feed price advice

[grassfarmer]

Great to see you have grain farmers prepared to subsidize ranchers Kato! That straw has a residual nutrient value of probably $15 a ton chopped and left on the field. Add baling at what? $7 a bale? certainly charging anything less than $20 a bale for straw is giving away money.
We have some heavy, minimal waste bales from last year bought for $25 delivered but it was tough sourcing them.
$100 a bale for hay? there was plenty asking but how many paid it i'm not so sure. There is a lot cheaper hay advertised now.

[kato]

It's not so much grain farmers subsidizing, as it is no one with any money to buy it. In some grain growing areas straw sells for as high as $7.00 a bale, before baling it. In other areas, burning has been banned for much of the time, and they just have way too much straw, so it's often free. It's the luck of the draw, where you live. Even if you paid $7.00 a bale for swaths in the field, you would not find anyone willing or able to pay more than $12.00 for it after baling.

If Alberta prices took hold in Manitoba, people would sell their cows first. There are areas in this province that are short of feed, yet the trucks do go west with it because no one here can pay for it. It's not pretty.

We're just thankful we've got enough feed, because if we had to go out and buy hay or straw we'd sell our cows too.

[kato]

Oh ya, I should mention, grain farmers here do not bale straw for sale. They don't normally even own balers. It's just cattle guys who come and buy it off the field who are doing this. They get it from grain guys who are looking for a bit of cash, or who have just too much straw to work in.