martlin
Well-Known Member
I'm not saying haymaking doesn't bring profit, it does, just not even Minimum Wage TBH.
This year, we did a bit of phoning around and I have some lovely big round bales of the best quality hay that cost us £17 a bale.....it is FABULOUS stuff and we have enough to get us right though the winter...the rest he is keeping stored for us undercover until we need it....
Did the same with feed, and went to bulk buy the first load after work last night....came home with CHANGE!!!! last night, and we bought a takeaway with it, and still had change!!!
You need to research your suppliers in future, worked for us!
If people dont like the price of hay, buy a greenhouse and grow your bloomin own!
Why shouldnt they make a profit!!
I started a thread about hay prices a while ago and was well and truely told off by most people for moaning about the huge price increase.
Its quite funny when some people are saying that its not right to complain about havig to pay 5-6 pounds a bale when they arebuying for 2.50.
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I'm going to upset you all now... I have my own hay, not enough though, so have been buying some in - £2.50 per bale delivered...
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In the thread I started people were getting quite nasty with me saying things like I should not keep horses if i cant afford it etc etc, just because I had the nerve to question how much prices had gone up.
My point is that there are some people who agree that its ok for hay to have gone up in some cases by 3-4 pounds a bale and yet they are in the lucky position of only paying 2.50 or so a bale. That seems to be a little hypocritical in my mind.
Umm yes but petrol was under £1 a GALLON (over 2 litres!) then and a loaf of bread was 10p, and that despite the Arab oil crisis period where supplies were short. And fertilisers are massively more expensive now (as in hundreds of percent more). In addition now we have to compete for land with biofuels and a much increased population demand for food.
The comparison doesnt stand up!
I agree.
I asked the simple question as to whether any people thought they were being charged a rate that didn't reflect their current hay situation in their area of the country.
So far this thread has stated that i shouldn't own horses if i can't afford to pay for them, implied that my horses may become some of the unwanted charity cases we sadly hear about everydayand suggested i trot off and buy my own land and make my own hay.
A simple question doesn't really need these responses - which i find quite alarming...especially when i haven't even stated what price i was/am now paying...there certainly would be egg on some posters faces if i did post the price, which i am not going to as this may rumble on forever!
I would like to thank everyone for their replies, some of which have been educational and very eye opening to the process of making a bale of hay and some of which have been a needless dig at horse owners trying to keep the costs relevant
Who?
I think the price increase is reasonable, I am not getting my hay cheaply. Infact, up here, the cost of straw is even more than hay.
There are a lot of fields with the straw still lying on it as it is to wet still.
Personally I think that is what you said that has antagonised so many farmers. You implied that because your farmers had new tractors & an expensive farm they should not be allowed to put their prices up. This in itself made me feel that farmers owed you a living & that we should think about you first.If you have the time or inclination to trawl back over all the posts, the comment re the tractors and farms was made in response to another poster saying farmers work for a minimum wage and can afford to do nothing because horse owners won't/don't expect to pay the going rate for services. I do not/have never said i think that 'farmers' owe me a living. I am very grateful for my livery (shown in the fact that i have been at the same farm for the past 16 years with no issues, so i can't be too horrid a livery) and was just asking what i thought was a simple question, only to be pounced apon by a group of angry posters. My OP states that had i had felt the reasons valid and not seen them change umpteen times i would happily have paid the increase (as i have in livery and straw over the years)
I think i might skulk off back to 'competition riders' where posters appear more friendly (no offence before anyone wants to hunt me down and burn me at the stake!)
My post was a simple question that was answered in a variety of interesting, educational and sometimes aggressive way that some posters felt un-neccessary, including me.
As a daughter of a dairy farmer with a livery yard attached I find this very annoying & frustrating.This is because it just makes me realise that joe public has not got a clue about what goes on in farming anymore. It is a way of life & you certainly dont do it for the money. If you it was for that reason then there wouldnt be any farmers left & then what would you do for food ( Human & animal) , hay or bedding?
look at this picture for every litre of milk (for example) that we produce we get paid roughly 22p, you pay how much in the supermarket. Do you complain about that? Do you complain when the price goes up? Well you may do but what can you do about it? That increase is not passed to us in fact quite often our price goes down.
OK hay may not be as short this year as the media would like to let you believe but it is short. This year we have had to increase the price of our hay to our liveries by 25p, which will probably been that for once we will actually break even by the time we take in the costs to make it.
I just wish that some people would actually look at what else they spend their money on & only provide what is nessecary for their horses & not have umteen different things that dont even get used. If they did that then any slight increase in feed prices would be covered. I bet you still buy your hard feeds even though they have gone up as well but you are not complaining so much about them.
Mike007 I agree with you that the price has been too low for a long time.
I am sorry for my rant but I just thought it needed to be said.