How many acres necessary to make it worthwhile to do your own haying?

[Jerry/MT]

This is my first year with hay in KY. I have a guy with a 組ood reputation in the area, however I have been very disappointed.

I have 20ac alfalfa/Orchard mix and 10ac Timothy. Also have about 50 more ac of pasture Orchard/KBG mix that needs to be either mowed or cut for hay.

I壇 much rather have someone do the work and split the results, however, the guy I have doing it now has let the alfalfa go to about 80-90% bloom for the first two cuttings. He is a nice guy when I catch him 1:1 but he doesn稚 return calls or texts.

I don稚 like the quality of the hay at that late bloom quality and I really don稚 like the lack of communication. He left several rounds on the ground and they killed the grass underneath. He ran over 2wk growth when picking hay out of the field creating a 喪oad where he drove. He could have removed them just after baling and the field would have been fine. Waiting like he did, there Inow have a long dead 喪oad where the regrow this dies. This road and bale dead spots will now just be weed locations that I will have to fight.

I can likely find another person to do the work, but I知 wondering where the likely reasonable point is, for purchasing equipment for small squares. I already have 100hp tractor but no haying equipment. I suspect I壇 need a mock, Tedder, rake, Baler, and accumulator. I have a hay wagon and wouldn稚 need a bale grapple for loading/unloading.

I think that my guy feels that the farm isn稚 as good of a deal since it isn稚 in his normal farming area. But he says 兎verything is fine. But he doesn稚 act like it I said so. I have a need for hay for 7 horses on my property which would only be about 25% of my farm production.

We have a 60 acre irrigated ranch and we have 20 acres in hay. We used to have this 20 acres custom hayed into round bales for our cows winter feed. It did not pencil out for me to buy a mower, rake, and round baler (~$15-$20K and good used equipment is extremely difficult to find where I live.)
Having sais this, the custom hay shakers did such a poor job putting up bales that I spent the feeding season forking hay out of the lanes to feed the cows. I was paying them to put good hay up and they put it up so dry, the hay bales fell apart on the way to feed. I finally had enough and bought my own equipment and did my own hay with excellent results. We sold the cows so now we sell our hay and we recently added a small square baler to see if we can develop a market for small squares for the horsey crowd.
Some, not all, of these custom hay guys seem to think they are doing you a favor to put up the hay you are paying them to put up. If you dare complain, they give you some lame excuse that it's the poor quality of your grass. In my case it means you bale in the morning or the evening to get the moisture up over 10% because of very low humidity conditions. Putting up good quality hay is not rocket science, especially where I live. (You guys in the east where the average annual rainfall is > than 40 inches per year have different situation than we do in the intermountain West.)

So if you have a custom hay guy that isn't responsive, get another. However I went through about four of them and they had good equipment. Their problem was they just didn't care. I'd seriously consider carefully buying some good used equipment and doing it yourself. You will have the willingness to learn how to do it correctly.

 

[ddbackhoe]

The bales go into an alcove in the barn and are stored there on the concrete floor. They are round side down during storage. With that slick concrete floor I can re-spot those bales easily with my 25hp CUT loader. They slide, I don't even need to roll them.

The "in-use" bale gets flipped on it's side, (carefully with the CUT loader, don't become a tiddly-wink!) flat side down, and the net wrap is peeled off. Peeling hay off of the roll couldn't be simpler, we just use a pitchfork, plunging down from the top and about 6 inches into the bale to peel off a section. How heavy that section will be depends how far along the circumference and how deep into the roll you plunge. My disabled wife has no problem at all doing this, and often as not, she's using hay that uncoiled from the roll and is resting against the floor.

My horse person could not agree more. We used to put small squares up in the loft and drop them down as needed. I now put 12 round bales out back for them to eat. We do have haying equipment but if I was buying, I'd still get the rounds, it makes things a little easier. For our operation, the equivalent is 20 squares (50-55#) to one round.

 

[TheMan419]

If you are going small squares an accumulator is almost a must. We need 1200-1500 small squares a year. Stacking all that by hand..... no thanks. The guy we buy from is a bit more money but I don稚 have to touch the hay.

