The Truth About Farming...Selling Hay for Profit..What Nobody Else Will tell You!
Вставка
- Опубліковано 1 кві 2019
- The Truth About Farming...Selling Hay for Profit..What Nobody Else Will tell You! Today we'll load up and sell some hay on the farm and loose money..plain and simple. I'll discuss my experience with hay in my area...and why we've spend so much money and seen little or no return. Making money on a small farm is tough...don't let anyone tell you different!
DJI Mavic Pro Drone: amzn.to/2uFvlxJ
Support the farm! Pick up a nice Hat or Shirt in our online farm store: stoneyridgefarmer.com//
Facebook: / stoneyridgefarmer
Instagram: / stoneyridgefarmer
Looking for something we used in a vlog? Click here to our Amazon store!
www.amazon.com/shop/stoneyrid... (affiliate link)
WEBSITE FOR PRODUCTS WE TRUST ON OUR FARM:
Meyer Hatchery: meyerhatchery.com/?aid=178
Titan Attachments: www.anrdoezrs.net/links/853292...
Electric Fence From Premier:
www.premier1supplies.com/?utm...
EVERYTHING ATTACHMENTS: www.everythingattachments.com/
LOOKING FOR SOMETHING WE USED A VLOG????
SUBSCRIBE HERE:
ua-cam.com/users/stoneyridgefar...
LINKS FOR PRODUCTS IN THIS VIDEO:
(SOMETHING MISSING? LEAVE A COMMENT!!)
Best Watch I've ever owned: amzn.to/2H8mY1Z
Oakley Gas Can Sunglasses: amzn.to/2FO1Dhp
DJI Mavic PRO Drone: amzn.to/2yU7nzd
Sony 4k Handycam: amzn.to/2nnctP1
Go PRo Hero 4 (4k video): amzn.to/2ut8IPQ
STONEY RIDGE FARMER'S FAVORITE BOOKS:
How to win friends and influence people: amzn.to/2FoFtCV
THE WOODLAND HOMESTEAD: (Wranglerstar) amzn.to/2IoVoCC
PASTURED POULTRY FOR PROFITS: amzn.to/2rS6mGv
SALAD BAR BEEF: amzn.to/2IpQIwj
FOLKS THIS AINT NORMAL (JOEL SALATIN) amzn.to/2IxAnBy
MINI FARMING (SELF SUFFICIENCY ON 1/4 ACRE): amzn.to/2L6GT3Y
RICH DAD--POOR DAD: WHAT THE RICH TEACH THEIR KIDS ABOUT MONEY: amzn.to/2Gt0yb1
Once you get the cattle you will have fine hay for them and it will begin to payoff for you in fat cows. Which are happy cows which like to make more cows. You’ll have to feed the new cows too. Farming/Ranching takes a while but your doing fine. Keep up the good work!!!
Absolutely! Thanks man! Boy...read through that pile of insulting comments down there....ugh....anytime I do a video that explains how things aren't ideal....I get ripped into by "farm scientist" telling me how dumb I am....geeze...just a man making a go of it on his farm....shoot these pastures were forest 3 years ago! I guess I need a thicker skin if I post "real life" videos...reality isn't always what we want it to be! Thanks for always being nice and supportive Roadhog!
@@StoneyRidgeFarmer This is the good stuff man - it's just the nature of some to want to be negative. Everyone seems to be an expert nowadays. I appreciate channels like yours that show real life. I know for damn sure no one gets everything in life right the first time they do something - most of us get to make our mistakes in private. I appreciate you putting yours out there for the rest of us to learn from.
Stoney Ridge Farmer Josh when I was a boy we had a farm and my first job was following the tobacco setter, two guys sitting on the back of tractor on a board. I ate dust all day long. I chased cows worked tobacco and bailed the square bails all my early years. Farming is hard work everyday it’s hard work, 50 years later I’ve never forgot that and I never will. All these scientists are to busy acting a fool to know, or they’d try to help instead of being A’s. Your a hero everyday from your labor to take of your family and your land.
