Hay as a Profitable Endeavor

[Tupperville]

The guy who was showing me the 3000 diesel was telling me as we were walking through part of the hay field how wet what he had cut, was.

This was a week ago and it has rained everyday since.

He then took me to the hay barn and showed me the good stuff saying he wished he would have kept the baler going that day.

Must be nerve wracking.

$7.00 Canada dollars per small bale is what his customers pay.

 

[da.bees]

There's an old saying that goes something like "You better make hay while the sun shines".

 

[the tractior vet]

The hardest part of making small squares is HELP . Been down that road back in the mid 80's thinking like it was back in the late 60's and early seventy's when all ya had to say was i got hay down and young guys came out of the wood work wanting to work and earn a few bucks . I rented a new farm that had nice hay ground and i did not want to turn it all under and work a rotation . Take 27 acres and make three cuttings and had a buyer on line for all i could send him. . put the rest in corn . Bought a hay bine a nice rake and a decent baler and had two hay racks and my 28 foot goose neck . we had the weather for six days and i put first cutting all down and went looking for help . Lots of young guys malling around the local burger places always complaining the did not have money i wanted five warm bodys and Five said Oh yea we will be there . Had it raked , baler hooked up wagon hooked up and nobody showed up . I did not have a kicker so i needed warm bodys . To get it made i had to drive down to my one buddy and shang hi his boy and he called three other starting four hours later then i wanted . my buddy sent his one straight truck with the long flat bed . and we made hay and got it in the barn by ten that night . For second and third cutting i sold it in the field self pick up at a reduced price and that ended my hayiing days . If i could not plow disc and plant by myself i was not doing it at harvest my one buddy came down with his truck and he hauled and i combined Now today ya got options if you have the check book , ya can net wrap round bales , you can plastic wrap round bales or ya can do large squares . If you go small square ya can use accumulators and made like 9-12 bales pods and pick them up with a skid steer or loader and stack then in box trailers or flat beds and stack in three side building's BUt again the cost of all the stufff needed. where i had a leg up was i dealt in used equipment and was at auctions every week . Sometimes there were STEALS like a 12.50 baler a 600 dollar hay biine a 200 New holland 56 rake . some needed a few bucks spent but worked . And when i was done with it load it up and haul it off to a sale someplace . That 12 dollar and 50 cent baler that was a little rusty when i bought it was well shine up after almost 4000 bales . I did mine my buddy did some and at the sale it brought 1850 . That one was bouight at the Kidron auction in a driving rain storm , the rake came from Tri Green auction with bearing out of the gear box and sold back down there for 1475

 

[Tupperville]

I been off the farm for 40+ years but me and my brother used to ride the "stooker".

My father did custom baling.

Him on one side, me on the other, each of us grabing a twine.

Cut side down so the rain would run off.

We couldn't have been no more than 13 or 14 years old.

And I remember riding the loader up to opening in the hay mow.

Putting down a floor of hay then speading salt like you were doing a sidewalk in the winter.

And I could still load a wagon properly if I was ever asked.

 

[showcrop]

I did fairly well at it for around 20 years. I found that the key is in making good enough hay that you can build up a clientel who are willing to pay a good price, and keep buying year after year. Of course making good hay is not easy, and you have to work at it.

 

[Loosehandle]

Best thing I ever did was stop trying to please horse people with small misery bales.
I never got $7, nobody wants 1st cutting, nobody wants rained on and it wrecked my shoulders. End of short rant.

 

[Tgrasher]

Have a accumulater hooked to square baler in shed, haven't used it in two years. Too much trouble stacking with grapple in shed, had to patch two holes in the roof, can't see with bales blocking view. Stack 4 × 5 round bales in shed on flat sides easily with Bobcat. Life is good.

 

[Tony in SD]

My hay selling rules:
Rule number one, do not even consider selling hay to horse people. Almost all of them are broke and they want the best hay at the lowest price.
Rule number two, do not even consider selling hay to a hay jockey. They lose money on every load and try to make it up on volume.
Rule number three, set you price for a profit. if they call and want you to lower your price, hang up.
Rule number four, most years you can buy hay cheaper than you can put it up. At least around here.

 

[ss55]

The guy who was showing me the 3000 diesel was telling me as we were walking through part of the hay field how wet what he had cut, was.

This was a week ago and it has rained everyday since.

He then took me to the hay barn and showed me the good stuff saying he wished he would have kept the baler going that day.

Must be nerve wracking.

$7.00 Canada dollars per small bale is what his customers pay.

Get to know your local market. Know what is in demand that brings in good money and what just sells cheap due to over supply.

Pencil out all your costs and expected income before you start. Include the true cost of all your labor. If you are working off farm and you have to burn vacation time to put up hay when the weather is ready, value your time at the same rate as what your day job pays you.

