Hay= the price of gold (or almost)

[Double T]

LOL Hazel, don't come any further west then!

I've been lucky in that all my mini hay has come from my family's fields so it's free except for the normal helping with this or that stuff. But ranch jsut ordered a turck load of Alfalfa for the big horses from N Dakota. Hoping it's better than the feed store big rounds we got a month ago, they were fine for our weaning calves (which is what we bought them for), but I wouldn't of started to feed them to horses, they stunk like a goat farm, and were all borwn and weedy. Hoping our small bales are a lot better kind (coming from a different source).

 

[Katiean]

I just bought hay friday. It was $15 a bale and the bales are getting smaller. I was getting 125-135 pound bales. Now they are maybe 100 pounds and they cost more. Oh well, I guess we gotta suck it up and pay it.

 

[topnotchminis]

I got some really good grass mix hay(timothy, and another can't remember) and it was 3.25 a bale and the bales are about 45Lbs

 

[Magic]

Hay is about 50% higher this year here than it was last year. We live in a rural area and are surrounded by hay fields, and raise some of our own hay, but we need so much hay and I prefer to use some of our fields as pasture that we need to buy a lot of it too. Our hay guy said that a lot of his previous hay customers sold off most or all of their cattle and/or horses because of the rising hay prices. He gave us a good deal on the hay we bought,which was very nice because between what we grew and bought we needed 50 tons of hay. I'm glad we had such a big hay barn built because it was absolutely full. Now we're making payments on hay. LOVE our hay guy! Hope he's around for a very long time.

 

[Marty]

If anyone out there is still hurting and can haul hay, I would be more than happy to provide some phone numbers of very good hay in Tennessee for about $3.00 a bale.

 

[HGFarm]

Ok here in AZ the timothy (with nothing else in it) is about $22.00 or more a bale. Always has been very high- these are 3 wire bales that are pretty heavy. The alfalfa is also 3 wire bales- probably 90 lbs each- it's running almost $16.00 a bale. Bermuda hay, which I use for bedding during foaling season because there doesnt seem to be much nutrition to it, is usually higher than alfalfa for some reason. No pasture here, just dry lots in the desert.

They need to STOP shipping it all to China..... two of the feed stores were out of hay completely a couple of weeks back.

 

[Marsha Cassada]

Ok here in AZ the timothy (with nothing else in it) is about $22.00 or more a bale. Always has been very high- these are 3 wire bales that are pretty heavy. The alfalfa is also 3 wire bales- probably 90 lbs each- it's running almost $16.00 a bale. Bermuda hay, which I use for bedding during foaling season because there doesnt seem to be much nutrition to it, is usually higher than alfalfa for some reason. No pasture here, just dry lots in the desert.

They need to STOP shipping it all to China..... two of the feed stores were out of hay completely a couple of weeks back.

We are shipping HAY to China?? What next!!?

 

[ohmt]

We ship a lot to China-the majority of our food exports are to china. Their increased demand for corn and soy bean meal is what has caused those prices to increase so much and because we use those for a very large portion of other food, a lot of other groceries increase in price. And then of course it causes our horse feed to increase in price. It will just keep increasing too. Reaching 7 billion is scary. We keep gaining numbers, but we get no more land, no more farmers, and no more animals. In the next 30-40 years we will have to produce more food than we have ever had produce EVER, combined! You add to that all of the new laws for animal welfare being passed and that decreases production (not saying i'm against or for it). I don't think we will ever reach 10 billion because we will never be able to feed them all unless someone invents some magic pill.

Ok-all done, sorry for the tangent! Just something I think more people need to be aware of. Did anybody see that the Duggars are expecting their 20th child? Ugh.

 

[HGFarm]

Shipping hay to China:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-09/hay-cheaper-to-ship-to-china-than-california-hits-dairies-freight-markets.html

It explains that they dont want to ship empty cargo boxes back to China from all the items they ship over here, so are filling them with hay and getting their money's worth on the cargo containers. And it's cheaper to ship to China than to California?!! What is wrong with this imbalance?!

