I've been doing the math/research on this as well. We have 20 acres and the horses don't eat it all..so why not turn 10 in a hay field instead of just mowing it all to keep the weeds down?
Low end - can get a (broken) baler, $300. Saw a haybine (rollers shot,but will cut) for $600. Tedder and rake...$1000? So say 2500 gets the equipment.
We spend about $4k a year on hay, so this looks pretty good so far, right?
Well...I mow 5 times a year, say 7 hours, $20/fuel each time - $100 and 35 hours.
To hay it I'll have to cut, ted, rake, bale, pick up the bales - three times a year. so 45 trips thru the fields instead of 5. More fuel, more time by far. Maybe what, $300 in fuel? 100 hours total? 200? If my time has a dollar value of $15 say, that's 1500-3000 dollars in labor....plus fuel, equipment capital...and keep reading as the work continues.
Currently we do no pasture maintenance...if we want good quality hay we'll have to kill weeds, add fertilizer, perhaps over seed. Cost? Didn't figure this yet - and I have no equipment for any of these tasks.
Biggest drawback - currently we get good horse hay at $3.75/bale, delivered and stacked. We get about 100 bales per delivery. Without haying our 10 acres I can't say for sure how much hay we'll harvest, but if we buy 1000 bales a year (plus some rounds in the winter) I think we can get 1000 off our 10 acres. BUT that is mixed cuttings...the wife prefers first cutting to feed the horses. So we MAY still have to buy hay..or sell some.
the issues is STORAGE - if we bale we'll get perhaps 400 bales from the first cutting. We can store MAYBE 200 in the barn...and we'll add to those on the second cutting...and maybe some for the third - we could need to store 800-1000 bales of hay. So we need to invest in some sort of building/hoop house for storage. More costs there.
And I'll have to stack all that hay.
So..the math isn't working out so well on doing our own hay.
Oh, the baler for $300? Out of time is all. Our farrier does his own hay and it broke during harvest - he's a busy guy, spent a day and a half working on it, but had to get the hay in so he bought a new baler and the old one is just sitting. Why fix it if the new one works great, right?
So there is a 'hidden' cost to used equipment - it can break, and of course it only breaks when you're using it, and you're only using it cause you must get the job done.
Seems easier to buy our hay...