Price of hay where you live.

[Podunkadunk]

Bought 7, 1000-1200lb round bales of Tifton 9 Bahia a little over a month ago. Paid $40.00 a bale and I picked them up directly from his field. Really good looking hay, very dense bales.

Podunk

 

[chetlenox]

As a few folks from Texas have already mentioned, we've gotten quite a bit of rain down here and production has been high. The drought prices of last year (>$10/bale) has settled into something on the range of $3-4 for cow, $5-6 for high quality coastal bermuda hay (at least for me in North Texas). I put up ~1900 square bales and sold at a price of $3-4 for my 1st cut (winter grasses), $5 second cut, $6 third cut. I've got a whopping 40 bales left in the top of my barn, so those prices moved the hay pretty well and it won't be long before we are done for the year. My customers are almost exclusively horse folks.

I do see a lot of round bales out in the fields around here in North Texas, and it seems like round bale prices are a little softer (~$30/bale) than square bales. I have a sneaking suspicion that with all that rain, there is also a pretty good stock of poor quality (baled wet) hay on the market. I guess the quality level probably doesn't matter quite as much for those big round bales, since many are fed to cows.

I would like to point out that the USDA has a great service were they provide weekly price reports on hay in certain areas of the country, and those reports can be found at:

Hay Reports

I look at the report weekly (it's published every Friday) and have found their comments on supply/demand, weather, production levels, etc. to be pretty much dead-on for my area. I use it, my local newspaper, and Craigslist to set the "going price" for hay in my area.

Chet.

 

[lug nut]

Click on the "My Home" hyperlink at the top of the forums page. Go to "Edit Profile" and scroll down to the "Additional Information" section. Fill in the "Location" block and it should appear under your name.

Thanks for the info, Jim.

 

[deere755]

Here in central Illinois I just priced some ok quality hay at $5.25 and good hay at $5.75. Grass hay is bringing $5 a bale. People are buying what ever they can get. There does not seem to be much of a difference in price this year in grass hay and alfalfa hay. A lot of people have bailed up corn stalks here also. This something you don't see alot of in my area.

 

[WVaHillbilly]

I could make more money selling hay then I could raising cattle.

 

[Rara Avis]

Afternoon HillBilly,
We usually do two cuts a year, everybody wants the second cut ! You can buy squares all day up here for $2.00, maybe even cheaper if you give the farmer a song and a dance !

That's real funny, everyone in Chittenden County want my first cut...$3.00per...

My primary fields' second cut this year was chopped by a dairy farmer...

That included me loaning him one of the other hay fields which he chopped twice, because he is in a big need for silage...Hopefully he will have slowed down the milkweed population in that field...

 

[sandman2234]

I wish I knew somebody that was interested in cutting hay on 26 acres in south Georgia. It is too far for me to do the upkeep and I hate to see the property unattended. Not worht buying the equipment to do it, because outside of a tractor, I don't have any haying equipment.
David from jax

 

[shvl73]

Are those considered Imperial Bales as in Imperial Gallons ???

They're just regular old squares. Not metric . They do bale some nice hay up there though.

 

[Georgia Boy]

I wish I knew somebody that was interested in cutting hay on 26 acres in south Georgia. It is too far for me to do the upkeep and I hate to see the property unattended. Not worht buying the equipment to do it, because outside of a tractor, I don't have any haying equipment.
David from jax

Sandman, where in south Georgia is the 26 acres?

 

[EastTexFrank]

I don't know about square bales but there are round bales (1200 lbs) stacked all over the place in East Texas. The average price is around $25 with a low of $20 and a high around $35. Afer the drought of the last 2 years, our rainfall is about 18 inches above normal this year. Our first cutting was pretty ugly, had to be baled wet, but the second was pretty good. We got so much that we didn't even bother with a third cutting ... no place left to store it.

The problem here this year was getting somebody to cut it and bale it for you. So many people got out of the business in the last two years of drought that there just wasn't enough to go round. It was such a hassle that we are talking about getting our own equipment and doing it ourselves next year. At least that way we can pick and choose when it gets done and we are not working to someone else's timetable.