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

[maggies.family]

We are in Northern CA.

We only have the two goats to buy for so we don't buy big quantities. Plus, we are storing it in my greenhouse as we don't have a barn! lol

If we buy alfalfa from the feed store it's $18/bale. But, my husband got a new job and his boss is selling it to us for $10/bale.

I did find some good organic alfalfa and other hay combo's for $8-10/bale but it's in the next town over, which in theory isn't really far away, just takes time out of our day to drive there.

 

[Mills1950]

Live in Texas and currently it's very hard to find any hay of any quality...alfalfa when I can find it is over $20. Coastal bales squares $9.50 and that is considered a real bargain----coastal round bales are available if you are willing to pay over $135. Hopefully the drought will be over soon but even if we get rain now too late.

 

[20kidsonhill]

Live in Texas and currently it's very hard to find any hay of any quality...alfalfa when I can find it is over $20. Coastal bales squares $9.50 and that is considered a real bargain----coastal round bales are available if you are willing to pay over $135. Hopefully the drought will be over soon but even if we get rain now too late.

so sorry for the drought. wishing you all that the drought ends soon.

 

[SuburbanFarmChic]

I am so excited because I think I just scored alfalfa for $2-$3 a bale. I was paying $5 last year.

 

[Ms. Research]

Live in Texas and currently it's very hard to find any hay of any quality...alfalfa when I can find it is over $20. Coastal bales squares $9.50 and that is considered a real bargain----coastal round bales are available if you are willing to pay over $135. Hopefully the drought will be over soon but even if we get rain now too late.

so sorry for the drought. wishing you all that the drought ends soon.

2X. Wish I could send you some of our rain.

 

[manybirds]

Right now, prices here are still going up.
I was paying 11.25 a bale for alfalfa 2 months ago...

now... 13.75 for a bale of alfalfa (bout 102#).

Bermuda... i dont remember what i paid for that last time...

what are you paying?

I know this is due to gas prices, but heck!!! This is horrible!

we get medium square bales (between 50 and 80 ibs) for 50 cents a bale

 

[cmjust0]

And another thing...it's no wonder why people are giving horses away left and right on Craigslist. I know of a local-ish goat dairy that has stray horses showing up at their place. I guess stray horses are the new stray dogs with these hay prices.

That, and the slaughter ban.. A full-grown horse used to have a rock-bottom price of like $700-$800, and what people apparently didn't realize is that the rock-bottom price was being upheld by the meat value (for lack of a better phrase) of the horse.. If a horse couldn't be sold private treaty for a pasture pal, *someone* out there would still pay $750 for it at the sale barn...either the meat buyer, or the guy bidding against the meat buyer. Nobody really ever talked about the slaughter of horses until it blew up on the news as sort of an expos, so it was kinda like an unseen, unmentioned force at play in horse values..

When the slaughter ban went into effect, the bottom fell out because the meat buyer disappeared from the sale barn and the sale barn, ultimately, was setting horse prices.. Combine that with high hay prices and, yeah, you can't hardly *give* a run-of-the-mill horse away these days.. For a while there, it seemed like there were stories on the news about once a week of someone in the area being raked across the coals for cruelty to animals, basically on account of high hay prices, unsellable horses, and the proliferation of cell phones, "hotlines", and do-gooders who had *no clue* about the reality of the situation these horse owners found themselves in..

Some folks needed to be fined/jailed/whatever, I'm sure, but there was also a story of a lady who was brought up on cruelty charges despite the fact that she'd only recently purchased the malnutritioned horses and was feeding and caring for them to try and nurse them back.. Got busted anyway..

I'll tell ya this.. If I ended up caught in the middle of all this and wound up with a skinny horse because I couldn't sell or afford to feed, I'd be inclined to drop it off somewhere too.. Too risky to leave it in the pasture for busybodies to lament and make phone calls over..

 

[Roll farms]

I'm getting 115 bales today for $3.50 a bale and feel like the luckiest person on earth....we didn't get much rain this summer so I was expecting to pay upwards of $5.00 per...

 

[manybirds]

Right now, prices here are still going up.
I was paying 11.25 a bale for alfalfa 2 months ago...

now... 13.75 for a bale of alfalfa (bout 102#).

Bermuda... i dont remember what i paid for that last time...

what are you paying?

I know this is due to gas prices, but heck!!! This is horrible!

we get medium square bales (between 50 and 80 ibs) for 50 cents a bale

Wow i never realized how good of a deal we are getting on our bales. i guess it depends where you live though

 

[Goatherd]

Just called the hay man yesterday and he regretted to tell me that second cut hay would be going up from $3 to $3.25. Still very reasonable to my way of thinking!