Reseeding hay, cutting, raking, baling for first timers!!

[Duckfarmerpa1]

Hi all, as most of you know, we have a nice farm called C&DFarming, with 35 acres. We currently have Timothy hay on it, mixed with some junk. Chris just brush hogged about 15 acres. I’ve been wanting to plant new hay of some sort...he does not want to invest in all of the equipment. Truth-be-told...he owned everything, and actually gave it away!! It was taking up space and he just wanted it gone!! Ugh. Anyways, today, our farmer neighbor, different guy than the one I normally mention. He stopped by to check things out. We got to talkin* about the hay. Years back he had cows. He paid people $1,000 to cut, rake and make round bales for him. He got 85 bales. He used much less of an area than we would be using, so we would get much more hay. At that time they were going for $30. This perked up Chris’s ears. Finally!! So, I said later, we could really profit if we tried to grow something no one else has...like alfalfa. Peanut doesn’t grow here...AlfAlfa, not really either, which is why it’s $15 a bale. But, if we stick with mixed grasses...you see, we have two neighbors who sell it. one Sells straight Timothy bales...so that’s different. The other, we could charge $3 less? Maybe $42 per round bale? They are $45 around here. 80 lbs. So, if we are to do this, type of seeds would you recommend...and where to buy them? I know we all talked about seed companies a month ago, but I really only saved the pumpkin ones, because Chris didn’t want to do hay, and we are getting crown vetch from a friend for free. Our planting season, tilling season is way off yet. Ground still hard as a rock, and we get heavy frost through May. So, when could we...would we need to get this stuff in the ground? What is the harvest typically? Ok, any other tips, advice would be great!! Also, anyone have any tips on finding a used tractor rototiller? New are $2,000. We got the two bottom plows, the disk...we need a big till...but want used...can’t find one locally..any ideas?? Ok, thanks!

 

[Beekissed]

Hi all, as most of you know, we have a nice farm called C&DFarming, with 35 acres. We currently have Timothy hay on it, mixed with some junk. Chris just brush hogged about 15 acres. I’ve been wanting to plant new hay of some sort...he does not want to invest in all of the equipment. Truth-be-told...he owned everything, and actually gave it away!! It was taking up space and he just wanted it gone!! Ugh. Anyways, today, our farmer neighbor, different guy than the one I normally mention. He stopped by to check things out. We got to talkin* about the hay. Years back he had cows. He paid people $1,000 to cut, rake and make round bales for him. He got 85 bales. He used much less of an area than we would be using, so we would get much more hay. At that time they were going for $30. This perked up Chris’s ears. Finally!! So, I said later, we could really profit if we tried to grow something no one else has...like alfalfa. Peanut doesn’t grow here...AlfAlfa, not really either, which is why it’s $15 a bale. But, if we stick with mixed grasses...you see, we have two neighbors who sell it. one Sells straight Timothy bales...so that’s different. The other, we could charge $3 less? Maybe $42 per round bale? They are $45 around here. 80 lbs. So, if we are to do this, type of seeds would you recommend...and where to buy them? I know we all talked about seed companies a month ago, but I really only saved the pumpkin ones, because Chris didn’t want to do hay, and we are getting crown vetch from a friend for free. Our planting season, tilling season is way off yet. Ground still hard as a rock, and we get heavy frost through May. So, when could we...would we need to get this stuff in the ground? What is the harvest typically? Ok, any other tips, advice would be great!! Also, anyone have any tips on finding a used tractor rototiller? New are $2,000. We got the two bottom plows, the disk...we need a big till...but want used...can’t find one locally..any ideas?? Ok, thanks!

I've got one.....don't do it. It's a huge investment and you have to keep investing in it if you want to keep the nutrient levels of your hay high...which means buying fertilizers. If you just keep cutting those nutrients~in the form of grass~off your farm and never put any back, pretty soon you have a poor quality hay and poor quality soil.

Then, think of the times when the weather makes for a poor hay year and you make little to no profit at all but are still paying off equipment and your tab at the farm store for your fertilizer, baling twine, machinery repairs, etc.

Better to invest in high tensile fencing around the place and do managed intensive grazing, which adds more and more nutrients to your soil and farm, allows you to run more livestock on it than if you were open grazing and the livestock you raise can be paying you to mow the grass, no matter the weather conditions.

Here's a good place to start if you want to do sustainable, regenerative farming instead of selling all the nutrients off your farm: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi8jM5w49UezskDWBGyKq5g

Here's a good playlist of his to get you started...

This guy breaks it down for you in simple, easy to understand sound bites...I'd soak up every vid of his you can find before making a decision on trying to make a profit off 35 acres by selling hay. You like animals....imagine making that profit by raising animals instead. Even more profit by keeping overhead low by farming a grass based farm, selling grass fed animals, and using sustainable methods to produce flocks/herds that require little intervention in the way of meds/vacs/feed, just sound management practices.

