Coming Hay season, hay prices, business plans.

I was going to reply to the hay price post, but I thought I'd start a new post about people's hay plans in general.

I'm trying to grow my hay business. I'm small time here in PA, but trying to get bigger. I've been making hay for years (for our own herd, and with my dad on his farm when I was a kid), but didn't start seriously selling it until last year. Sold over 3000 bales at $2.50 each last summer, hope to double the output this year. But will the market be there?

I have two main markets:
Horse people - I make very good quality hay
Mulchers (oil & gas contractors)

Here in NW PA, there was a lot of oil and gas exploration last year. Don't know what it will be this summer. This is a perfect example of the price of oil directly affecting me as a businessman. If oil can stay above $50 per barrel, the dillers will continue drilling and the contractors will need mulch. I could have sold twice as much mulch last year, but I just ran out of hay!

Another area is alpaca people. I was talking to a guy who has alpacas, and he was telling me he's pay $4 per bale for straight orchard grass hay, and so would every alpaca person he knew. Better for their coats. Thinking about planting a field of orchardgrass.

What are your plans???

Maybe since I have begun addressing my diabetes I will have more energy during this growing season. I still need more storage, and may address that in late April depending on financials. I"m smaller than you are, and see no expansion until I can get more storage. I only have one buyer now because thats all I can supply, but I don"t keep hay long. This is the first time I have carried hay this late into the winter, and thats because I was able to store more last year in the buildings I had. Market should still be here a while I think.

I don't understand how anyone can sell hay for $2.50 a bale and figure the expense of spray,fertilizer,land rent or tax if you own the land,cost of baling,hauling and storing,my pencil quits working when I try to figure that.I sell for $4.00 for clean fertilized protein at least 12% good color and make a little per bale but sell all I can put up.Feed stores around here get $7.00 a bale and I sell to them also.

Here outside of Albany N.Y. Quality hay is real scarce right now. We make a 40 -45 pound grass mix bales and sell the horse quality for $4.00 per bale and our mulch we sell for $2.50 per bale. With fuel prices as high as they were last summer that probably isnt charging enough, with everything that is involved. The last 10 years we move everything we make usually around 8000 per year. So I dont see any change coming next year.

I haven't had to lime & fertilize...yet. The land I use is, for the moment, free. We make a good grass mix hay with Timothy in it. I drop hay in the field for the horse people to pick up, or I usually only need one or two hired hands (high schoolers), who I pay $8 per hour, to ted, rake, or stack on the wagon behind the baler, when I sell to the mulchers.

Using these parameters, I'm able to make a bale for a little less than $.40 per bale.

...but not really, as last year I invested quite a bit into equipment. But I'll be able to depreciate that.

If I have to start leasing land, I think I'll have to go up to $3 per bale.

I'm going to push production hard in my existing grass hay fields. With nitrogen prices down, and P and K still up, the alfalfa seed I bought last year is sitting on a pallet until fall. Also selling my accumulator, as Im seeing a real lid on square bale prices at the 5.00 mark. Probably not one of my better moves, but I bought it new and only used it the day they brought it and set it up. Figure it should bring 80 percent or so of what I gave. At 5.00 or below for small squares, Ive sold everything I could grow, at over 6.00 its just what people need to get by.

Figure in a nutshell, I want to keep alfalfa/grass and timothy square production constant to a normal year or slightly reduced since I'll probably roll my second cutting. For rolled hay, figure constant production of alfalfa/grass mixes, increase straight alfalfa in the roll, and increase grass hay as much as I biologically and economically can.

What brand accumulator did you buy hayman? How did you like it?

Kuhn's and I loved it. Its a 10 bale, on edge. I looked at all of them and it seemed like way more machine for the money. Everything that they say about them is true in their advertising. For me, I had planned on a Hoelsher but the thought of all those hydraulic hoses draped over the baler.............. With this one its all gravity. I figure it will find a good home with somebody, lol. When they told me to take the spring pressure off the bale I was a little hesitant, but they were right. The weight of the bales in the chute make them perfectly tight and sized every time.

A perspective from a very part time low volume square bale producer in Ohio- last year I was deluged with requests because of a KY/IN/western OH dry spell. Not so at all this year. I am worried I might have to darn near give my small squares away. There just does not seem to be much interest. For the past 3 weeks or so, the local weekly farm paper which circulates in the OH/PA/WV area has had more "hay for sale" ads in it than I can remember in a long time. Advertised prices for squares range from $5 to $2.75 (most don't actually list a price), and I'll bet the $5's are not moving much. I've tried a bit of on-line advertising, even the scammers have seemed to have gone away! If you don't have the scale (big storage, big capacity equipment, big ground) it's tough to make it work on $3.50 a bale assuming you want to produce good hay. As I ease in middle age I wonder why I do it.

There just is no market for high quality hay in North Louisiana anymore. People feed their horses $12.00 per bag ''sweet'' feed and don't know that it is mostly by-product and filler, then the same people want square bales for $1.50 - $2.00. The average person I deal with doesn't have a clue about livestock nutrition let alone any idea about what a particular feedstuff is worth. Even people that own cows buy the cheapest hay they can find, unfertilized, over mature crap, and then they pay $350.00 per ton for liquid supplement. I guess if you were selling to Dairys or feedlots where the user knows what they are paying for you could still make some money at it.

