Hay Prices?!?!?! What are you paying?

[RockyPhoenix]

If grass hay has some mold on it can i just pull the mold off and give the clean hay to the goats? my neighbor has about 30 bales for me that have a little mold that she wont feed to her horses.....idk why though also how old is too old? we have about 120 bales of grass hay that has been sitting in our hay loft for about 3 or 4 years...its been dry so i think its good but i just wanna check!

also hay around here is about 3 or 4 for any kind of square bales and 30 or 40 for round bales

 

[SuburbanFarmChic]

The 3-4 year old hay isn't going to have a huge amount nutritionally but you can certainly start putting it out as roughage. I wouldn't hold it over much longer though as you are going to have pretty much just bales of bedding. Nothing wrong with that but not sure if you need 100+ of them.

Personally I would spend the money on fresh hay to put away for this winter and start feeding the old stuff as roughage for the summer and hang on to how ever many you think you'll need a bedding/junk hay for the coming kidding season.

It's also great as dry matter when you make the poop compost piles.


I have found that my guys will eat around the bad spots in a bale. Also as I'm busting up some of what I have for mulch if I find an essential try section in a bad bale I'm tossing in into them for their approval. If it meets standards, they'll eat it, if not they step/pee/nap on it.



** Mold is a serious issue with horses as they can colic and die. That is why I ended up with my hay for free as it came from high end horse farms and they wanted it GONE NOW so as to not risk contamination. If you are feeding a $40,000 horse are you really going to worry about a $5 hay bale?

 

[ChickenPotPie]

$20 for a square bale of alfalfa (@ 105 - 120lbs) *whimpers*
$15 orchard grass (same size)
$8 for straw (about the same size)

Shoot me, now.

 

[Our7Wonders]

Hay just went up here AGAIN...... 14.99 FOR Alfalfa 12.99 for mix 7.99 for straw

Local grass hay 5.00

Just heard from my hay guy 1st and 2 nd cut from eastern washingtom 310.00 a ton .

even the blocks Gem pine shaveings are now 7.50


I may have to reduce my herd and not bred a few does this fall till hay priece settle down again.

We have got to get fuel prices under control

Wow! I've not seen ANY hay going for that high of a price over here. I just bought two tons of organic alfalfa hay - it was first cut but we had a lot of rain this year so it's not as stemmy as it usually is. I paid $180.00 per ton - that's more than I paid last year for second cutting - then again, I wasn't impressed with last years quality at all.

It may be worth renting a truck and coming over to get a few tons yourself. I can't imagine $310.00 per ton! Wenatchee and Moses Lake each have a craigslist page and it covers quite a large area all around them, including the Okanogan area on down to the Ellensburg area - there's hay listed there regularly. Might be worth checking into.

 

[Goatmasta]

I feed a Alfalfa, orchard, and clover mix, $2.50/square bale.

 

[elevan]

We just contracted for this winter's hay.
$3.00 / bale for alfalfa / orchard grass / clover - delivered.

 

[goodhors]

Not sure what they are getting for new hay this summer. Depending on the seller, could be first or second cutting. Some folks missed the 7-day window at the first of June for getting in first cutting and are now just getting their first hay cut and baled. Way past prime, but there is ALWAYS someone willing to buy hay, or you can sell at the auctions. Second cutting is iffy, lots of random showers wetting it after cutting. Some folks trying to do small batches at a time, so they can only lose a small amount if it gets wet and moldy after cutting.

Around here, the best price for hay is buying out of the field, that is the lowest it will ever be. Price goes up after it is put in the barn or hauled to your house, all that extra handling costs money to the farmer.

Prices of $3-$4 a bale delivered and unloaded are amazing! Last year we bought hay for $4 a bale, had to go get it out of the field AND put it in the barn ourselves. We pay $10 an hour for loading and unloading help when we buy, sometimes can't find any workers to help. Got a new guy around the corner doing hay, so we may save in driving costs this year. We bought some last years hay to clean his barn out. Hay seems to be excellent stuff, some grass and alfalfa mixed, plus he cut the price to get it gone for this year's hay storage. Bales were bigger and heavier than what we have gotten recently, so we were pretty beat putting them away. Probably about 70 pounds or more. Horses liked it at the show this weekend!

We still need about 450 bales to be ready for winter. No machinery to handle big bales, nor the inside storage to keep them nice for the horses.

 

[willowbreezefarm]

$5.25 for small bails of orchard mix. We used to pay $2 but hay went up in our area.

 

[Goatherd]

x

 

[goodhors]

Be careful with him keeping the hay. Heard lots of stories about "he promised me xxx bales, then sold them later" from last year. Then person had to go hunt for more hay. Some paid ahead, farmer got the chance to sell hay for more money and did! Some folks got refunds, some didn't. No contracts on every case I heard, so they were hung out to dry with loss and no refund. Your farmer could be a really nice guy, so you will have no problems. Just relating what has happened to others.

I think if you need hay for animals, you NEED to get a method of keeping the hay in quantity at YOUR farm. I could not deal with a few bales here or there, EVERY week or so. What do you do if there is a storm and you run out? Had a lot of that being snowbound last year. We know folks who buy a load of "whatever they are selling" at the auction once a month, pay the going rate. Sure appears to be a lot of extra work spent buying, handling, chance of animals getting sick because of feed changes so often and also running out at a bad time.