Round bales or square?

[strong42]

We do only large round bales wrapped in plastic - haylage in fact. We switched from small square dry for a number of reasons:

1. The square baler broke.
2. There is only me and my husband and a dearth of willing helpers to pick the darn small bales up.
3. The haylage comes up at about 19% protein, the cows keep their weight all winter with only the need for grain to keep them friendly.
4. We can cut in the morning, let the hay wilt and bale the same day. Wrap at night and we are done. That way the whole process fits with our full time work schedule without taking too much time off for haying.
5. Where we live in New Hampshire the weather is too unpredictable to rely on 3 good drying days for square bales.
6. We can store the bales outside because they are wrapped and they keep all year.
7. The cows (and goats) love it.

Not to say that having a few square bales around wouldn't be handy for the odd occasion. Not so handy that I feel like springing for another square baler, however.

Nic

 

[SageHill]

$4 a bale?
We’re around $26 a bale - 110-120# bales

 

[farmerjan]

@daval ; I am going to preface this with saying I do not believe you are trying to be mean or even that you are being unfeeling... but your comments about the hay have just set REALLY WRONG with me... so here goes........

You are wrong if you think the hay isn't worth more than it was a few years ago. The cost of seed had increased... double or more, to establish a hayfield... existing fields will last about 6-10 years. Then the weeds start to take it over. The cost of any spraying has doubled to keep the weeds from establishing.

Fertilizer costs tripled about 3 years ago, so if you don't feed the ground, all the nutrients you take off in the form of the hay crop then you get less and less yield. Nature designed it so that if you do not take a crop away, then it feeds itself by dying off and then goes back to the soil. If you take the crop away, the ground needs to be fed to be able to grow. If you use only animal derived manures as fertilizer, the cost of say poultry litter has gone from $15/ton delivered to over $35/ton. We spread approx 2 ton PER ACRE..... and you have to balance what the ground needs so there are things that have to be added.

The cost of equipment has gone through the roof. To buy a new baler today is in the neighborhood of $30,000 for a square baler, and over $50,000 for a full sized round baler. We used to buy a round baler for $15-20,000 about 10 years ago. So what, you say, you already have them..... okay, buying replacement parts costs 4 times what they did 5 years ago... and things wear out... The belts on a round baler have a life span of about 4-5 years MAX... They used to cost $50 a piece and there are anywhere from 6-12 according to the size and brand of baler (4ft wide to 6 ft wide).... They are now $200 each for starters. You get tears in them, they can be spliced to get more time out of them... but they wear out.... they are under strain and carry alot of weight as they are rolling that hay into a round bale...

Baling string costs 3 times what it cost 5 years ago... A "bale" of string which is 2 rolls... used to be $20-25... now it is over $60... string that holds the bales together be they large round or small sq ones... that gets thrown away or recycled... never to be reused for it's original purpose.... a one time thing.
Then add in the cost of RUNNING the equipment... Diesel fuel, oil, hydraulic fluid, grease to use on the moving joints...Hydraulic fluid has gone from $25/5 gallon bucket to over $60.....
And the value of the person sitting in that seat to run the equipment... wages if you hire it done... and them having the knowledge and expertise to troubleshoot and FIX things so the hay can get made and in the barn before that rain comes to make it mulch hay instead of good quality hay for feeding.

We make alot of hay... have alot of OLDER USED equipment... and we figure now that we barely break even getting $60 a roll for hay . It costs us just in the value of time and all costs figured in, to custom roll hay for one neighbor at $12 roll... just the cost of actually going out there and running the tractor and baler around his field to roll his hay for him; not paying us for OUR WAGES, just the actual cost of the net wrap, the fuel and all that it costs to run the tractor/baler....

Sq bales of hay have been priced at $1.00-2.00 a bale since I was a kid... it is about time that farmers get the value of their time, labor, and equipment back. There are not the scores of kids that are willing to go out and buck sq bales for $2-3.00 / hr cash money like when I was growing up... You can't beg kids to work for $15/hr... so farmers have gone to more mechanized ways of doing it and it costs money to do so.

It is not a matter of profit corrupting anyone... It is the actual cost of "doing business"..... as farmers we do not set the price of what it costs us to do that business. It is the cost of inputs that we have to figure in to be able to just cover those costs and then try to also get a living wage out of it.
Maybe the way you are looking at it is fine... the "HAY" is not worth more... if you are satisfied with just any old grass to be your hay.... BUT everything else that goes into getting that hay to you costs 2 to 5 times what it cost 10 years ago.
You can always go out and cut it by hand with a scythe, rake it by hand or with a horse drawn rake, and pitch it on a wagon and bring it to the barn and then pitch it into a loft as loose hay...
HOW MUCH is YOUR PERSONAL TIME WORTH????

We make alot of sq bales to sell to people with horses and some llamas... if there is any trash in those bales, the people have a fit... any weeds and such... well, mother nature does not believe in a "monoculture" in a growing field... so we cannot sell hay made like that... and we deal with less than perfect conditions here in the east for making hay compared to places in the mid west and west where they have the perfect kind of drying conditions... but then they irrigate the crops to get optimal growth in a certain time period to get the hay made at the best quality... irrigation does not come free either... and farmers are getting cut off from water in many states....

Know what you are talking about before you judge that farmers are making such a big profit on the hay they are selling.

 

[farmerjan]

Maybe the money is worth less, but this is reality... and if you want to eat you have to put a value on things... be it a dollar or "fiat " currency or a barter value.
The COMMON GOOD.... ie community owned... for everyone is a pipe dream. There will ALWAYS be slackers, and those that will let others work harder and still they want to share in the bounty.

Nature does not work that way either.. it is not touchy feely nice nice...

I don't deny that there are people who take advantage of others, and all that sort of thing, but a personal satisfaction is something that cannot be replaced by a "everyone needs to work together" mentality. I personally am not going to work that hard to benefit someone else that will not do likewise... and if it gets measured in dollars, well, that is how it is at this time.

Sorry, but we are on 2 very different levels of understanding what it takes to actually survive in this world.

Good luck to you... I will take care of myself, and those that are willing to do their fair share to help and trade off their abilities that I lack for things I can do and they cannot. A fair share can be measured in many ways, somewhere you have to put a value on it. And people that cannot do manual labor can offer up other skills.. but there has to be a point of a trade off and where to make a stand on the value of their skill...

I am a mortal, and the practicalities of life means I have to work within the system that is there, and learn how to manipulate it to be able to have a satisfying and rewarding life. Whether the value of the "money is less" or not, it is the system we have to work with. Maybe you need to find someplace that you can create this world of which you speak. I do not see it happening here, and have heard that the values of equality and working for a community, from people who have escaped from places this was forced on them, tells me that with the fact that we are human, and therefore imperfect people, that is something that will never happen. Utopia is not a state .... it is an imagination of people that spend time thinking up the "perfect life" that does not exist.

 

[murphysranch]

There is a young man here on a FB page offering to buck hay for $20 an hour. He got lots of replies.

 

[Finnie]

Looks like @daval has left the forum. I’m glad, because I couldn’t stomach his seemingly welfare mentality and had to use the “ignore” button. All his posts are deleted, so I don’t know what @farmerjan was replying to, but I can guess what they contained based on the posts of his that I did read.

 

[SageHill]

Looks like @daval has left the forum. I’m glad, because I couldn’t stomach his seemingly welfare mentality and had to use the “ignore” button. All his posts are deleted, so I don’t know what @farmerjan was replying to, but I can guess what they contained based on the posts of his that I did read.

Kinda got the this one is a troll vibe.