Cutting haylage.

china

china

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I'm looking to hopefully cut my own haylage this year, up to four acres. What sort of cost are we looking at this year? In an ideal world I would like small bales to make moving them easier, but I could cope with big ones, just!
 
Are you asking how much it will cost to have someone cut or how much could you get for the bales if you sold them?
 
Sorry didn't make that clear. How much it would cost to get cut and wrapped. I'm tied into a contract and cannot sell off the field.
 
I make small bale haylage. 2010 it cost me £2.30 per bale, and last year it cost me £2.60 per bale to make. That includes mowing, turning, baling, wrapping and the contractor even stacked it for me as well. We make the small oblong bales. Size of a bale of hay.

Hope that helps.
 
Those prices on that list are way lower than anything I've ever been quoted. Farmers wouldn't get out of bed for that!

We paid £11/bale for wrapped and stacked haylage last year, and they made 3' bales for us, which are a bit smaller, but easy to push around if you don't have a tractor. They weren't much cheaper than 4' bales as they needed the same wrapping and carrying etc.
 
Honey08 said:
Those prices on that list are way lower than anything I've ever been quoted. Farmers wouldn't get out of bed for that!

We paid £11/bale for wrapped and stacked haylage last year, and they made 3' bales for us, which are a bit smaller, but easy to push around if you don't have a tractor. They weren't much cheaper than 4' bales as they needed the same wrapping and carrying etc.
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I agree that list is very cheap!! My boyfriend is a contractor and what I would say is with only 4 acres you would more than likely be at the bottom of the list which means you will not always get the best weather! Farmers in general are a bit grumpy (I know I live with one ;)) with us horsey lot so make sure you find someone local who doesnt mind dealing with horsey folk!
 
Dolcé;10693247 said:
Wow, what a really useful link! Having looked at that there really is no excuse for weedy paddocks is there, how the hell do they make a living!
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Thats why we gave up contracting, when we gave up we would put a full team into a farm to do silage, tractor and mower, tractor and rake, 450hp self propelled harvester, 2 tractors and trailers and a tractor and buckrake (and the drivers obviously). We gave up 10 yrs ago and were charging £45/acre for the lot and reckoned then it should be £50, it seems on that list the average rate for that job now is £50.50/acre. Diesel is about 25p/l more expensive too. The hp on the forager was £1500/month over 4 yrs, we were due to upgrade and would have to find an extra £100k to do this, alongside the tractors, arable kit, round baling kit and other odds and ends all of which were upgraded every 3 yrs it was all getting hideously expensive. So glad we saw the light!
 
We paid about £10 per bale last year, the mini Heston size (about 4 x 4) but they are far too heavy to move without a tractor.
Many contractors have given up on the very small bales as it takes so long to do the field in comparison to the bigger bales; 'time's money' is probably a contractor's favourite saying!
 
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