My thoughts are, let the big boys who already own the equipment and have the acreage to get a good profit from their hay....there will always be a need for hay...but with small acreage you'll never make enough to compete with them. You can, however, make a good yearly profit from grazing and selling grass fed sheep and meat goats. They are bringing more profit than beef right now and require less input.

 

[Mike CHS]

We are under 19 acres and had hay cut here for our own use twice but also find it easier to mob graze fairly small paddocks. We still wind up cutting some grass because our sheep can't keep up with it in prime growing season but it's usually just knocking the tops off with the bush hog. I have planted Fescue and Red River Crab grass last year and it's coming back in with the nice temps we are having now. I picked up a couple of bags of Pasture Mix seed yesterday at the CO-OP and it's fairly economical. The paddock grasses where I'm going to broadcast seed is short enough that I usually get a good stand of everything I have planted broadcasting the seed. I missed the window last fall getting rye grass seed out so I wound up having to buy hay earlier than in the past. I have a broadcast attachment that holds right at a full bag of seed or right at 100 lbs of lime.

This particular mix is Fescue, rye grass and Orchard Grass that is being broadcast over paddocks that already have decent stand of our native cool season grass and other grasses planted last year. Fescue has a bad reputation but we have had no issues. I just make a point of sowing seed with some rain in the forecast and early enough to miss our hot, dry temps that start in late May/early June. My sheep are keeping up with the grass at the moment but there is 70 plus sheep out there going down to half that in the near future.

If the grass and ground is dry enough or I have a bit more height to the standing grass, I'll broadcast and then pull my drag harrow over it although I used a section of cyclone fence before I got the harrow.

 

[OneFineAcre]

I wouldn't recommend getting into hay business. For all the reasons Beekissed mentioned.

 

[farmerjan]

I am going to try to address some of what you want to know about the reseeding/hay.
First off Timothy is a very good hay. More nutritious that orchard grass. It doesn't grow well here in Va because we are too warm. It was very popular in Ct and north when I was a kid growing up, up there. We compensate with orchard grass here as a saleable hay for people.
Round bales are a dime a dozen so to speak. If you are thinking that you will undercut your neighbor by $3 a bale then you are on the road to making some very serious enemies. Most people here would not worry about a 3.00 difference in a round bale price. The quality of the hay is what counts. Don't even think in those terms because if you get to where you needed some hay, that neighbor would remember your undercutting him, for something that he has been making for years, and he would not be very likely to want to help you out.
There is a guy here who underbid us on making hay for a place that we had for over 20 years. The man's widow decided she would get a better deal and went with the other guy. She came to us and told us all he was promising to do and we told her that he could not make the hay and do what he said for the price he told her but that we understood if she wanted to make a change. We even had her talk to the extension agent so that she could see that we were not trying to take advantage of her with what we had been doing for years. We had the place all the years with her husband and did alot of little extras for them over the years, then he died, and she got to thinking that she could do better. Well, it was a dry year, they did not do what they said, she got shortchanged out of the hay they were supposed to supply for her horses, and it turned out very bad for her. She came back to us after 2 years and asked if we would come back and do the haying. We told her no; because we were not going to spend all the extra money trying to put the hayfields back into fertility and then in a year or 2 get them yanked out from under us again. They had not kept the edges of the fields and there was brush and briars already starting to grow. That much more to clean up too.

Alfalfa is a very demanding crop. It needs to be cut every 26-30 days, at a certain stage, in order to get good quality hay. It is harder to get developed, but is very prolific if the conditions are right. There is a bug, alfalfa leaf hopper, that can devastate it in days. It HAS TO BE SPRAYED if they get into it, or else cut off early to save the crop. It is a great feed but has problems. Bloat is a big one, and being high in protein, it can founder animals very easily. We don't even grow it due to the timing of making the hay. It is more economical for us to grow orchard grass and buy our alfalfa that we feed to the pregnant sheep and the dairy cows when they first freshen. And we limit feed it.

We have all the equipment to make our hay. We make about 250-400 acres of hay a year, figuring at least 2 cuttings of hay. So about 150-200 acres of ground. It costs us about $30 per round bale in total cost, NOT COUNTING OUR TIME. That cost goes up if it is dry, or too wet. If it is wet and we get a late start, or can't get it made due to rain every couple of days that hurts the drying, then the quality goes down and the value goes down. Last year we had a good early season, then didn't get enough rain and we didn't make near the number of small square bales that we usually do. The small squares is our "paycheck" from haymaking.