Where in NW PA are you located?

funny how things go. been running hoelscher unit for years and went to kuhn last season and so far its been joke period. 50 bales all last season is all that went thru,put the hoelsacher back on and went to the field. going to have to dig both units back out soon to see which I keep. the kuhn bales would not slide down after going u the chute and the chute was cutting about every bale. As far as tenesion release yes that is a must,funny thing is I ran the bale basket wagons for years and loved them but this unit is same frame and chute but sure no comparison yet well see

are you looking for accumulator have unit for sale if that helps

A few comments:

1) It's always interesting to see how regional the hay business is. To me, it's amazing how producers in one area can be doing great and others in another (sometimes just a few hundred miles away) can be doing poorly. I guess it's too be expected since the weather so strongly drives how much (and how high of quality) hay is produced.

As for here in North Texas, things seem pretty solid. It looks like we've finally worked through the huge volume of (mostly bad) hay produced from Spring/Summer 2007 and last year's relatively good crop from Spring/Summer 2008. It was amazing how many rounds piled up from 2007! My squares sold briskly in the fall at $5-6/bale. Kinda wished I'd saved more, I've started getting calls on folks that have run out this winter.

2) I think most folks around here seem to understand the value of feeding good hay to their horses. Although I definitely agree they don't always like the price! My wife and I attended a horse nutrition course last year in Wichita Falls and two professors from A&M emphasized over and over how it was actually cheaper to spend a little more for good quality hay (higher protein content) and supplement less then to buy the cheap hay and supplement more. I wish I could find the presentation they posted online, it had lots of good data.

3) My plans for this year:
February - Complete my winter maintenance on equipment
End-of-February - Pick-up new baler (JD 428) ordered last month
Mid-March - Test my soil to figure out what I'm going to fertilize with
Start of May - Bale my first cutting (winter grasses) - Fertilize
Start of June - Bale my second cutting (Coastal Bermuda) - Fertilize again
Start of July - Bale my third cutting (Coastal) - Fertilize again
Start prayin' for rain...

At least, those are my plans if all goes well.

Chet.

You have an advantage being in the NE area. I was born and raised in MA and we had a dairy and a feed store. The last couple of years I was involved (2004), good timothy alfalfa bales were bringing $6-7. If you can make good solid bales you always have the option to ship them to a feed store, dairies or horse people. We used to buy about 10 or so semi loads from Upstate NY or Canada every year. The other bonus you have in that area, is selling your low quality hay as "mulch". Around here we have alot of straw in round bales that construction crews will shred for ground cover and I hardly ever see small bales used for erosion control...So as long as you can get thru the down times you should always be able to do ok with hay IMHO.....Jim

Rick, What is the accumulator you have for sale?? Do you have any bale baskets for Sale? I would like to find a couple of baskets. If I remember you are in IA right??....Thanks, Jim

I did the numbers and was shocked on my cost per bale once you include depreciation. I really am working for darned near free until my equipment is paid off.

hay takes out a lot of fertility. You wont be growing hay for long without fertelizer and for 2.50 or 3.00 a bale their isnt much point in it anyway. Do the rest of us a favor and get a job

Is your kuhn hay accumilator still for sale? I am in the market for one. please e mail price and unit size. [email protected]

sounds like you are selling quality hay pretty cheap to horse people. I'm in northern MD near PA line, and usually sell Orchardgrass small squares for $4.50, but this year has been more competetive due to good rains and production and it seems I need to keep prices down to move the hay. I've had better luck selling nice clean Orchardgrass squares at $3.75 to $4.00 to horse people. I square bale my first cutting in mid-May and round bale 2nd and 3rd cutting for my cattle friends at $35/bale for 4x5 size. Most alpaca people around here prefer Timothy to Orchardgrass. Good Luck and keep us posted.

Finn

chetlenox,
Your outlook for the hay business In N Texas is a lot more optimistic than mine. If it doesn't start raining soon I'll be lucky to cut 1 cutting by August! BTW what town are you closest to? I'm outside of Cleburne.

Well last year we baled all rounds and and squares by request with the intention of rebaling the rounds into squares to save time and labor during the season...bad idea. Now we have a ton of rounds we can't sell and rebaling didn't work our so now we are doing as many small squares as we can stand next year. Also runnin 2 small square balers and upgraded to a 10ft hydroswing amd case 5000 windrower to hopefully get it mowed in timely manner. Hoping to catch goat sheep and horse owners in our area.

Ha! Yeah TxJim, maybe I am.

I'm in Venus, so just right up the road from you. My pasture is dry, for sure, but the growing season hasn't started yet. I have faith! Could be worse, the boys down in Central Texas have it a lot worse than we do...

http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/DM_state.htm?TX,S

I'm just pleased we have finally burned through a lot of the excess hay in the last few months. Now if Spring just fires up some rain starting next month, we'll be all set!

Chet.

Buddy, maybe you're just trying to get me going - but I don't really appreciate your attitude. I can farm, make hay, do whatever. Kind of my right as an American. And by the way, I have two other jobs besides part-time farmer.

Anyway, my pricing is in line with others in my area, some of whom sell 2 or 3 times more than me.

And I understand what you're saying about fertilizer - I probably cut a whole lot more ground than I need to get my production.

Jared M,
I'm not promoting unrolling rd's and square baling them but what was your problem. I have a neighbor that does this quite often. One thing that needs to be done is unroll rd bale backwards from direction it was rolled. He uses a 3pt unroller on a tractor. A sq baler with a wide pick-up is required. If I happen to have one that twine is messed up on while baling I just turn around and use frt tire of tractor to unroll bale. Rebale,tie and eject. Hay can't be real low moisture to re-bale or it will crumble. I'm referring to Coastal Burmuda.