I’ve been farming for about 30 years and the best advice I can give anyone is find what works for you and your operation. What works for some may or may not work for others. I got in the custom agriculture business and out of the cattle business because that what worked for me in my area. And secondly never be afraid to try something new or different just be aware that it may not work and be willing to take that risk.
Or get cattle. Making a living with beef cattle. And horse's.
Reminds me of what an old guy told me “ the best way to become a millionaire farmer is to start out farming as a billionaire “. 😂 Love the videos man.
An old farmer once told me "if you get into the hay business, don't get into the cattle business. If you get into the cattle business, don't get into the hay business." He was right. I have close to $40k in hay equipment. It would be cheaper to buy hay. The hay you buy has as much fertilizer value as it does feed value. Feed where your soil is poor and you get fertilizer, organic material, and seed on that area. Good luck with the cattle.
my grandpa and I square bailed . Just the two of us we attached the hay wagon behind the baler with an extended shoot that reached the wagon . My grandpa drove and I ran back and forth on the wagon stacking . Good memories .
Every old timer who farms for a living has told me 'Farming is about timing', and nothing could be more true. When your 'timing' is right you'll add cattle to your operation, and you will be so glad you invested the time and money into haying equipment and haying knowledge. You will never have to purchase those expensive bales mentioned in the comments below to feed YOUR herd . The number one killer of profits in cattle is feed costs. My wife and I enjoy watching your journey! Keep up the great work!!
You are right on about starting a 1st generation farm unfortunately. The numbers just don't work for the most part. It's very frustrating because small farms are very good for the country. We need more farms.
You need to find an old farmer who wants to retire but doesn't have kids to hand it off to. You can come in and work into a partnership. That's what I'm doing with my cousin. They sold everything but a few hundred acres because they weren't making enough money but now want to expand again. The problem is people think farming is just driving tractors. It's not it's a business and needs to be ran and treated as such. Tough business but rewarding if you can make it happen.
I appreciate your sincerity in this video. Making hay is tough and not profitable on its own. My parents have run a hay farm that primarily sells small square bales for 35 years both with full time jobs on the side to make ends meet. Now I’m thinking about taking the place over but am looking for other ways to make money on the farm that don’t involve suburban development.
Man, the memories I have as a kid bailing square bales on my family's farm in Oxford Ohio. Getting rides to the loft in the bale elevator were the best!
I used to be partners in a hay operation when I was in high school and college. Net wrap bales keep better outside, and after looking at y’alls rainfall from last year it looks like you guys had a great hay season which makes it tuff to sell bales. We had years when bales sold for $30 and then other years it sold for over $80. Having cows will help because years when you have abundance of hay and prices are junk you can turn that hay into ribeyes! Did that myself and then sold sides of beef so I made up for the poor hay prices! It will work itself out Josh! It is tuff but I think you’ll be just fine! I would either advise wrapping the bales, or storing them under cover! Helps make your hay more valuable! Here we can rent a bale wrapper! Not sure about your area but it’s added expense to keep your bales try. Or you can stack and tarp them too. Guys just hate buying hay they know they are going to throw away the outer portion on. Hopefully some of the tips help and look forward to more videos!!!
You sold round bales for $30? I know this is four years ago, but my god, that crazy.
On a serious note God bless your farm and future expenditures, I’ll be watching regularly!
We used to store round bales outside through the winter and would take whatever we could get as the hay deteriorated from weather. Usually about 30% of their undeteriorated value by springtime. Could never justify the cost per bale of constructing a permanent type structure for hay storage.
