2nd Cutting Finished - North Texas

[chetlenox]

Callen,

It sounds like we are in about the same boat. We sold our 1st cutting of Rye and clover bales for $4/bale, and our 2nd cutting of Coastal (with some Rye mixed in still) for $6/bale. We have some of that same problem with folks baling up weeds and selling it cheap. But I think the folks that sell round-bales have it worse, most of the "weed bales" are round bales, and I see a lot for sale for $20/bale around here. I'm guessing that square bales are too much work (ie, manual labor) to do too much of that (although I still see it on occasion).

I really feel for you with those fertilizer prices, I thought my $450/ton for ammonium sulfate was bad, you mentioned in the other thread that you are at $900/ton! Wow. That's bad. A those rates you are definitely going to have to raise your prices. I haven't been doing this long, so I don't really know what I'm doing, but you'll have to hope that folks that know horses can tell the difference in the hay. You should probably test and advertise the protein content if you too, to try and differentiate yourself from the "weed bales".

Chet.

 

[EddieWalker]

I just saw an ad on craigslist for square bales in Sulpher Springs at $3 each. I'm sure it's all weeds, but I just buy them for hay rides and errossion control. I won't drive an hour to save a buck a bale, but that's the cheapest that I've seen square bales. I usually pay $4 each for bermuda/bahia mix.

Great pictures and comentary. I'd never get into haying myself, but sure do enjoy hearing about it from those of you who are working the fields. It's very interesting, but too much work for me.

Eddie

 

[callen]

chet,

Being new to the hay business the number one thing to watch is your overhead!!
ex. fuel, labor, fert., herbicides,your personal time

The main thing is to produce a good quality bale without going over your budget.

From experience I think the future is going to be square bales. Because ther is not going to be many big farms. Its what I call weekend farmers is the future. What I mean by that is city folks is buying 5-30 acre traks of land from your old family farms that cant make it in this econmy. This is the ones that buy a couple horses, cows and some goats etc.. These types of people have steady jobs and do farming as a hobby. Because a farmer cant make it on farming alone.

I hope all of this makes since. Im not a big computer person, I just wanted to make some comments.

I wish you luck with your hay. I hope you have another job or you going to be broke like me. If you have any questions just let me know.

callen

 

[chetlenox]

Callen,

Thanks for the tips (and encouragement). I agree completely on your comment to watch my costs, I think that is really good advice.

I also agree with your sentiment on good quality square bales being ideal for the hobby farmer (both as a producer as well as consumer) and probably a product with a solid future. My place is smack dab in the type of location you are talking about, a bit out of town (30 minutes drive to Ft. Worth, 10 minutes drive to one of it's suburbs) and generally populated with folks on 10-50 acres and a house. Folks with a good non-farm job and a couple of horses to feed are at least 70% of my customers, and I imagine that will go higher rather than lower.

As for me, I do this as a hobby and to keep my Agricultural exemption on my property taxes. Don't get me wrong, I'm working to try and make the whole deal as profitable as possible, but as I'm in the "start-up" phase, it isn't anywhere close right now. I have already commented at least 3 or 4 times to my wife "it's a good thing I'm not trying to pay the mortgage with this". The times that come to mind is when I'm standing in the rain watching my hay get ruined, I'm standing in front of a broken peice of equipment holding an (expensive) broken part, or I'm driving back from the fertilizer store with my trailer of (expensive) fertilizer to spread.

Eddie, yep $3/bale seems to be the bottom-of-the-barrel right now around here. It feels to me (just watching the adds in Craigslist and the newspaper and reading the USDA hay market report) that most of the decent square bales from last year have finally sold out and it is mostly 2008-cutting hay being sold now (although that doesn't guarantee it will be any good I guess). Still lots of round-bales left over from last year though, I see the adds and the bales in my neighbors fields. With all that rain we had last year, there just was a ton of hay put up. Hope those guys can get rid of it. I'm guessing that if diesel wasn't $4.50/gallon, it would already have been put on a truck and sent to Georgia and the Carolinas to help with the drought.

Chet.

 

[ddivinia]

Storage of square bales is the biggest issue. By the ton, squares is the way to go. I am looking at options to do squares on my place or maybe bale up in rounds and convert it to squares as demands dictates.

D.

 

[slowzuki]

I have a heck of a time getting 3$ a bale for my hay and its delivered. People are telling me they can still get squares for 1.50$. Thats 1985 prices.

 

[jimg]

O yes...there was a fellow here selling his hay for $3/sm sq recently. Of course it was all snapped up in a heart beat. The prob w/ farmers here is they dont do any cost analysis on which to base prices. Then they wonder why they cant make ends meet. I suppose you could sell hay for $3 if you did no management, had a diesel/oil tree out front, carried no insurance and had a ready supply of free parts for your machines.

 

[ddivinia]

O yes...there was a fellow here selling his hay for $3/sm sq recently. Of course it was all snapped up in a heart beat. The prob w/ farmers here is they dont do any cost analysis on which to base prices. Then they wonder why they cant make ends meet. I suppose you could sell hay for $3 if you did no management, had a diesel/oil tree out front, carried no insurance and had a ready supply of free parts for your machines.

I think I will graze some of my hay fields out instead of baling. There is a lot of hay left over from 2007. I am more trying to get hay for the winter and get my pastures cleaned up at this stage.

D.

 

[mark.r]

I was just quoted 5.25/bale delivered for 100 bales. It was just cut yesterday.

 

[jimg]

My area isnt one of those that had any left over....in fact even in good yrs its hay deficit. Last yr was particularly bad and considerable hay was trucked in. This yr while better (rain-wise) is still hard b/c fields came into the yr in such bad condition. Even so all input prices have gone thru the roof.