 1086 has about 35 more horses under full load and I know, it’s a different color.

Well I’m looked up the Nebraska test for the 4230 and it came up with 7 GPH at what I assume is max hp of 100. Uffda.
 
Well I’m looked up the Nebraska test for the 4230 and it came up with 7 GPH at what I assume is max hp of 100. Uffda.[/quote]

I got to looking farther for comparison the 986 IH used 7.2 gph and the 1086 used 8.6. There was a Deere model change so maybe I should have compared the 66 series IH. Nonetheless I didn’t realize those tractors used that much fuel. My figures on my 1086 must have been off a bit.
 
Glad you always had high yielding hay lol,, here we get one cutting and I cut it this year @ just over 1/4 ton per acre, my 1070 runs the 1014+2 14" hyro swing for just over 1/2 gallon a acre, 970 take less than half that raking and the 770 burns a bit less than the 970 baling per acre, I am Glad to get what i did but a normal hay production is in the 1-3/4 per acre range, a good one gives me 2-3 ton per acre
cnt
a273597.jpg
 
IMHO - the path to profitability does not (or should not) lay with any tractor?s fuel mileage. IMHO the remedy to your profitability is quality, quantity and a customer base willing to pay.

It pays to lime and fertilize. If you are selling, mash the field for all it can give. Maximizing your yield lowers your overhead.

It pays to spray for weeds and plant good hay, be it grass, legume or a mix.

Test your hay and show the results.

Consider square bales - IMHO the selling price is much better than round bales.

When we started haying again, this time for sale vs our own livestock consumption, we did the above. We now find ourselves selling out, turning away tractor trailer load/size sales from out of state.

Good luck,
Bill
 

cjunrau, you need to park everything and work on your business plan. I make $330.00/acre from hay sales, pay no rent, fuel to mow, ted 2X, rake and bale is $4.80. I ted and rake with small tractors. lime and fertilizer around $25.00. Customers pick up in the field.
 
? What do you mean ?turning away tractor trailer load sales from out of state?? ?

We have customers from out of state that prefer to buy by the semi load, not a problem. Those customers have referred us to their friends and they too want tractor trailer loads of hay. At some point, we sell out. Based on filling repeat customers and a few new ones this year, I?ve already turned down additional tractor trailer loads of hay - from out of state.

That?s what I mean...
 
Dang. I burn less then 1/2 gallon acre with our JD W235. Our Macdon W150 before that was about a gallon per acre.
 
Well in order to pay no rent he has to own the land or get a
few pieces of junk ground like I?ve got that are to small for the
mega farmers to even turn their equipment around on . As far
as fuel that?s a big expense when fuel is 3.00$ a gallon
 
Yesss but we all farm to get those big government pay checks and poison the land and kll the people 😂😂
 
Tractors use a bit of fuel under full load . If you get the chance
to run a big tractor and it burns 18 gallon an hour it?ll make yer
butt pucker a bit
 
i use the hay not sell it. i can buy hay for around $40-50 most years, So it makes me wonder sometimes if I should quit doing what I am and buy hay. I have to think about these things once in awhile just for kicks. If I don't cut that piece of land some one else might but the land is crap and nobody wants it. If I bring it up to where it would bring a decent amount I guaranty the big shot farmer HUGE trucking company guy would scoop it up just so I could not farm it. Happens all the time here
 
Buying hay is great as long as you can buy it drought years like this year cow hay is at 150$ a ton already and going up southern Utah New Mexico Arizona Colorado the parts I?ve seen you couldn?t feed 3 jersey calves if you combined all the grass in all 4 states together ? I am in the same boat 🚣‍♀️ and I like to put up at lest a little hay just because you never know had to pay 150$ for the blackest hay you ever saw about 5 years ago and I got it that cheap because it was my cousins and I was glad i could get it
 
you guys burn way too much fuel! My 430 Case Diesel cut 65 acres of timothy at 5.5 mph , 3rd direct on one tank of fuel with a dual drum mower .13 gallons. my other 430 raked the same field in 3rd hi and still had 3 inches of diesel in the tank. I baled 1300 bales with a 530 Case and used about 10 gallons of diesel.then the 466 Hesston started baling the rest of the field with a NH 846 .we made about 170 bales with around 10 gallon of fuel .
 
I love these threads everyone telling you how much cheaper and better and blah blah they did it that you did and of course some of these tractors you have drain the fuel tank at the end of the day to let the fuel it made while using it out so the tank doesn?t burst from overfilling 😂😂
 
34 horsepower? So probably pulling a 7 foot mower conditioner or 9 maybe or a sickle mower ? I?d hope it would run pretty cheap .
 
I may start farming rocks or something. People want this premium hay but are only willing to pay weed price for it. Then when the weather is nice they don't call....wait till the weather is the worst and beg you like they've gotta have it now. Getting tired of it. Maybe I'll go back to raising bovines...naw, I'll be the one wanting premium hay at weed prices....grin.
 