What we did was search our community for old car/truck tires. We’d lay them down in a rectangular grid three bales wide and as long as you had room for. Stack the bales in a 3-2-1 pyramid on the tires and keep adding tires as you add more bales so you don’t have to drive on the tires while stacking. We were able to store 66 bales under a $200 hay tarp with about 2% loss. The tarp would last about four years making our storage investment under 80 cents per bale. The old tires were easy to accumulate locally from repair shops as they are costly for them to dispose of and I we would get them free plus our hauling (and they last forever). We would deplete the stack rolling the tarp back as we did and leaving the exposed tires in place and driving over them through the winter. Cheap easy to manage storage that was a game changer for us
Good luck going forward
Back to my cattle days. Used pour on wormer: cattle got some and I got some when they would go bonkers in the head gate. No worries about me being wormy back then.If you get some cattle look for videos about "horn broke" and "bucket broke". Helps when chasing them through the neighbors place or down the road when they go through the nice fence you just built....
I have experience with farming hay and the only way to make money is small squares for horse people stored in a barn. Or plant specialty grass like alfalfa or orchard grass. Sometimes hay farming is kinda a gamble.
Josh, I love your channel. Even though your first foray into hay was a bust, the comments on this post are solid gold. Where else can you find so many expert opinions and varied strategies on the hay business? This is great information! Thanks for posting your failures as well as the successes. People learn more from failures anyway!
man...I tell ya..everyone has the instant solution...however...hay is stacked up all over the place around here...hay farmers simply can't sell all the hay because nobody is farming and or ranching around here....literally hay is all over the edges of fields rotting all over my county...yet still they want $40 per bale!
@@StoneyRidgeFarmer I think it’s like any other business. Capitalism tends to make all business transactions balance out so that only those who excel at their own business will make good profits. That’s why some make money and others don’t. The only way to get better is to keep on trying and finding creative ways to optimize both the production and the sale. It’s the same in all endeavors. Reading the market is key. One of your commenters said “farming is timing”. I think that’s incredibly relevant. Another said horse people will spend any amount on their pets. If I make hay it will be for high-end horse farms and I’ll ask them upfront what they want so I know what to plant. Keep up the good work!
That’s some cold hard truth there. I bought 50 + acres in Chatham county and round bales we’re going at about 30.00 per round. I’m working a deal with my neighbor who has all the equipment to bale so we’re doing a 60/40 split this year just to get rolling. I do have excellent hay here orchard grass rye bluegrass clover mix. It’s an old farm. I want to do the rotational grazing next year when I get some cows. Good luck to you. Hope things work out for us both! That 40k tractor is a hard pill to swallow! Whew!
Have you tried exporting to Asia I tell you cuz I deliver hay from winnemucca nv to Wilmington ca
Need a baler that wraps the bales if you cant store in a barn
YES, farming is a lot of very hard work! My neighbor's farm all around us, and I watch them out in a lot of 18 hour days. I do what I can to give them a hand. By changing out the cutters on their sickle bars for their 40' headers on their Case ID combines every spring. I feel like I am always in debt to them because of all the help they give to this 75-year-old man.
Neighbors like you are a blessing to us small Farmers. ♥️
Hi Josh good vid thanks.I have my bales wrapped to store outside,it is an extra cost but the hay keeps fine for two years.If hay is that cheap where you are it might be better to buy it in and save the work and cost
Starting a 1st generation farm also, the struggle is real. Clearing land at the moment, so much work but it will it is worth it.
Mommymilestones, sound words of advice, thank you. I am fortunate that we have friends and family with equipment to borrow, definitely don’t want to jump in and be swallowed by debt. Bought a cow/calf last year that’s at a friends farm, she should be dropping again in August 😁. I definitely am not afraid of getting dirty, will be doing all the clearing and building except for a few things (concrete slab and rough in plumbing) want them done right, not that I can’t, just don’t want to worry in the future. Thanks again for the advice, much appreciated.
O my gosh just beautiful footage w drone thanks for Sharing !!
Great job enjoyed that, hope you have better luck in the future!!!
Its worth looking into doing small squares and getting an accumagrapple for the tractor
I’m learning too! I lost my butt trying to sell pasture raised pork. I found out nobody in my area even knows what organic pasture rotation grazed pork is. So now I just do it for my self
I told my neighbors they're gonna think I'm crazy once we get our cows
"You are what you eat...eats"
I hear pasture pork it's night and day.
