How's your hay situation this year?

[stormy]

It is unusual in our area to have problems finding hay. Normal price is about $3 a bale, right now hay is selling for around $9 on craigs list, round bales around $70. I am fortunate, have used the same suppliers for years and what I can get I am getting for the normal price but there has been no second cutting and have just begun to get a little rain. Fall will have to hold off to see any 2nd. Going to be a rough winter in Michigan, Indiana.

 

[Katiean]

I went and bought 1 bale of hay last week just to last until I could get hay. It was meadow grass and cost $14 a bale. I went yesterday to get hay for the month and The meadow grass was now $15 a bale. But, he had some hay that had sat in the feild just a bit long so it is bleached out on top. It was $11 a bale just because of how it looked on the outside. I bought 6 bales of the $11 hay and when I opened a bale it is the nicest hay I have seen in some time. I hope they still have the $11 hay when I go back next week to get some more.

 

[Equuisize]

In early July we picked up, in the field 2 1/4 T of local orchard grass @ $7 a bale/ .75 cents higher than last year.

Picked up a half of ton of last year's alfalfa from our other vendor@ 14 a bale / that's about his normal price year round.

Waiting on him to get his stock of this year's alfalfa and we'll be good for our 9 guys, as we have a bit left over

from last haying season.

Today it's 92 here...so far... hottest day since Aug 2010. Our fields did not brown out as I'd like them to so the kids

are still in the fat kid pastures.

Even though they've been mowed the big pastures have to much green grass that is waaay to high in sugars.

Normally by mid July we're out of the danger zone, as the grass has died down.

They graze freely all thru the fall and winter until about late February/early March and then we start watching for that

spring burst of green. They hate that.

 

[Riverdance]

I was lucky to have my farrier introduce me to a farmer who supplies hay all over Florida. With several semi trucks. His business is just hay. Coastal and perennial peanut hay( supposed to be as good as alfalfa). They were not taking on any more new customers, but they took me on. So I buy all of my hay from them. They have a HUGH building they store all of their hay in. My trailer is where I am storing all of my hay for now. It holds about 80 bales. When empty I just go to their farm and they stack it for me in the trailer. The costal grass is high in protein and my horses like it. The bales are $5.50 (up .50 from last year) the round bales are $45 (up $5.00 from last year). No worries of having any hay here.

 

[JAX]

Hey Jackie, ok here so far. Great hay and heavy bales at $6.50. Hope to get more but even if not I can buy from a place that irrigates.

I have been meaning to ask you about the hay I soak for my I R one. If I accidentally leave it soaking for 5-6 hours is it still good. Smells kinda smelly by then. I normally soak for an hour or 2, of course.

Hi Vickie,

$6.50 for great heavy bales huh?

Coastal? Hmmmmm just how far are you?

My coastal was $9.00 per bale. The Alfalfa bales are about 90lbs and running about $30.00. Best price on coastal rounds I can find are $75.00 and those are so much smaller than I have ever gotten before.

Wish I could answer your question better but I have not soaked hay so long that it had an odd smell to it so I cannot give you a good answer I'm afraid. First guess would be no I would not feed it. If I knew I would have to soak it longer than normal I would probably soak it inside or I would soak ahead of time and then leave it out to dry and then feed it when I got back. Once it has been soaked its perfectly fine to let it dry again before feeding as the extra sugar has already been soaked out of it. Of course I'm speaking only of grass hay, NOT alfalfa. alfalfa will go bad much too quick after it gets wet!

 

[little lady]

Well I was lucky and got my winter hay supply first part of June and so glad I did. For two string 60# alfalfa paid $5.00 a bale. "If" you can find hay now they are asking $9-10 for same hay. I normally feed hay October-late March early April. I have been feeding a bit of hay already to my Paint mare due to pastures being dried up. The mini's are getting a bit more complete feed and a few hay cubes for chewing satisfaction.

 

[Margo_C-T]

Drought is keeping prices high here. The guy I got my dovey fescue grass hay from last year raised his price by 50% a bale!! Bales sound like they are smaller, too(I called the guy who tends and bales the fields-he's not the owner, but is whose phone no. I was first given last year.) He told me the bales were 'maybe??' 50 lbs...so a double whammy. I stiil had a decent amount, so haven't bought any yet, but won't wait much longer, as I'm afraid he'll sell out. Have seen grass hay prices on craigslist ranging from $6 to $12/bale, but haven't seen any of it, so have no idea @ the quality or bale weights. I'm not using much alfalfa, so was able to get a few bales from a friend who went down and got a load from my longtime supplier(she's been buying from them too since I told her about them.) Price was up a lot from last year, though...$285/ton compared to $240 last year(and was even higher early in the season, @ $315/ton.)Sure do hope the drought will break soon and make things better for a LOT of people.

Margo

 

[Hosscrazy]

Hay is always gorgeous over here - no complaints!!! Fresh and green - always looks good!

Liz N.

 

[Miniv]

I think it's interesting that so many here buy hay by the bale.......

 

[JAX]

I think it's interesting that so many here buy hay by the bale.......

I would love to buy by the ton but have never come accross that. Makes more sense to me because the bales range in weight and size per bale.

 

[bluerogue]

I'm in northern California, and we also buy by the bale. If it's priced by the ton, it's still baled, you just get 20 bales (our bales are pretty much always around 100 pounds, 3 string). We feed twice a day, and go through about 16 bales or so a month. I believe we pay $10 or 11 a bale, but it is direct from the grower, and high quality hay. Feed stores are around $18-20, and the hay is definitely inferior.

