cost of having hay made

izafriendly

izafriendly

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just wondered how much people are paying to have there hay made? i have had a local farmer to do mine for the last 12 years who used to charge £10 acre to mow, £10 acre to spin and so much per bale depending wether it was small bales or large bales and wrap if we didn't get the weather. he has now retired and i am having to source a new hay man! had a lovely guy come to give me a quote and he worked it on price per acre and the best he can do is £100 per acre which seemed a bit of a big jump. this is for small bales and the price is the same wether i get 80 bales an acre or 120. seems a funny way to price it to me as obviously it may need turning twice or 6 times depending on the weather and its the same price wether i get a good or poor yeild. he said one of the other farmers charged £180 an acre!! he did however seem very concientious and reliable which of course is very important. we have 5 acres to cut and it is accross the road from one of the fields he is going to cut for himself.
 
If you expect 100 bales per acre and he charges £100 per acre, that seems to me to be a good deal.
It may be he does not want to negotiate during/after the event, but wants a guaranteed income, from what is a small acreage.
 
my 2 acres cost me £160 and i got 140 small hay bales (although he quite rightly didnt cut edges as they were weedy) I know that the baler charged per bale to bale as I stood with him while he counted up - he then phoned the farmer who cut and turned to see what his charge was and I paid the baler. Seemed very reasonable to me and about in line with our charges in area (although one farmer did want quite alot more).
 
A word of warning; having worked for a contractor, and having used contractors, the problem is always that unless we get a decent period of good weather, then your contractor will almost certainly be making his own hay, and he'll be making it when you want him for yours. It's a juggling act, sometimes! ;)

As an indication, our local chap will charge £14 pa to mow, I'd do the turning, and then he'd charge £3 per bale for mini Hestons- 8'x2'6"sq. For your £100 does that include loading and stacking? If they're flat 10s then that would be easily achieved, if they're 8s, then the stacking work would need to be done by hand, so it would sound a bit too cheap to me.

Alec.
 
no alec i'm loading and stacking myself by hand, hopefully we should be near the top of the list as he would be doing it the same time as he does one of his own fields. he is i think as far as contractors go fairly small time. i think we are definatly going to start tractor shopping as would be better to do our own in the long run but we have been saying that for the last 10 years........;)
 
Last year I think we were quoted £2/bale, brought off the field and stacked. In the end we opted for haylage as we would have had too many bales to store inside!

Our contractor was good in that he was more worried about letting us down than getting his own in, he said he was worried about the forecast - he would risk his own but not ours. He did ours first. Previous contractors have left us to the end when the grass had pretty much gone to seed.
 
Ditto Alec.

If there is any possibility of doing a share, that is definitely preferable to paying to have it done, i.e. the contractor gets the hay in return for xxx number of bales to yourself in lieu of rent.

Years ago, I got a contractor to make my hay for me. He cut it and turned it....then disappeared (as usual!). But the silly man left his tractor and turner in the field, so I rowed it up and got someone to bale it for me.

A couple of weeks later, mostly of rain, the contractor turned up full of apologies with the excuse that he's been away in a course. I took great delight in showing him my barn now full of excellent hay. That happened again with another contractor -- this one "had to go to a funeral". Again, I got someone else in to bale it.

If you must use a contractor, have a back up plan!
 
I always do a deal with a local farmer, he does everything for half the yield. That way I know I'm pretty high up on his priorities to get it cut :)
 
My local farmer is doing mine for 85p a bale.. Should get a couple hundred bales from 7.5 acres?

I say he's cutting it, not if the weather doesn't dry up.. The land is soaking at my place :(
 
Price of diesel is a lot higher than previous years, contractor costs are spiralling upwards...£100 sounds good...if it was here I'd bite his hand off
 
last time I did hay it was 90p a bale and I got nearly 100 bales an acre. I usually make large haylege bales now and they are £11.50 each. this year I have sooo much grass I will make half and half and hopefully sell some of the hay to pay for it
 
We always used to use a contractor until we had a terrible crop one year - half of ever single bale of the haylage was bad (even the ones inside the stack), the guy was nice and swapped some of it for some he had at home but it was a lot of hassle and had cost us quite a bit. the hay we always had to shift and stack by hand and my trailer would only take 12 at a time max... so it was a mammoth task!
we decided after doing it for a few year that was it - we would just buy in.
we then took on an extra field and agreeded with a local farmer that if he cut it, turned it, baled it etc he could have half. that seems to have worked well, although he takes it all back to his farm and brings it as we need it so who knows what we actually get brought.
this year we have rented an extra field of about 10 acres and plan to do the same. not sure what we will get off it but its all a bonus as i am ideally renting it to graze during the winter to give my other winter fields (who have served me very well for 24/7 turnout the past 11 years!) a rest.

when they are getting something in return (ie crop rather than money) they do seem a lot keener to have you higher up the priority list, plus you are not forking out hundreds of actual cash if it turns out to be a bad crop.
 
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