Lots of work starting up! That hay will come in handy soon I hope.
It feels like I'm listening to Greg Judy and the pastures have recovered from animals and a hell of alot of hard work. Keep on growing and thriving.
I find your videos very interesting and informative. Thank you for sharing what you're doing - especially videos like this.
Small square horse quality is where you will make money in hay. This winter around us it was between $7 and $9 a bale average years it's about 5 over winter 3 in summer. Buying brand new equipment is where you went wrong. I have less than 2k into my tractor, baler and sickle mower combined.
I bought a new tractor...but used bailing equipment...a new baler would cost over $20-30k my friend
Charlie Noreen
Stoney Ridge Farmer don’t have to buy a brand new baler
Please share where one can find a reliable tractor and hay equipment for 2k...
Charlies post is dead on. I have done the same thing for 30 years with about the same investment. This is on a small scale and really just amounts to a hobby farm. You do it for fun, not money, but you try to stay in the black just for the challenge. From what I can tell, Stoney Ridge is really just a hobby farm as well. I have lots of relatives that are real farmers and they don't have the time or inclination to make videos while farming a couple thousand acres in order to actually make a living farming. Hobby farmers need to face reality and understand that a huge investment up front is not likely to get payback. By the way, I have also raised cattle under the same premise and found that the best profits were to be found raising freezer beef.
I really appreciate your insight and honesty. It takes a big person to admit disappointment. Thanks for not blowing smoke up my...
It’s a shame you don’t live in closer to Kentucky. Hay was so scares this year. I sold 4x4 rolls for 50 bucks a roll
Great video sir love them all. Living life through you and folks alike. !! God bless and happy good Friday!!
I'm 19 and from va and got into custom bailing last year and taking over my home farm this year the saying it's not what you know its who is what got me this far either people knowing people who need hay which I worked on farms my whole life and am trying to start a dairy that helped me know people but also if there is any hay auctions try that hay is going for outrages prices becouse of the weather we've been having I love watching your channel and how your expanding
Also with hay sells higher in areas where more people have horses
a 4x4 bale near me is going for 65-80 a bale.
My wife and I would love to start a farm, but we are still saving and investing. It’s so incredibly expensive to get started as a farmer these days. We don’t want to finance, so we will likely have to wait another ten years until we are forty.
Hey Josh thanks for this video and your honesty about the economics of the farm. I'm sure that, in time, you'll become profitable. Don't give up!
My dad use to grow alfalfa. He would sub out the cutting, bailing and stacking. Didn't sell the hay, but used for our livestock.
Great video, great angle! I just picked up a DJI Mavic as well. Did a quick aerial shot on our channel of the dirt bike track we built with the Kubota Tractor and Grapple
thank you Josh for doing this volg i relay like see you work and doing thing on your fram thank you agen
Thank for great video as usual my friend. I’m going to do a Live Stream coming up Featuring Farming Channels. Yours and Keeping it Dutch will be on there for sure✌️
Absolutely crazy! those bales would easily go for $40-$50 a bale here in Minnesota. Go further west and they would double in price. high-quality hay sells for $70-$80 a bale here.
The problem is trucking it out there. Figure you can fit 30 round bales legally on a semi. You are only pulling 2400 bucks top line at 80 bucks. Not going to be much room for profit. Unless im missing something here
Nice video. If you want to do little square Bailes get a stacker for on the loader. Around here we have a auction every week where we sell hay and grain. We have a good market for little square bailes around here because there is allot of Amish in my area.
Good video. Interesting points.
I'm sorry you are having a problem. I am hoping to move to VA soon and next year I am planning on doing a straw or old hay bale garden and will need the other kind of bales.
Same here it’s really tough to get started from scratch, if a person had an endless budget more power to them, so much money and time to get going!
Thanks for your honesty!