We feed alfalfa, as our horses are picky, and will waste tremendous amounts of grass hay. The best grass hay I've ever found was a tri-forage of beardless wheat, oat, and barley. They LOVED that hay, never wasted a single stem of it. Ate it like it was candy. It smelled wonderful. Haven't been able to get it for a few years now. Hopefully he'll start growing it again, but it's not as big a money maker as the alfalfa (and less of a return, as it's a single cut hay- so only one cutting of it a year, where he gets 4-6 cuts of alfalfa).

Sadly, our grower went mostly to alfalfa, so that's what they get. Our grower is awesome... we don't have a lot of storage, so he does his best to keep a supply for us all winter long. If he runs short (almost always just a month or two before first harvest), we end up filling in the gap from the feed store, with lower quality hay (and the horses let us know about it!). He'll even bring in hay from out of state for us (and others, too), if he runs out too far from harvest and charge us what he's been charging. He's just a really awesome guy.

With my mom recently winning 1000 pounds of a local high quality pellet from the Western States Horse Expo in June, we're going to add in pellets, and hopefully cut down their hay usage a bit. It's a complete pelleted feed I've fed in the past, and had been happy with it. For various reasons, we've been hay only for a while now. I want to change their diet a bit, partly in hopes that it will help with weight management. Alfalfa is tasty, and all that, but holy cow have they put on the weight (and it really doesn't help when it's overfed, as well *sigh* the joys of having someone else feed and not listen).

 

[TPs flat rock acres]

I am in upstate ny and think its good so far

 

[vickie gee]

I would love to buy by the ton but have never come accross that. Makes more sense to me because the bales range in weight and size per bale.

Yeah, then my husband couldn't say, "Don't ask me to do another dang thing this week, I just stacked 80 bales of hay!"

Oh, and thanks for the additional advise on soaking the hay.

 

[rubyviewminis]

Last year we were able to buy wheat, oat, barley hay and the horses LOVED it. It smelled so good!

We had always bought or baled our own hay by the ton not bale. But the pesky ranchers here have 70# bales and try to claim they are 100#, or advertise $240 a ton good grass hay 22 to 25 bales a ton (for example) and when you start loading all of a sudden it is 21 or 22 bales is suddenly a ton. To us a ton of hay is 3 string 110# bales average, @ 18 in a ton. But I am not complaining, I am very grateful for the wonderful hay we scored last year and this year. When new people move here and advertise locally looking for horse hay, I email them and give them all of the places to avoid and to buy and try. When we moved here quite awhile ago, the horse people actually would NOT tell us where they got their hay! I couldn't believe it, the horses are the ones who would suffer. Sure makes me miss Colorado.

 

[Katiean]

My hay guy has the wheat/oat/barley hay. I looked at it when I picked up hay friday. It smelled great but I worried about the heavy stems (like straw but green) I like feeding the grass hay anyway because when I need to add things to the hay they won't get too fat. Well, too much fatter.

 

[happy appy]

I'm in central Ontario an the hay here is terrible. The lack of rain has made the yields almost half the norm. The only good thing is that the hay isn't stocky at all, it's very fine. Price runs about $3/50lb bale if you pick up from the field.

 

[rubyviewminis]

Katien you have a very valid point. I had forgotten that I could not feed that type hay to my two smallest minis because they had problems with the larger stem.

 

[Knottymare]

We're actually have a heck of a time...I have never paid over $3/bale fo hay. Normally it is 2.50 - 2.75...maybe $3 middle of winter. I just started calling about two weeks ago to get some more hay in and called most everyone on my hay list, craiglist ext and everyone wants $6-$10 / bale. Most are shipping and have sold their hay and have reserves on cuttings to come from folks west of us. I just got 100 bales for $7/bale...and told him I would like 100 out of the following cutting and he said I could have that for $7/bale as well. So I feel better knowing now that I will have hay.

WOW. I was paying $18/bale for 2 strand 95lb bales of Eastern WA Orchard grass... recently bought up a barn full of local grass that I really think had to stay uncut for a bit too long because of our wet, cool early summer. It smells good but it's not orchard grass. I can tell by the way the horses react to it that it isn't their fave.

I know that first cutting was lost to many people in E. WA this year because of rain on the Eastside. Going to be a bad year for hay and I hear with the loss of corn and other grain crops, bag feed will be up as well.

 

[mydaddysjag]

This year is the first time Ive been worried about hay in 15 years. Sure, I can find some on craigslist, but its first cut field grass, stemmy full of weeds and crappy looking at $5 a bale. Last year I bought second and third cut straight alfalfa at $3.50 a bale, stright second cut timothy at $3 a bale. Honestly, I let one of my bigger drylots grow grass and have been grazing them in that "pasture" all day right after their morning grain, and only giving hay in the evening. Im hoping I can put back some of my second cut from last year (I buy a years worth +25 extra bales each summer) and add soaked hay cubes to it to stretch my hay supply, I dont mind the prices as much as I mind the terrible quality of the hay Ive seen this year, we cant even find second cut. Im really picky about hay, and heck, all there is is first cut field grass that is as stemmy as straw.

 

[Field-of-Dreams]

We actually had a super cut off our field in June- 122 bales! If we could get some rain we could get another cut and maybe a third. I think we use about 200 bales a year plus rounders in the winter. We haven't heard anything from the lady we normally buy from, so we really need it to rain! We've sold quite a few horses, though, so that will help too.