(quoted from post at 19:46:41 07/15/18) Well in order to pay no rent he has to own the land or get a
few pieces of junk ground like I?ve got that are to small for the
mega farmers to even turn their equipment around on . As far
as fuel that?s a big expense when fuel is 3.00$ a gallon

There is just one mega farmer in NH and they are too far away. There is so much good crop land here just growing up to brush that landowners are very happy to have someone come in and take care of it and not have to pay them. Although a friend used to charge another friend for haying his field, so I bet that it does happen.
 
(quoted from post at 12:01:45 07/15/18)
cjunrau, you need to park everything and work on your business plan. I make $330.00/acre from hay sales, pay no rent, fuel to mow, ted 2X, rake and bale is $4.80. I ted and rake with small tractors. lime and fertilizer around $25.00. Customers pick up in the field.

You have a great program going there, it sounds like. I have been burned by one neighbor with a no-rent situation, where they rescinded my use of the field as soon as I got it cleared, limed, fertilized and established. Do you use a lease, or just handshake deals?

I spread a mix of fertilizer and lime on my owned hay fields this year, not nearly as much potash as the tests called for, about half. A mix totalling a ton per acre cost me almost $250 per acre.
 
(quoted from post at 07:07:53 07/16/18)
(quoted from post at 12:01:45 07/15/18)
cjunrau, you need to park everything and work on your business plan. I make $330.00/acre from hay sales, pay no rent, fuel to mow, ted 2X, rake and bale is $4.80. I ted and rake with small tractors. lime and fertilizer around $25.00. Customers pick up in the field.

You have a great program going there, it sounds like. I have been burned by one neighbor with a no-rent situation, where they rescinded my use of the field as soon as I got it cleared, limed, fertilized and established. Do you use a lease, or just handshake deals?

I spread a mix of fertilizer and lime on my owned hay fields this year, not nearly as much potash as the tests called for, about half. A mix totalling a ton per acre cost me almost $250 per acre.

K Effective, I don't use any written agreements. I did get burned once too by someone who I thought was my buddy. Actually I forgave him and he is my buddy again, but not to be trusted so much. Before I downsized I used to combine my own liming with custom work. I bought bulk lime in 33 ton loads and sold it spread on the field, mainly to horse people for their pastures. It kept my cost down.
 

I'm a small guy and don't rent much hay ground, on the ones I do tend if it's simply cut and bale without investing my money into the land I'll do that on a word of mouth or hand shake agreement.
If I have to clean up any of the land, apply seed, lime, or fertilizer it's a 5 year written agreement or I'm out.
I'm not going to invest time and money building up someone else's land just for them to rent it to another person next year.

My tractors are 40-72 hp diesels so fuel consumption isn't bad.
My 52 hp tractor burns around 1/2 gallon per acre pulling a 9 ft disc mower, cuts 4-5 acres per hour depending on how rough the field is.
Tedding and raking both equals around the same 1/2 gallon per, 72 hp tractor with baler making 4x5 bales burns around 1 gallon per acre. I bale around 4.5- 5.5 mph, hays fairly thick and I like to feed it at a slower pace, tractor starts running out of power if I go much faster.

Most of our hay is fescue, orchard grass, clover mix, on poor ground we'll make 2 1/2- 3 bales per acre, average ground 4-5 bales per. I apply chicken litter to my farm keeping the nutrients in the upper scale on soil test charts, that ground will make 6-8 bales per acre on average years.
Baled a 5 acre field last week, late 1st cutting with lots of growth, 42 4x5 rolls from 5 acres = 8.4 bales per acre.

This year with cold wet spring weather early 1st cuttings only averaged 3-4 bales per acre on good ground.
Later 1st cuttings had lower quality but made more bales.

One field made more bales on the 2nd cutting than on 1st cutting, 1st time I've ever had that happen.
 
All I did was post what mine use if you think I am lying so be it,, mine use far less fuel than most other brands and thats a fact,, I have only ran one JD long enough to have real idea what fuel it used it was a almost new 4020 powershift dsl we traded for at the dealership, it was pulling a semi mount jd 5-16 plow my 1030 both about the same hours at the time this was in 1970, was pulling a Case 6-16" semi mount, the jd had to be fueled twice a day plowing, the 1030 still had fuel at the end of a 12 hr day of plowing,, the 4020 pulled the plow in 1st and 2nd gear in sod and 3rd in stubble, 1030 was in 3 rd gear in sod and 4th in stubble ground, the 4020 had to let the 1030 around every other round depending on the size of the field we was plowing, I do feel at the time the jd plow pulled about a bottom harder than the Case ones or it seemed like it did, I did not post it to slam another brand i posted it as you asked for input costs
cnt
 