A baler with net rap will keep the outer ring of the bale a better quality. Now I’m not saying it can’t go bad but it will be less likely of going bad. Just some personal experience
or a plastic wrap when dry and store them
I got out of the hay bidness in 1996 for the exact same reasons. Nothing ever changes :(
Another great video. Congrats Josh👍
We just got the same one. Love it
Farming is a tough business! Almost sink or swim. Nobody works harder than a farmer! Power to you Josh and Mrs. Stoney Ridge!
It's a crazy buisness,you're exactly right.Its not easy to up and start a functioning farm,you basically have to build and modularize the whole thing.Alot of times it's a 4 or 5 Generation operation where they live in it,or have enough money up front to finance if ALL and hope for the best.Farming is often thankless and very stressful,there was a fella I knew took his own life when he couldn't keep a old family farm afloat and lost it to the Bank,when they came to serve the papers for Eviction and foreclosure he opened a Anhydrous tank on a wagon in a shed...sad stuff
Love the footage
Thanks...you'll really like this saturday's video! Great farm footage...headed out to work on the jeep now!
Would be cool if you’d get a picture with the drone of your entire property then overlay where different projects are happening. Where you had trees planted...
It sucks that hay isn't worth that much where you live but hey, what can you do. Keep the videos comin' Josh!
Thanks buddy...yep...lessons learned.....bale hay for my own animals...not for sale
Round bales sell for $50 or more stored inside a barn in nj!
I wish I could get bales for $20, I'm paying $35, but it has been stored indoors.
Chestnutgirlz
Love your videos! I get round bales for $65 delivered in Iowa for horses. Stored inside cuz horses can't eat any mold. Sometimes hard to find a supplier tho.. Keep up the Good Work!
So what if its alphafa hay? Also do you have any resources you recommend reading up on for more information about hay and what determines quality? Trying to help my folks out with their field. Granted they only get anywhere from 12-15 bales per cutting they need a little help selling.
After seeing prices of hay equipment at the auction I went to this weekend, the only way I would get into it is if I had livestock. Although I will say, it does sell a little better around here.
Amen! Expensive!
Thx for the content sir. I will NOT be cutting hay now...lol
Great Drone, we use the Mavic Pro also
amazing video. trying to learn some new stuff to talk about with my farmer bf😂 thank you!
lol....oh no don't tell him ya can't make money selling hay lol...he'll get pissed....lots of folks that are loosing their butts on small farm are very attached to the routine...no way I could make money doing this!
Hey Josh glad you made somethin off of the hay but I got my moneys worth watchin your vids on the production of it(drone "awesome" as you always say but maybe a vid on how you edit and compose your videos) Thks
Yep...now that would be one for my other channel...lol that I haven't started yet 😁
My father has been doing small square straight alfalfa for years in SW MN. has had up to 60 acres, but had a bale wagon to pick up the bales (New Holland 1038). this was before he got a few beef cattle around to eat the poor hay that got rained on, he would have to give away and lose money just to move it. now we have the choice to feed the poor stuff off to our beef cattle and sell the premium hay to horse people. some years are very profitable$6-$8 / 55lb bale others were $2/ bale. just depends on the weather for that year. We have had to spray our fields twice already for bugs, and with the drought might not get a 4th cutting. only one other time dad remembers getting only 3 cuttings for the year.
I enjoy the videos !!
78yr old country boy. Well your finally answering my questions as to why a city farmer boy has all of this new equipment. Made no sense. Me retired, bought old rocky homestead ranch in canyon above the Salmonriver. All my equipment is old used and paid for. Just finally getting a afford 8n with disk.
I have a lower class type of drone it video records on to a USB MIVRO CHIP stil trying to learn how to use
How far away can you fly that drone before it loses its signal?
Hey Josh great vid yes it is a shame you have to sell at such a low price but over here in Aus due to drought in northern NSW and QLD we were selling hay at a premium as we were lucky enough to grow some good hay this year, who knows what might happen next year. We are 5th generation farmers here primarily wool and fat lambs we usually cut for our own feed and do some contract baling for some of the locals, with you looking at getting into cattle you won't regret the baler and assoc equipment being able to feed your stock off your own land pays for itself in the long run. Keep up the good fight oh and how is Popcorn going?