Include some overcapacity as breakdowns and other commitments will happen.

Sometimes you will be competing directly with people who are farming for entertainment or a tax write off rather than for profit.

 

[paul]

Locally alfalfa isn’t worth what it used to be, small dairies are mostly gone, big dairies contract for their hay and mostly use wet alfalfa in a bunker or bag or round wrapped from close by fields.

Grass hay comes from road ditches and low too wet to farm patches of ground. This leads to a big supply of hay but the quality is only fair most of the time.

It’s difficult to find a steady market for top quality grass hay locally, and with our usual wet springs and humid summers it’s difficult to produce top quality hay on ground that rents for $300+ for corn or soybeans, and come out good year in and year out. Hats off to those that do, they work hard to keep the quality and volume up.

In a wet year we have hay stick out everywhere but it’s over mature and put up too wet or too much rained on.

In a rare dry year we sell off all the extra junk we accumulated, but it’s a year old and wasn’t top quality to begin with, so we get some money for it but it’s still average dollars at best.

Again, hats off to those that manage a good top quality hay production in my local region.

This summer folk were coming from several hundreds of miles away and paying good money for average and above hay at the local auctions. That was a nice bonus for the hay producers. I got $47.50 for some round bales, it was nice hay but not exceptional. Best I’ve ever received.

Paul

 

[john in la]

What I call hay and what some call hay are often two different things. A weed field with no fertilizer or herbicide cut over mature from a field that was rained on is garden mulch not hay.
A lean year and an abundant year will dictate the price more than anything.

Luckily we don’t need much hay because November is basically the only month we don’t have green grass growing.

 

[Mule Meat]

Ole friend had a mini baler built using a New Holland square baler. The chamber was modified to make 8" x 11" bales. Starting the first weekend in October. He would pull into a Walmart parking lot, flea market etc with 5 to 600 bales and sell them as fast as he could pull them off of the trailer for 5 to 7 dollars a bale to people wanting them for fall decorations. Being small made them easy to handle and get rid of when the time came. He sold 3 to 5000 bales a year and said it was the only time he made any real money with hay the few years that he did it.

 

[paul]

Ole friend had a mini baler built using a New Holland square baler. The chamber was modified to make 8" x 11" bales. Starting the first weekend in October. He would pull into a Walmart parking lot, flea market etc with 5 to 600 bales and sell them as fast as he could pull them off of the trailer for 5 to 7 dollars a bale to people wanting them for fall decorations. Being small made them easy to handle and get rid of when the time came. He sold 3 to 5000 bales a year and said it was the only time he made any real money with hay the few years that he did it.

You have to feed those modified balers pretty slow I would guess, for the small plunger size? Do they bale in the field, or stationary rebaling from bigger bales when there is free time?

They are rebuilt out east by a company that competes with this site, so I best not say the name.

The bales are neat for decorations. I would think straw bales would sell the best.

Paul

 

[Mule Meat]

You have to feed those modified balers pretty slow I would guess, for the small plunger size? Do they bale in the field, or stationary rebaling from bigger bales when there is free time?

He baled in the field with a 235 MF. The baler was a full sized NH with modified plunger to make the small bales. He ran a little slower ground speed than he would making full sized bales. His wife drove the truck while his two sons loaded the trailer. When it was full. He was ready to head to town with a load to sell the next morning. The only waste he had was bales that may have pick up biers or burrs that could scratch someone.

 

[Russ from MN]

There seems to be an awful lot of surplus hay in N MN, thousands of big round bales. Ever since the drouth a few years ago they just keep baling and baling. I saw today where a guy had pushed a bunch of old bales over a creek bank, wrapper plastic and all, to make room for new ones. How many years does hay keep if it's wrapped in white plastic?

 

[Ray,IN]

My hay selling rules:
Rule number one, do not even consider selling hay to horse people. Almost all of them are broke and they want the best hay at the lowest price.
Rule number two, do not even consider selling hay to a hay jockey. They lose money on every load and try to make it up on volume.
Rule number three, set you price for a profit. if they call and want you to lower your price, hang up.
Rule number four, most years you can buy hay cheaper than you can put it up. At least around here.

Find some people who raise sheep or goats, quality of hay is not as important to most of them.

 

[paul]

At the hay auction I’ve become friends with 2 fellas. One is mostly horses, the other has sheep.

I sell a few bales when my junk hay is better than my average. Don’t think I fit the title of this thread tho.

Funny they both want the exact same bales at the auction.

It’s a hoot sitting in the coffee shop after the auction between them. So far I haven’t had to break up a fight, but I felt like ducking a time or two!

Paul