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Call your local/area livestock/hay sale barn. Around here they sell it at the hay auction most saturday mornings. The guy running the sale usually knows the value of hay. Usually sitting on the ground broken down into pickup or small trailer load size lots for the horse people. Then they sell by price per bale for the lot. Depends upon type, quality, and demand. $4 to $5 to $6 isn't unheard of. Sell a pickup load or few and then you can dicker with any buyers about any more and they come get it. That way the buyers can see your hay and compare it to what else is out there. Sometimes there is a big price spread between bales. (last years, first or third cutting, how stemmy it is, etc) Seems like the local elevators around here are usually contacted by the local and out of state guys looking for hay but only cash sale it to them with no checks. Your county extension agent probably has a handle on the price. The second to the last time I bought hay at a sale barn, I didn't come back till the afternoon to pick it up. By then the guy who bought the stack next to mine pilfered half of mine. Like one guy said on a thread a while back, problem with selling to someone to pick up in the field doesn't work unless you get cash up front before you bale. Otherwise they don't get it before it rains and then the rearend will tell you to shove your wet hay where the sun don't shine and you are stuck with ruined hay and no money. Put it in the barn or buy some tarps. With gas and diesel the way it is, you can't sell too cheap. I bet we may see some $8 a bale stuff. It would cost me about 50 cents a bale in just mogas to deliver to or from the sale a pickup load of hay. Figure all your variable costs (fuel & twine) and then your yearly machinery maintenance, machinery depreciation, plus your time, to see what your costs per bale are. My cutter last year charged $20 an hour to cut plus $9 per big bale or $1 per small bale (I pick up) to bale it. Averages me about $15 a big bale for brome. Probably pay more this year. Some people buy by the bale and some buy it by the ton which are the advertised prices. Whatever you load up, haul across the scale to get an average weight since so many of these balers produce different size and weight bales. If you are lucky and even when the elevators aren't open, you can pull across the scale and peak into the window and see your weight. Depends upon where they are hiding their readout indicator. Since I was a kid, I always compared the hay brought to the state fair each year. Love the smell. To me the hay/alfalfa either all looked the same or the blue ribbon hay looked the worst to me. Go figure. I don't claim to much of a judge of good hay.
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