Being Ripped Off? (Hay Prices Please)

Antw23uk

Antw23uk

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Evening all,

Been at a new yard (well first yard with new horse in 20 odd years) and things are fine, facilities are ok/good and on DIY Livery with a really good friend and her horse so happy ...

BUT ... we are buying our hay from the YO at £45 a bale for the large round bales .... Im not sure if they have a certain name but imagine the ones you cant roll through a stable door unless you are super human because the just dont fit!! The BIG ones :confused:

I'm seeing prices for these bales from £15 upwards .... Spoke to a local lady advertising hay tonight and i explained the size and shape and she said "Oh yes, thats the ones .. yes £15 a bale but collection only" :eek:

So? Being ripped off?

How do i approach the Y/O about this ... its 'assumed' we only buy from them but seriously I dont want to be paying over the odds. I appreciate they are a business and need to make money but to me this just seems to be taking the piss!! :confused:

Thanks in advance :D x
 
I had some huge ones delivered at £35, but also bought £700 worth of haylage. You have to remember you have to handle them,. Chap and I had horrendous job trying to get them in a container and this was with a tractor with lift on front
 
About £35 around here -collected.

Costs about £12 a bale to make (Plus land, handling & storage) so I doubt any worth feeding is being sold at this time of year for under about £28 per bale.
 
Last year at our first "yard" we paid £40 a bale off the farmer, whose field it was.

This year, new field, own sourced for £25 (£25 per delivery, can bring 5-7 bales at a time).

Just found a more local supplier doing them for £15, (can bring 6 at a time for just £10 per delivery!)

Your paying for the convience buying from the yard.
 
Well if you can get it for £35, go and collect it, store it at home and bring it in for your horse as and when you need it; I'd say go for it.

If you can't, it's perfectly normal for YO to charge a fee to do all this for you especially if it was bought last year and stored at their cost for a number of months.
 
At my livery yard it's £5 for a small bale of hay and £45 for small square bales of haylage

what we pay is a real rip off for the size we did in the summer pay £45 for a round bale like yours and most people on my yard thought that was a good deal my livery is abit like yours were not allowed to buy from another yard or farmer . Do you know if the price you pay has alot added on as a profit or if if there selling it to you at breakeven
iv'e heard before from others i know that some yard owner do bump up the price alot.

I guess speak to the yard owner and see if can get some from somewhere else for a cheap price ?

Good luck :)
 
£40 round here (Essex) for reasonable quality and I charge liveries £45 as I have to collect/man handle!!/store.

As long as its decent quality I don't think you're being ripped off - I have never seen them for anywhere near £15 and would question the quality if they really are the same size?
 
As a yard owner I pay £38 for haylage half that size. YO needs to make money. DIY livery alone is break even at best for YOs.
 
Antw23uk said:
I'm seeing prices for these bales from £15 upwards .... Spoke to a local lady advertising hay tonight and i explained the size and shape and she said "Oh yes, thats the ones .. yes £15 a bale but collection only" :eek:

So? Being ripped off?

How do i approach the Y/O about this ... its 'assumed' we only buy from them but seriously I dont want to be paying over the odds. I appreciate they are a business and need to make money but to me this just seems to be taking the piss!! :confused:

Thanks in advance :D x
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Well I can't comment on the price for the large round bales but I'm paying £4 small bale and happy with that. £15 sounds ridiculously cheap as I'm sure large bale is at least 10x size of a small one (probably much more). If it's good quality and already on site it doesn't seem like you're being ripped off to me.
 
would also depend on whetehr it is 4ft round or 5ft round. here we pay £40 for 4ft round delivered and £50 for 5ft round delivered. It is livery yard so sometimes you just have to suck it and go with it unfort
 
If you can't handle (ie you don't own a tractor with bale spike) and store big bales it might not even be relevant what the cost of those is. Your alternative is to go and buy small bales (2 in the boot of a small car at a time).
So I'd work out how many small bales you think you get from the big round ones - they tend to be very tightly packed so I'd guess 12-15 ish (but no idea without a photo), hence you're paying you YO around £3 a small bale including handling and storage which sounds pretty good to me
If you're happy with the quality of it and you can't buy equivalent quality for £2 a bale then I wouldn't worry about it.
 
I am currently paying £40 for a large round of good quality hay. I have paid up to £50 over the last couple of years, when my supplier has had to bring in hay from out of the area. That price is for the round, delivery and being put onto pallets in my field. Around £40 seems to be the going rate here (East Kent). You can get it cheaper, but run the risk of it being poor quality or the possibility that it could contain ragwort.
Tbh, I would be wary of buying hay for £15 for a large round, unless it was from a very reliable source. If it is crap, you will end up chucking loads away.
 
