standing hay

[DiamondSCattleCo]

Interesting reading about what others get or pay for their hay. If we've got excess, and not enough time to bale it, we generally sell for $10 - $15/acre for a single cut, which is about the norm for our area. This is alfalfa/grass mix hay that generally yields 2 ton/acre on first cut.

Rod

[kato]

We pay a wee bit less than 1 cent / pound. This may sound cheap, but we also have a long term deal where we pay the same price every year, even in years where you can't give the stuff away. The hay market around here can be wild. Some years you can buy it for $15.00 a bale, (already baled for you) and some years you pay $60.00.

The guy we buy hay from would rather see a steady reliable income, and not have to go shopping for buyers every year, and we want a steady reliable supply. Hubby gets pretty frantic if he thinks feed might be short.

The deal works for us both. You also have to factor in what it will cost to bale it and get it home. Cheap hay with a long haul isn't very cheap.

[DiamondSCattleCo]

We work our baled hay similar to this. We work off a base price of 2.5 cents/lb, with a half cent slide for market conditions. On years when hay is cheap, we drop to 2 cents. When hay is up high, we go to 3 cents. Our customers come back year after year, even on years when they can buy it cheaper, simply because they (and their bankers) put a value on knowing what they'll have to fork out for feed costs each year.

Rod

[dballan]

We rent land that has standing hay on it. We fertilize it and pay up to $55 per acre. Fertilizer this year averaged about $68 per acre. We are praying for excellent haying weather to dry the ground enough so that we can start cutting. We have had about 19" so far this spring and summer. We weren't able to seed about 500 acres of land to wheat or barley. Water is laying everywhere.