 

[StuartDK45SE]

I have ten acres. My dad planted it in jiggs grass in the mid 90s I guess. He would fertilize and spray herbicide and the neighbor would make square bales out of it. All dad wanted was to be reimbursed for fertilizer and chemicals to keep his ag exemption. This worked well for many years and the hay was awesome. But eventually the people baling it changed several times, dad got to where he couldn't get the fertilizer etc. I guess the people eventually thought it the hay had been great with no reinvestment ever into it. This went on for several years and the fields rarely got fertilized. Fast forward, to a couple of years ago when I bought my sister out of her half of our late parent's estate.

I have all my equipment needed to make 4x4 round bales now. I have a guy round baling it this week and just taking it away for cows. Then I will fertilize and spray for weeds and hopefully get a good cut in October. It will take a few seasons to get it back to where it was, but it will get there. I romanticize about doing square bales one day, but it is just too much of a pain and horses will eat good hay no matter what shape it is in and people with a lot of horses usually have ways to handle and store round bales. I am confident that when I get it back up to snuff, I will have all of my hay presold. The demand here for good hay is high. (the economy is booming, with lots of folks buying places and getting horses so they can never ride them

 

[atsah]

It's funny to hear you southern guys talking about a good crop in October.. LOL I have frost in the ground in October.. Labor day is about as late as it gets for haying here and even then the nights produce a lot of dew, it's no easy to dry hay here is those conditions..

You guys have snakes and spiders, we have frozen tundra..

 

[StuartDK45SE]

It's funny to hear you southern guys talking about a good crop in October.. LOL I have frost in the ground in October.. Labor day is about as late as it gets for haying here and even then the nights produce a lot of dew, it's no easy to dry hay here is those conditions..

You guys have snakes and spiders, we have frozen tundra..

Lol. I think it was well into last November when we had our first frost. I'm on the Texas gulf coast about 15 miles as the crow flies from the Gulf of Mexico.

 

[joeu235]

My dad used to do some custom bailing. One customer kept going on and on about a few small places where the grass was left uncut because of fire ant hills and a little grass not raked. Mind you my dad was a very particular operator. He finally told the customer he could write my dad a $120k check and my dad would leave all the equipment so the customer could do it himself. That customer never got bailed again.

Another guy called up demanding my dad cut his hay that day because it was scheduled. My dad responded there was an 80% chance of rain tomorrow and it was a really bad idea. The customer insisted, so my dad told him he'd cut if he got paid immediately for the cutting. The next day there was an inch of standing water on the field. Customer told my dad he needed to come out an "fix" the siruation

Not making excuses for bad operators in your area but it's a hard way to make money

 

[joeu235]

If you are going small squares an accumulator is almost a must. We need 1200-1500 small squares a year. Stacking all that by hand..... no thanks. The guy we buy from is a bit more money but I don稚 have to touch the hay.

We put up 950 bales in one afternoon with no accumulator last year. My mom, me, and 3 helpers. It was a very long day. Last trailer was loaded with head lamps.

 

[TheMan419]

We put up 950 bales in one afternoon with no accumulator last year. My mom, me, and 3 helpers. It was a very long day. Last trailer was loaded with head lamps.

Yeah no thanks. I am so glad to find the guy with all the equipment to do it with out having to buck by hand.

 

[EddieWalker]

I need about two round bales a month. I only buy second cutting and for the last few years, I've been able to buy horse quality hay for $50 a bale. My challenge is in finding somebody that I can consistently buy from. It's been very frustrating. The last guy decided to sell all of his equipment and travel more. I've had to spend a lot of time finding another supplier that isn't an hour away. If I was wiling to drive forever, it wouldn't be an issue, but i'm looking for long term, with good quality. I've found two sources this year less then a mile away. Why is it so hard to find these people when they are so close to me is a true mystery!!!

For my needs, and only buying 30 bales a year, there is no way to justify spending the money on equipment to do it myself. One of my suppliers says that he bales 20,000 bales a year. The other just owns the land and he gets one third of what is baled for himself in exchange for the guy doing all the work, spraying, and fertilizing his fields. I buy from his one third and it's really nice stuff, but it's mixed and I only get the find bladed coastal bermuda from him. He holds those bales to the side for me.

Since you have the tractor, why not just use it to move the bales out of your field after they are baled yourself? Maybe renegotiate your split with the guy doing the baling for a few more bales to cover your time? My guess is that he is working 20 hour days to get it done on as many properties as he can, and he probably wants the bales out of the field so he can get more hay the next time, but there isn't enough hours in the day to get it all done.