Lots of yo's add a % to forage rather than charge a higher rent, although some are rip off merchants, other times its just a way of covering costs of running the yard. Hard to comment on price. We do get ours from farmer, but even near me it varies. We only got one cut this year so I've been ringing round. Got some lovely late cut stuff at 2.50 a small bale. Also found some awful dusty old crap for £2 a bale, ok stuff but overpriced for what it is at £50 a round. And some brilliant hay at £60 a round, it works out cheaper than buying hard feed for poor doers, but way too good for my fatties.
 
Im paying £45 for round roll delivered. Last year we were paying £65!!!. There are a few around cheaper but not by much, some of them arent as good hay either.
 
Thanks all i really appreciate the feedback and comments. I had it in my head I was being ripped off (Bad week so in a foul 'wo is me' mood) :o

Money going out for various things just seems never ending at the moment :mad:
 
We were paying £40 for big bales, that were enormous and v heavy, we switched to some for £35 that are slightly smaller. When we made our own, it cost about £12/big bale and so I highly doubt that anyone would sell big bales for £15 - they'd hardly cover their fuel delivering it.. If they did, I would expect small dodgy quality bales..

ps, a lot of the bales we have had have gone off or the horses haven't liked, so if yours is happy on what you've got, I would stay with it.
 
We are paying £10 for our big round bales of hay, only downside is its collection only & they have no machinery to load it, so we have to do it by hand....makes for some interesting times trying to get them on the trailer lol.
Weve been lucky this year as we managed to get 34 round bales of haylage for £12.50 each at the end of the summer as well :)
 
They can vary in price depending on quality so it's difficult to compare.

However what you've got to allow for with yards is they store it and there is a cost with that as there are business rates and if it wasn't used for storing hay it could be used for something else. Also if any get spoilt then they have to take the loss on that.

It is working out expensive for everyone at the moment. I've got one at grass and it's costing me a fortune in hay while there's snow on the ground and nothing to eat.
 
criso said:
They can vary in price depending on quality so it's difficult to compare.

However what you've got to allow for with yards is they store it and there is a cost with that as there are business rates and if it wasn't used for storing hay it could be used for something else. Also if any get spoilt then they have to take the loss on that.

It is working out expensive for everyone at the moment. I've got one at grass and it's costing me a fortune in hay while there's snow on the ground and nothing to eat.
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That's a good point - business rates is charged on all facilities including things like barns where hay is stored plus the machinery to move them is expensive to buy and maintain. The rates are charged even if the barn is empty in the summer pre buying in the hay, it's an all year round cost.

If the horse likes it, stick with it. The difference in cost is generally a lot cheaper than a lot of vet visits if they get sick from poor food and forage. If its good stuff, it's worth it, and especially this year where a lot of stuff made was very poor quality just cos of the weather. If next years harvest is a lot better, you may even see costs come down a bit.
 
I think a 4ft round bale is equivalent to approx 12 small bales, I bought two small bales today to tide me over till my next delivery, they were £5.29 each from a feed store so £45 sounds about right to me?
 
The best way to compare bales is by weight as we'll as size. On a baler there are lots of different settings for how heavy / tightly packed the farmer wants the bale to be. It goes without saying a fair percentage of contractors set on the lighter settings so they bale more bales to sell. 80% of our hay / haylage is produced for our own horses but we also sell to liveries too. We bale as heavy as possible to save costs on net and wrap. I remember years ago a livery bought in a large five foot bale as it was a bit cheaper than ours, it was so light they rolled it up the yard one handed, we weighed it and it was 80kg lighter than ours :eek: and they used it up three weeks quicker, they came back to ours after that! All liveries now must buy hay / haylage from us, yes we make a profit but a fair one, its good quality stuff and very good value - by weight, which is the only real way of knowing what you're actually getting.
 
Pippin79 said:
The best way to compare bales is by weight as we'll as size. On a baler there are lots of different settings for how heavy / tightly packed the farmer wants the bale to be. It goes without saying a fair percentage of contractors set on the lighter settings so they bale more bales to sell. 80% of our hay / haylage is produced for our own horses but we also sell to liveries too. We bale as heavy as possible to save costs on net and wrap. I remember years ago a livery bought in a large five foot bale as it was a bit cheaper than ours, it was so light they rolled it up the yard one handed, we weighed it and it was 80kg lighter than ours :eek: and they used it up three weeks quicker, they came back to ours after that! All liveries now must buy hay / haylage from us, yes we make a profit but a fair one, its good quality stuff and very good value - by weight, which is the only real way of knowing what you're actually getting.
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Weight is important but some farmers get complaints from horsey buyers of small bales that they are too heavy and they can't lift them. :-))....so it's not always a ruse to make more money
 
I pay £25 for a 4ft bale and takes 2 or 3 of us to push it up,i order two at a time from my farmer its really good quality my lot go mad for it and get fat on it if chucked out in the field as it is.
 
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