Hay

Does anyone have a sheet for figuring cost of baling hay? Got one from ext. office for corn years ago, but none for hay. Trying to pencil our cost this year....up up and away!!!!!

I would love to see this too. I am in the same situation. I started the other post on Round Bale Hay Prices to hopefully get responses from around the country to get some average prices.
Thanks
Scott

I received two replys from my post yesterday. One man live in Canada (to far to get for me) and the other I liked the price, $75 a bale. Not sure if I can get that yet out of the field.
Later

You could try a simple spreadsheet like this....

Equip Cost Life Yrlycost Bales Cost/bale
Cutter 2000 5 400 3000 0.13
Rake 1200 10 120 3000 0.04
Baler 6000 10 600 3000 0.20
Tedder 3500 10 350 3000 0.12
Tractor 3000 5 600 3000 0.20
Fuel 600 1 600 3000 0.20
Fert 2500 1 2500 3000 0.83
Twine 179.94 1 179.94 3000 0.06
Landrent2500 1 2500 3000 0.83
Maint 1000 1 1000 3000 0.33
Labor 400 1 400 3000 0.13
Wagons 1500 10 150 3000 0.05


3.13

My problem was figuring out a cost on tractor. Bought a 66 JD4020.. it might break or might not, i figured if I can get it to last 5 years at minimum I could sell as salvage....

To me this cost seems reasonable... Others are more than welcome to pick it apart...

Joe, do you have a exel spreadsheet you did that on? That would be nice to have.

I have a spreadsheet that I made similar to this. I was hoping there was something more detailed, possibly through one of the ag schools, that gave details on determining useful life for equipment and things like that. The things like maintenance get me. We blew a tire on the tractor yesterday. It would have blown out whether we were working hay or anything else. Do I charge it all to hay? That doesn't seem fair. Do I not charge any of it to hay? That makes an inaccurate calculation. So what percentage do I charge to the hay process? Things like that are what I would like more information on.

Well, technically, what percentage is your hay business. Mine is easy as that is all i do(besides some bushhogging and snow pushing in winter, I give those to myself for free).

If 1/2 your acreage is hay then half...of course you could do it by tractor hour as well, maybe 1/2 acerage on hay takes 3/4 of tractors hours in a year. Many things depends and am not sure there is one correct way to do it.

A number of my estimates were just that esitmates. The one year costs(fuel, fert, labor,etc) are pretty solid numbers. But after that, it is all an estimate. Be honest about your equipment. My Tedder is new(should last 10 years maybe more), baler is a JD327 with low numbers through it, it should last 10 years(this is year 5 without an issue yet), Rake has been around for a long time not much to go wrong with it(should last 10 years), Tractor has 6600 hours will it need a rebuild or split job...who knows. Hay cutter, well it is worn, but works, has a weld or two(on an aluminum hydraulic motor housing) it may last 5 years(this will be year two).

Based on what you do with your equipment and what kind of shape it is in, make your best guess. I try not to be too conservative or optimistic on values and how long it will last...

I was thinkling about this my self. But then decided I really didnt want to know.
If I did maybe I might decide to do some thing that costs less.