Jogeephus":ur4y6msk said:
alabama":ur4y6msk said:
Sometimes I think I would be money ahead to buy hay for $50 a roll every year and sell my hay equipment and let someone else roll the dice.
That is what the extension says but when somebody renigs on your standing order or a drought comes, it pays to do it yourself. JMO
Just a thought but would it be feasible to line up a backhaul for a flatbed truck bringing hay into your area? I know some boys who have a semi and flatbed to haul hay on and they could probably put their hands on a couple thousand rolls. Problem would be coming home empty. Seems like that would be costly for everyone.
Yep that's for sure! Depending on the capriciousness of the hay market, driven by the capriciousness of the weather and people, certainly puts you in a risky position, and certainly one I wouldn't want to be in, but that is a personal decision we all have to make. I've seen hay here and especially in the Shiner area go from $20 a roll to $120 a roll or more, for just plain old hay, nothing particularly special. This year we've got plenty of hay. I remember the 96 drought though when Shiner looked like Saudi Arabia and we lost our cotton here too, and they were trucking in dairy mix hay from north Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico. Stuff was going for over $100 per roll or big square and guys camping out in the parking lot overnight to buy it off the truck when they arrived first thing in the morning. First guy in line bought the whole truckload and they beat the h3ll out of him! Guys at the end of their rope, out of hay, out of grass, out of feed, and out of money, were hauling cattle to the sale barn and the weekly sale was going until three in the morning, and even then they were sometimes turning cattle away because there just wasn't any more room in the barn. One guy in this situation drove back home, climbed up on the top of the trailer with the 30-30 and shot every cow and put the last bullet through his own head. BAD stuff...
Last year we were powder dry too and in pretty bad shape til the fall; we did make some hay but then the winter turned VERY nasty; worst I've seen it here since I was a little kid, and we lost 4 head, but what can you do?? The weather is becoming more and more capricious; it's always either feast or famine. Last year we went most of the summer with about maybe 2 inches of rain all total. This year it rains for two months straight. Part of why I quit row crops; can't afford that kind of risk.
One thing 96 taught me is that when hay goes above $100 a roll, you might as well sell down to nearly nothing because a cow will eat her own worth in less than a month, then what have you got?? The $100 hay is dried manure and you still have a thin cow you have to sell, probably for less than they were selling for a month before... lousy situation but if you have to rely on high dollar hay, or like a guy here that couldn't even get hay in 96, had to feed them cubes by the pallet load, you might as well sell and wait for better times. The guy feeding cubes was a seedstock producer who'd take a killing at the sale barn, but typical cow-calf guy could NEVER afford to feed that way!
There are plenty of guys on this site that will tell you that you're a fool if you're baling hay for yourself, if you're baling with machinery more than three years old, or if you're baling less than a bazillion bales a year, but if you don't want to be held hostage when hay is short then you darn sure better be. We're running a nearly 20 year old mower, older than that rakes, and a 26 year old round baler and we do fine. Not saying that you still can't find yourself behind the 8-ball, because last year there just wasn't any grass to bale til later in the year and this year it rained until about this month so you couldn't cut and bale anyway, but still it's nice to know that what ever is out there is mine if I can get it, and I don't have to rely on anybody else to bale it.
Things are going to get more and more uncertain over time, not less, and anything you can do to reduce you're exposure to uncertainty and secure your inputs just makes good sense and certainly reduces your risk. JMHO! OL JR