You would be better off either fencing it all and rotational grazing it, or if you can work out a deal, then get the neighbor to work out a deal to make it and you get a certain amount. But be prepared if you work out a percentage. Here we make hay on one place on percentage. They supply the land, and it is in a mixed pasture grass, nothing special. We do the fertilizing, cut, tedd, rake, bale and they get 1/3 of the hay. We have a set amount of money and time in it no matter if we get 10 rolls or 50 rolls. It costs X amount for the fertilizer, X amount every time we go across that field with a tractor and piece of equipment. So we figure an average of 30 per roll as costs on an average year.
The other place we do they get 200 sq bales in their barn of 2nd cutting and we get all 1st cutting, and any 2nd they can't fit. It isn't worth the aggravation of them bothering us with constant phone calls telling us we need to come cut the hay because it is so nice and sunny out, yet the weather is calling for rain in 2 days so we know we can't get the hay dry enough to bale so why leave it laying on the field for several days then have to spend extra time tedding and raking to try to get it up off the ground to dry enough to bale and have the quality that much less. I doubt that we are going to do it again this year. 3 years of this BS is enough.

Haying is alot of work. HAS to be done when the conditions are right. Headaches when conditions are not good.
Give it alot of thought.

 

[farmerjan]

Word of advise, buy a NEW tiller for the back of the tractor. They are one of the most used/abused pieces of equipment and buying a used one, 99% of the time you will put more into it for repairs than you will ever save. The only one used to buy would be from a commercial poultry farmer that uses them to till the confinement houses.... but they use them ALOT..... they just don't get run over or through places with alot of rocks or anything like that. $2,000 is a good investment for a new piece of equipment like that.

 

[farmerjan]

Also, all according to the size of the round bale, they can weigh from 800 to 1500 lbs..... not 80 lbs. Our one round baler that net wraps makes a 4x5 that will weigh 800+. The other balers will roll a 5x5 to a 5x6 and we make them as big as we can to make less trips when feeding since more hay per bale. They will weigh 1,000 to 1400 lbs. Depends on what type hay too.

 

[Duckfarmerpa1]

Also, all according to the size of the round bale, they can weigh from 800 to 1500 lbs..... not 80 lbs. Our one round baler that net wraps makes a 4x5 that will weigh 800+. The other balers will roll a 5x5 to a 5x6 and we make them as big as we can to make less trips when feeding since more hay per bale. They will weigh 1,000 to 1400 lbs. Depends on what type hay too.

Yes, our neighbor did come by later and tell us he was wrong on his figure of the weight of a round bale.....which, was funny to me when he said it, because a nice big square bale is 30-40?

 

[farmerjan]

Our normal small sq bales run approx 50 lbs. That is the preferred size here for the horse people. Many are "older" like me and they don't want a hernia trying to lift a 75-90 sq bale. The big square bales depend on the size again. 3x4x6 will weigh 600 or more. There are balers that make a 4x4 or a 4x5 x6 or x8 and they can run 1,000 lbs. We figure 2-3 BIG squares to a ton, according to size and how tight they pack 'em.

 

[Duckfarmerpa1]

Ok...I didn’t have time to read anything on here before we went the auction....probably wish I had. We bought a square baler..BUT, we are not going to sell hay. We are only going to portion off a smaller area , enough for our animaLs. Mostly, because, we don’t want issues with our neighbors, and we are already very busy. Plus, we hope to keep expanding the garden. We also aren’t going to try alfalfa. We’re going to stick with some nice mixed grasses that grow around here. If we have soil issues...and it’s costing too much, we’ll stop doing it. The machine was a steal.. I realize we need two more piexes, but Chris is savvy and knows how to get a deal. So, we’ll see how it goes. We will definitely leave some Timothy as it is for our rabbits, and the goats do like it sometimes too. They were just sick of it last summer. They’re pretty spoiled. As for the sheep being a profitable animal...we are very aware. They are on our radar. I like pigs, so that’s why we’re trying these mini pigs. But, if they don’t work out, I think we’d probably switch to sheep from the mini’s. Much more money to be made. Please don’t think that this is start to become all about the money...it’s not all all. I’m trying to earn money so that when I need another barn this summer,Chris will build it, or when I need something else, etc. plus, that way...if I have some, just a tad money coming in...he’ll never make me get rid of the goats...my first priority. Speaking of them....I missed out on the $2,000 milk machine by $10!! But we were bidding against a lady that only came for the machine. She was giving me dirty looks and I don’t think she’d have stopped. We stopped $275.... I’m hoping for more auctions soon!! My new milker is....well, I use it for 5 minutes...works great then it Peters out. So I milk by hand. Yes, I’m butting like crazy. We even restart it, take it all off them and start from scratch...it just can’t be this difficult!? Plus, it seems as though it makes their nipples too hard...I turn the dial down...nothing comes out. Turn it up, still barely anything comes out..,and when I take it off the poor nipples look purple and hard. I don’t want to damage them. I’m pretty sure this one is going back too. Ugh