It's a sad day here for sure when we can't even take care of our own country. Guess what's going to happen to the cost of milk and milk products when the dairies start going under, or are paying such ridiculous prices for hay?!

 

[Margo_C-T]

I have been told that export is a large part of the reason that even beet pulp goes way up in price at certain times; certainly that is happening around here now...beep pulp pellets hard to get AND notably pricier. I darn sure agree that we should not be shipping ANYTHING to China that we do not have an excess of over here!

ohmt, you bring up a very good point about the exploding world population. I have recently been thinking a LOT about this, not only due to the 'news' of the 7 billionith human being born(NOT a cause for celebration, IMO), but simply to looking around and seeing how 'congested' it is, almost everywhere you go. This IS a 'finite' planet; would life even be 'worth' living when we literally OVERRUN it w/ people??? Flame me if you must, but I strongly feel that the time is near, if not already here, that limits on how many children one can have should be instituted, across the globe!I don't LIKE that this seems necessary, but it seems to me the only choice to try to preserve SOME sort of decent quality of life, including sufficient food, for humanity on this planet going ahead.

As for the Duggars...while I admire their base values, I think it is EXTREMELY poor judgement to produce SO many children. When they were on the 'Today' show yesterday, I KNEW what their 'big news' would be, and deliberately turned it OFF when they came on....'they love kids', one TV person said...but they already have MORE THAN 'ENOUGH' of them to demonstrate their love for, wouldn't you think?! I really hope there is FINALLY a 'backlash' against their practice of endless production of offspring that will, at the least, get them OFF TV(I have NEVER watched them, BTW, because I was put off by learning about them back when they'd only 'cranked out' 14!

Margo, who remembers....

 

[Riverrose28]

I hate to say it but greed is killing us small farmers! When the guy died that owned the twenty acres next to me, it never made it to market. The real estate man bought it and sold it as estates. The land across the road from me went on the market being sold in five acre lots, when I called about the five acres across from me to add to my farm, I was told this land is too valuable for farm land. What the heck it has been farm land for 200 years, now all of a sudden it's too valuable? Well they sold the five acre lot to someone that built a house. :arg! Now our hay supplier has passed his property is for sale, guess what, it will go to a devoloper, all 50 acres as no farmer in this area can afford it. Some friends of mine live five miles away they went to a trail horse sale looking for a horse for some one else that was looking. They didn't buy, but, when they came out from the sale the people that were parked next to them had a stock trailer that wasn't locked. There were four horses in their trailer. They didn't buy any horses either, but just goes to show how desperate people are to feed and care for their horses. I didn't ask after hearing this, so don't know the outcome, but if this keeps up none of us will be able to feed our livestock.

 

[ohmt]

I sadly agree with you Margo, though I know it will never happen. What is going to happen is that we will hit a population plateau-we will stay right around the same number of people (it WILL be less than 10 billion) because we can not produce enough food to feed them all and we will see higher and higher numbers of people dying due to starvation and malnutrition (and other disease due to crowding).

Another growing export to China is beef-the past few years their demand for beef has inclined dramatically and it will continue to do so. They do not have the space to produce it so they must import it from other countries, including the US, of course.

This is a topic I very strongly encourage more people to become aware of. It scares me and the fact that the majority of people don't realize what is happening is also incredibly scary. Like Margo said, reaching 7 billion is NOT something to be happy or proud of. We have come a long way in production, but science and resources can not keep up with human reproduction.

 

[HGFarm]

I agree with you all and it's a sad state of affairs for sure! It's not just the exporting of hay. As to the Duggars, if they are so proud of a big family, go adopt some kids who have none, or do some community work to help those that are not so lucky or in need.

I also agree with the over crowding comment. Out in nature, when a species is overpopulated, something devistating- either starvation or a horrible disease that kills off a lot, happens to get the population back to a sustainable level. Somethings got to give and I hope my old life is over before that happens- I dont want to be here to see it... but I do think this world is done in regards to cramming any more people on it.