A case 1030 holds 48 gallon of fuel a 4020 29 gallon so I bet the case didn?t need fueled up as often . And I didn?t mean that comment to be rude to you i just meant it?s always funny to read these things
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Sorry guess I am gun shy, as I get jumped on here more often than not,, yes I was aware the 4020 held a bit less fuel it was all but empty with the gauge well to the bottom of the red in less than 6 hrs run time,, 1030 used 3/4 of a tank at best in 12 hrs, now at the tie we were custom plowing so we roaded a lot of places and that 4020 would flat out Scoot down the road compared to the 1030 lol been a lot of years since then but I still remember running the 4020 with all the doors and windows open when it was cold in the spring due to what I called the seat heater they had in them,, I am sure you may not notice as fast as me but I never had a tractor with a seat heater before lol that winter we mounted a new Waldon dozer on it to plow snow with,, it was warm and toasty even when it was well below zero, the powershift was handy on the dozer but those dash hyd controls was a pain for a short guy like me to reach lol wish I had both of those 4020's we traded for that year and they were is the same shape as then,, they would bring a nice price,, the one was a year old with syncro trans it had less than 300 hours on it the ps one was two or three seasons old at the time they were slow movers,, as we had them on lot for over a year before we sold them both to one buyer,, Dad had made the newspaper ad wrong and it said one or both for 5000,,, was supposed to say choice for 5000 lol ahh live and learn
 
I checked my profile and the email address is wrong. Before I change it to the current one, I don't want it available online. To prevent that do I check the No do not display in the profile section? Next question, if I were to send you an email, where would I look to make the entry?
 

Mark
I have no problem with my email address on this site being checked on. It appears your email box at lower left corner of your reply on this thread is "open".
Jim
 
That newspaper ad would be a stunt I can see pulling . I can usually run ten hours on a tank of fuel in either the 40 or 3020 working them hard I had an ih 550 five bottom semi mount plow I traded it for a John Deere f145 4 bottom that I have never pulled because the two way plows do so much nicer job on the fields I work now and no dead furrows from cutting out new lands or fields with an odd shape
 
I hope what you had to say wasn't important. To change my email address I have to remember things I used years ago and don't know what's currently active. That's why my handle has a 1 included. I forget my password back when I was a newbie and had to come back on with a different name/pw. Thanks anyway.
 
Interesting read.

OK for those who say it doesn't matter what it cost? WOW. Good thing you are farming. In business you wouldn't survive. You can bet everything you buy for yourself, your home, your family and your farm NEW the companies that provide those things know to a fraction of a cent what they cost. They stores that carry those items (at least the bigger stores) again know exactly what that item cost going out the door. That is part of how they decide which items to make/carry and which items to discontinue. IT's how they stay profitable.

For those who don't think fuel consumption is important? When you take into account how much it cost per acre to produce a crop you have to include tillage cost including machinery depreciation and fuel including harvesting and storage if you are going to really have a really good picture of how profitable each crop is. If you are feeding it to livestock you have to go with going prices in your area. Years ago my dad was great at record keeping. He discovered that when all the cost were added in except labor (he never added labor in because he did it himself), that he could buy bulk feed for his dairy cows cheaper than he could grow it and make it himself. He planted everything into hay and oats (for the straw). No he did not increase his herd but he had hay to sell every year too. Now I know that won't work out for everyone every time. But it is an example of how record keeping can show you if it's profitable to keep doing what you are doing or if you should look at other things.

Rick
 

I went back and read over this thread, unless I missed it I didn't see where anyone said it didn't matter what it cost.
I did see a lot of variables in the cost which is normal for farming depending on ones location and weather conditions for that year.

Record keeping is important in any form of business, and farming is a business, sounds like your dad keep excellent records

Manufacturing has pretty much fixed cost, for each item they make they know how must their raw materials will cost, how much energy they'll use, what the labor cost will be, what the equipment cost and how long it will last.
If cost go up they raise the price of their product all while looking for ways to make it cheaper, robotics, lower quality materials, ect.
Once demand for a product drops below a set volume or a newer style replacement is introduced they quit making it.

Yes farmers must do their best to control cost but unlike mfg that cost is not fixed and it's hard for us to just stop raising a product when the profit margin drops.

I can figure my fuel cost per acre, I know how many bales I can wrap with a bundle of twine, I know what fertilizer will cost per acre, what I don't know and can't control is how many bales per acre that field will produce each time I cut it.
Example: I have a 12 acre field in front of my house, 2 years ago it made right at 80 4x5 rolls, "give or take a couple rolls" on first cutting.
This year we had a cold wet spring, that same field made 36 rolls 1st cutting, 44 rolls 2nd cutting. I used the same amount of fertilizer, same amount of twine, but I went over the ground twice for the same number of bales, this doubled my fuel, labor and maintain cost to get the same dollars worth of hay.
Even though hays prices are up I can't sell it for enough money in order to make the same profit I did 2 years ago even though that hay sold at a lower cost pre bale.

Farming is one of the only industries where we pay the price others demand for the materials and equipment we need to raise a product, but yet have little to no control over the price we'll get paid for that product.

A farmer needs to make a profit to stay in business, but unlike mfg we don't have as much control on what that profit will be.

And personally I'm not ready to move my farming operation to another country just to make more profit.
 
I gathered from one post that the poster didn't care how much a fuel a tractor burned that you had to get the crop in.

It does matter. I remember back in the early 70's guys burning unneeded crop in the field because they were going to loose money either way. Especially if it was a poor crop. Claimed it was more cost effective to light a match to it. No every farmer, each went their own way on that issue.

Rick
 

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