Hi..... Thank you 🎥👍👍👍
In my area the cost of production on an average year is around $25 per roll counting land rent, fertilizer, mowing, raking, tendering, baling, and any weed control needed. That’s in the field not counting the cost of moving it. Nobody wants to pay break even for any hay here. Square bales are better but I use machines to get it up. Not much manual labor. Couldn’t get the help anyway.
Yep...but ya gotta store them in a barn for sure my brotha...so there I am buying a $40,000 barn for hay that I'm already loosing on ...my area is economically depressed....things just don't bring much around here
Man that’s too bad you can’t find labor, baling small square is my favorite thing to do, but I only get to help with 1,500 bales or so, I wish I could find farmers here in Indiana who would want help, it’s just hard to know where to start
Do you have your Part 107 license? If not you need to look into getting it.
I really enjoy your videos. Thanks for sharing.
Selling right of the field the day you bale it is best. Up here in MInn some sales barns and auction sites were selling for $50 -$100.00 per bale but my family got $30 per bale for stored in side first cutting grass hay.
This Vlog could help with sales. Word of mouth is priceless in this world we live in. Do you have much indoor storage? Or a neighbour?
In my area, they sale square bales for $20, round for $35 and up. depending on the kind. We have a lot of Alfalfa Hay here but, when we had the horses, we bought it from the Amish about 10 miles away.
You do that for your cattle and sell what is left at the end of the winter at least that's from my experience thanks for the video and keep em coming
What model John Deere do you have? And what do you think of it? Would buy the same one again?
5065e 4X4....yes I would buy it again...however if I had it to do again I'd have gotten the cab model
Hay is getting hard to find now in my area. We just converted a old round baler into a rebaler on our channel. We use a DJI spark. I’d like to get a mavic pro 2. Have a good one
Advice from a western NC farmer, advertise with local feed mills and cattleman’s associations to sell it in the field rather than in the winter. People will pay more when it’s fresh and never been wet. Also, if you do store outdoors, get pallets from a local big box store to set them on. It saves the bottom. Consider stacking 3 in a row with 2 on bottom and one on top tight together. You have less surface area exposed and less waste. Tarps also help
Find drivers that are collecting hay for the farmers in the flooded areas ,
Cool drone. What's the reception range before it doesn't respond to commands?
$20 a bale? Here in tx the last i checked people were selling for $60-$90 a bale.
Its the same in california because of the droughts. I know people who are spending over $1000 a month to feed their horses. Im in Tennessee where we get tons of rain and hay grows like crazy, and i pay about $3 a bale compared to $22 where my mom lives. Also out here, people only need hay for 3 months out of the year because we get good pasture from the beginning of march until the end of november. My yearly hay costs are between $200 and $300. Out where my mom lives, there is no pasture so people have to feed hay year round and like i said, some people are paying into the thousands per month. It just depends on supply and demand, and climate has a lot to do with that if were talking about hay.
Great video thanks!
1st Gen farm: I sincerely wish you the absolute best of luck. I was born in Dec 1945 and my parents moved to a farm when I was about 1 year old, we were there until I was 8 and they had to sell it. We moved on to other things and another life. I had a great time there and wish it hadn't ended, however a lot of first-time endeavors do end up going under. I sincerely hope all of you have the greatest success, with other family around it should help a lot.
Cutting on time or early and baling big squares adds so much value. Easy to ship and store and more hay in each bale. Rotating crops is important as a good alfalfa field becomes scarce after 4 or 5 years. Newer seeding produces a lot more than even a 3 year old hay field. Fertilizer is worth the cost. This year in Ontario hay is worth a lot! 100 a bale for 1st cut 800 lbs bales/ and so far 140-150 a bale for good 2nd cut
I don't know much about drones, what kind of range do they have? I've seen videos that it looked as if it were a half mile away. Enjoyed the video.
DJI mavic pro 4 mile range Pro 2 5 miles
How long after seeding did you cut hay the first time?
