I had always bought hay in the past up until a couple of years ago. And I always had the same problem even though i bought off of the same person most of the time. And that was most of the time he i got shorted on the amount of hay that i wanted to buy. And it got to where the person i bought hay from did not want to spray or fertlize the hay. So the quality got worse and worse as the years passed by.
And then too you could not count on him to cut the hay when it needed to be cut so that hurt the quality of the hay even that much more.
And during the years that hay yeilds were short. He could not even supply half of the hay that i would ask for. So i would have to go else where and pay nearly twice the going price for hay and that was if i could find it.
Sure you could run more cattle if you were to graze the land that you would be cutting hay off of if you could buy your hay. And there are alot of people who dose that. But sometimes things dont go as planned. My neighbor learned that last summer. His hay supplier found a higher bider and my neighbor wound up scrambling tring to find hay. He found some 3 year old rotted stuff and not near enough of that. And he starved his cattle through the winter.
One thing about cutting your own hay. It is nobodys fault but your own as to the quality. And as far as quainty goes well, If you dont get enough rain and wind up short. The person you are relying on to buy hay from is going to be in the same sitution and you may just get shorted on your order.
