2019-2020 Hay Pricing ?

[chevytaHOE5674]

Wrapping hay also costs a bit extra, you need bodies to be able to get hay hauled and wrapped in timely fashion, if hauling far you are hauling a lot of water weight around, then you have a mess of plastic to dispose of.

Having said that I custom bale for a guy that inline wraps everything. Since he isn't baling all he has to do is haul and wrap, but for one guy 100 bales is about all he can haul and wrap in a day. I can easily bale 2x that amount but unless he has help he is holding me up.

When I have to rake/bale/haul/wrap myself 100 bales a day is a pipe dream. So depending on your volume wrapping gets to be tedious and costly.

 

[Stocker Steve]

I have done the math on hay shed payback. I should go back and estimate to how much the rained on hay cost me (before baling) last year.

There is one local guy who does custom wrapping with his wrapper. He charges by the bale and uses your loader tractor.

 

[Rydero]

Wrapping hay also costs a bit extra, you need bodies to be able to get hay hauled and wrapped in timely fashion, if hauling far you are hauling a lot of water weight around, then you have a mess of plastic to dispose of.

Having said that I custom bale for a guy that inline wraps everything. Since he isn't baling all he has to do is haul and wrap, but for one guy 100 bales is about all he can haul and wrap in a day. I can easily bale 2x that amount but unless he has help he is holding me up.

When I have to rake/bale/haul/wrap myself 100 bales a day is a pipe dream. So depending on your volume wrapping gets to be tedious and costly.

Don't forget in most cases bales have to be made smaller so there's more of them to haul and feed. It's harder on your baler, loader and whatever you're hauling the bales on. I spent years not wrapping and wondering why people did so I gave it a try on some greenfeed. Baled up the field and started hauling. Bale picker was going to twist itself apart hauling those heavy bales, end up hauling them off a couple at a time w/ the tractor. Had time cause the custom guy blew a wheel bearing on the wrapper and couldn't get there till the next day. Bunch of extra time sensitive work, stress and expenses. It's a tool to use if the weather won't allow you to put it up dry not something to do on a regular basis if you don't have a dairy or army of workers. In most cases the protein content of the baleage will exceed the requirements of your cow and she'll poop it out. If you're going that direction why not get custom guys in to chop silage so you get more feed and eliminate work?

 

[1wlimo]

My plan is to plant crop to swath graze all winter. Will have some hay on stand by. I have ground that is just not as productive as it should be. No-till in a cereal crop that will get its roots into the soil and make way for better soil structure. Going forward will move to corn grazing, then calving on stockpiled grass. If hay is cheap I will buy it in and animals to eat it to improve my ground.

A hay shed to carry hay into a bad year is I believe essential. Not in my budget just yet. i need to buy ground to get to a viable cow number, plus improve the ground I have.

 

[1wlimo]

Silage is often cheaper to obtain, but it takes more equipment and labor to feed it. Canadians seem to love grazing standing corn. I don't think they have to worry about acidosis or mud in the far north.

If you have your silage on dry ground you can limit feed it with an electric wire, no need to load it. Cuts down on the machine costs, but causes other problems.

 

[Banjo]

Looks like wrapping hay dry would be much more economical than building a hay shed.....

 

[Stocker Steve]

Looks like wrapping hay dry would be much more economical than building a hay shed.....

You see some interesting hay sites here. One has a big hay shed between two fields, with inline wrapped round bales on both sides the hay shed. :nod: The hay shed is partially full of equipment and big squares.

A new development is building "drying sheds" for large squares of alfalfa. Not sure what the payback is, but dairy quality alfalfa is currently selling for U$S 2/point at auction. Hay shed economics get very clear as hay price increases.

I tried to get some estimates of what cow hay will be worth next winter. Feel free to chime in. My not so scientific survey results were:
- $5 per bale higher than average
- depends on the amount of winter kill
- too much
- $100 per ton

Where it really gets ugly is for grass finishing folks who buy their hay in...

 

[Jogeephus]

Don't see it changing here except for the little guy who wants a roll delivered on Sunday.

 

[M-5]

Don't see it changing here except for the little guy who wants a roll delivered on Sunday.

I need to double my price to recoup losses from hurricane Michael . Its impossible to get tho.

 

[Stocker Steve]

As bean n corn guys try to make it up with volume. and medium dairies drop out (they may sell hay for a couple years after the cows leave, but they usually end up on the grain train at some point), and big summer rain events increase - - there is less hay in this country.

 

[Dave]

I was just talking to the neighbor. He is basically out of hay and we are a month from turn out. Hay is hard to find and expensive this year. He said that he turned down some hay today. They wanted $210 a ton (plus trucking) for meadow grass hay. He said he has a couple big pastures with a fair amount of sorry dead last year grass on them. Before paying $210 for that hay he would turn them out and make them rough it through until green up.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Bedding is scarce too. Mid sized diaries use a lot of outside bedding packs. Cows have no shed - - so they have used an unusual amount so far this year.