Love your vids Josh
Here in south east Texas we haven’t been able to get hay and a round bale is $80. The feed stores didn’t even have hay in some parts and one of our feed stores is charging $120 per bale. It just depends on the market where you live. I bought a square bale for $12.75 that was full of pine needles once I opened it up this winter. It’s been a bad winter for hay. Thankfully spring has brought fresh hay and we don’t use but a little bit.
I have the DJI Spark. It doesn’t do 4K like the Mavic but it still does 1080. You can get those under $500.
I have a spark also, love it. Found it on Walmart website on a sale for $299. I have alot of footage for my channel but havnt had a chance to edit being sick going on 2 weeks.
The price depends on the supply and demand. If the weather is favorable, the crop is good and supply outpaces demand so the price is low. If the weather isn't favorable, the crop is poor, supply is lower than demand so prices are higher. If the price gets too high, the people who raise cattle for meat sell many or all of them instead of buying high priced hay.
For a lot of farmers, the one ot the best ways to store hay is on the hoof!
It's tough stuff,I see it all the time in Western North Carolina.Dairy and Tobacco are like Textile Jobs in the area.....Gone! I've worked on Beef/Dairy farms and as a Teen-early 20 year old I've worked in alot of Tobacco fields from setting out to hanging up...its been gone from here.Now I'm interested in Industrial Hemp as a cash crop in Western North Carolina,good vid man.
pay no mind to the negative people. you have 194k subscribers who really like your channel and all the REAL LIFE experiences of farming. most of the farmers in my area had a profitable farming business handed down to them. im sure the struggles are real trying to be a first generation farmer but stay the coarse, your labors will hopefully pay off someday.
Yes they will...and they are....we have a great life and are building up a beautiful farm
How do you make money farming if you input costs outstrip your selling prices by thousands of percentage points?
You need a large barn to store all that grass, like Charlotte's Webb lol, good stuff
Yep ...expensive stuff...takes time to buy it for sure
I work as an auctioneer and we have been selling hay just like yours all winter for $110 to $170 a bale .Its crazy here in NW Missouri,You would probably make more in small square bales stored high and dry
Here in northern Ontario Canada I think it’s about $50 or so depending on quality, most are need to b picked up on the field .
What grass did you plant for the goaties? Is Fescue ok for them?
We've sold the goats....fescue is the predominant hay grass in my area.....if I don't plant it....the land will grow up in weeds and saplings....so basically the grass is for pasture...hay and cattle/farm land. Soil is too rocky to till for row crops
Josh do you have any plans of starting to farm hay again next year?
Targeting the horse market can be a plan. Square bales of orchard grass for horses and getting customers lined up beforehand adds value to the endeavor. Most horse people don't like round bales due to quality issues. Cattle are a commodity and horses are pets. You'll spend anything for your pet.
Hi Josh, Here in Oztralia, where much of the country has been in drought for a number of years, rounds are selling for around $100 each as many farms are struggling to produce enough fodder to maintain essential breed stock to breed back to normal stock levels and maintain bloodlines when we get out of the drought. For the most part, hay producers are not being greedy tho, they set their price at the start of the season when there is plenty around, and generally maintain it at that level once it becomes scarce. The producers also donate some stock to ''hay drives', convoys of up to 20 semi trucks taking free hay into northern Oz to support farmers who have had long term droughts and have totally bare paddocks. Some 'enterprising' dealers do buy what the can at the start of the season to on sell later as it becomes hard to get with somewhat ridiculous markups.
I agree with you tho, there is little point in making hay unless you have the stock to eat it, a pre-arranged and contracted market for it like Wes the hay baron, or you are convinced that it will be in very short supply. Most of the market hay produced in the southern part of Oz these days seems to be fully wrapped rounds, which do not deteriorate if stored in the paddock. I can understand how twine tied round would deteriorate during a snowy winter
Damn, $60/round bale . . . stored in barn - same day wrapped in Maryland. What was that tall mountain in the background?