 

[Aaron]

I was just talking to the neighbor. He is basically out of hay and we are a month from turn out. Hay is hard to find and expensive this year. He said that he turned down some hay today. They wanted $210 a ton (plus trucking) for meadow grass hay. He said he has a couple big pastures with a fair amount of sorry dead last year grass on them. Before paying $210 for that hay he would turn them out and make them rough it through until green up.

Throw them out on that old grass with protein tubs and they will do fine.

 

[skyhightree1]

Hay prices here have been trending up here since last summer. Folks expect hay prices to drop (a little) this year. Talking heads are projecting an average reduction of $10/ton for hay. That is still too high for my budget. What adjustments are you making to prepare for overwintering during 2019-2020?

I kept 11 cows just sold one now 10 i still have about 300 rolls leftover from last year so I think im in good shape for a while :cowboy:

 

[Rydero]

Hay prices here have been trending up here since last summer. Folks expect hay prices to drop (a little) this year. Talking heads are projecting an average reduction of $10/ton for hay. That is still too high for my budget. What adjustments are you making to prepare for overwintering during 2019-2020?

I kept 11 cows just sold one now 10 i still have about 300 rolls leftover from last year so I think im in good shape for a while :cowboy:

That's great you have security but at 10% (may be as high as 15%) loss per year to rot you're losing almost half what you'd feed in a year. I never thought of it till a friend pointed it out but if a person was disciplined enough it may be better to sell hay excess hay and put aside the money for a rainy day then to lose it to mother nature. Cash never goes bad - unless you're an Escobar and have to bury it to hide it from the law.

 

[skyhightree1]

Hay prices here have been trending up here since last summer. Folks expect hay prices to drop (a little) this year. Talking heads are projecting an average reduction of $10/ton for hay. That is still too high for my budget. What adjustments are you making to prepare for overwintering during 2019-2020?

I kept 11 cows just sold one now 10 i still have about 300 rolls leftover from last year so I think im in good shape for a while :cowboy:

That's great you have security but at 10% (may be as high as 15%) loss per year to rot you're losing almost half what you'd feed in a year. I never thought of it till a friend pointed it out but if a person was disciplined enough it may be better to sell hay excess hay and put aside the money for a rainy day then to lose it to mother nature. Cash never goes bad - unless you're an Escobar and have to bury it to hide it from the law.

Not rotting in my barn ;-) I sell hay I sell quite a bit and will continue thats just what i have in the barn that I can pull from incase of an issue

 

[Aaron]

Hay prices here have been trending up here since last summer. Folks expect hay prices to drop (a little) this year. Talking heads are projecting an average reduction of $10/ton for hay. That is still too high for my budget. What adjustments are you making to prepare for overwintering during 2019-2020?

I kept 11 cows just sold one now 10 i still have about 300 rolls leftover from last year so I think im in good shape for a while :cowboy:

That's great you have security but at 10% (may be as high as 15%) loss per year to rot you're losing almost half what you'd feed in a year. I never thought of it till a friend pointed it out but if a person was disciplined enough it may be better to sell hay excess hay and put aside the money for a rainy day then to lose it to mother nature. Cash never goes bad - unless you're an Escobar and have to bury it to hide it from the law.

Your area is obviously not desperately short on hay/straw then. Neighbor couple miles north of me is paying good money for 10 year old hay stored in pyramid stack, along field edge. You can guess what kind of feed value it has in it. He is planning to use as bedding as he ran out long ago, but if cows can eat some without dying, it's a bonus. Nobody is stealing hay (yet) but anything left along bush edges in the last number of years is all selling like fire. 3 year old hay sitting outside on the ground sold for $60/ton.

 

[skyhightree1]

I kept 11 cows just sold one now 10 i still have about 300 rolls leftover from last year so I think im in good shape for a while :cowboy:

That's great you have security but at 10% (may be as high as 15%) loss per year to rot you're losing almost half what you'd feed in a year. I never thought of it till a friend pointed it out but if a person was disciplined enough it may be better to sell hay excess hay and put aside the money for a rainy day then to lose it to mother nature. Cash never goes bad - unless you're an Escobar and have to bury it to hide it from the law.

Your area is obviously not desperately short on hay/straw then. Neighbor couple miles north of me is paying good money for 10 year old hay stored in pyramid stack, along field edge. You can guess what kind of feed value it has in it. He is planning to use as bedding as he ran out long ago, but if cows can eat some without dying, it's a bonus. Nobody is stealing hay (yet) but anything left along bush edges in the last number of years is all selling like fire. 3 year old hay sitting outside on the ground sold for $60/ton.

We had so much hay and grass this past year it was ridiculous

 

[Rydero]

If the post you quoted is correct you`ll lose $1800 in value based on a 1200lb bale from the price swing though ;-) and the barn wasn`t free. I`m not against all carryover though, it can be a very responsible insurance policy. It was an eye opener for me when I started looking at the cost of carrying hay. I just never looked at it from that perspective until it was pointed out to me. But if there was a glut of hay last year and things are different this year those 300 bales in the barn may gain some value and be the best thing you did.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Hard to find items on the ranch that don't cost to carry. There was an unpopular post a while back on items that can appreciate. Sell/buy hay marketing was one of the proposals.

Straw here is now 120 to 135 U$S/ton at auction. Could be a better investment than hay...