Hay - Ouch!!! - time to panic!!

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canteron

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Had a small delivery of hay yesterday. Well, thought it was going to be a large delivery, but the bales (they were large bales) are now half the size, but the same price. Thats a 100% rise in 3 months and I guess works out at about £7 per bale. The hay had been imported from Ireland to East Anglia.

And for the first time ever, they had run out of Barley Straw.

So how is the hay harvest looking. I hear that there is NO hay whatsoever in France so they are paying whatever it takes and will keep prices high whatever happens here.


Have you secured hay for the Winter - or do you think the crisis is over and prices will come down?
 
We have haylage on our yard and still have several large bales left from last year. The YO rents 2 large fields nearby which are cut for haylage. They haven't started cutting yet I noticed yesterday when I drove past. Those fields are then used for winter turned away horses (retired or youngsters).

We have been paying £27 for large bale haylage. I don't know if it will be the same this winter
 
Please don't use the hay word and the panic word in the same sentance. It only causes people to........well.........panic! Then the prices go up and we all end up paying over the odds. Instead tell the supplier your not sure the hay is up to your normal standard but you would lower your self if it were a little cheaper!

You never know it might work
 
We baled a couple of fields yesterday here in Yorkshire, for big bale haylage and our crop is markedly up on last year.

We had a lot of bales left over from last year, but we don't move it very far as the transport costs push the price too high and folk don't want to pay.
 
The problem here in the east is that we have had NO rain so the grass just hasn't grown - for the second year running!:eek: The grass in the paddocks here had no 'spring grass' flush (good news for my lami:rolleyes:) but it hasn't grown enough for the farmer to make hay:o We have good grazing and normally have enough grass to last until late Nov/Dec (snow permitting) but we will be having to supplement early this year and the last hay we bought was £5.50 a bale:o

I realise it isn't the same everywhere but to those who say don't panic I think you need to realise just how bad it has been and still is in some parts who aren't getting the grass to graze least of all a hay crop:o
 
My yard owner has 3 fields, down the road from yard, the they hay themselves, and it is pureley for the horses at the yard. Our winter rent goes up £30 a month in winter and hay is put out in the field for horses, we can also buy it from her if we need it for in the stables.
 
slinkyunicorn said:
The problem here in the east is that we have had NO rain so the grass just hasn't grown - for the second year running!:eek: The grass in the paddocks here had no 'spring grass' flush (good news for my lami:rolleyes:) but it hasn't grown enough for the farmer to make hay:o We have good grazing and normally have enough grass to last until late Nov/Dec (snow permitting) but we will be having to supplement early this year and the last hay we bought was £5.50 a bale:o

I realise it isn't the same everywhere but to those who say don't panic I think you need to realise just how bad it has been and still is in some parts who aren't getting the grass to graze least of all a hay crop:o
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Yes I realize this is a regional problem, it's the transport costs that are making moving bales around uneconomic.
 
We've (the whole yard) just done our haylage order for the winter and a big bale (the really big ones) has only gone up by £3 a bale. Hardly any difference from last year and probably more to do with inflation than the lack of hay.


I know it's bad in the East, I live here too, but at least there has been a crop in other places this year. Last year no one had any blooming grass. Hopefully that will help to quell the panic at least a bit. There is hay out there this year if you're willing to pay. Last year it seemed like there wasn't, even if you were happy to pay £10 a bale!
 
i'm in mid Beds. At our farm the silage for the cows a month ago with a high cut. With the showers and sun in the last couple of weeks you can hear the grass growing. Don't think its going to be bad as we thought a few weeks ago, sould easily get a 2nd cut for the hay. We buy straight from the farm. Last year it was £3.50 for a normal bale of hay but it started to run low and went to the large round hay bales which are much more economical and work out cheaper £35 each. Last winter I used more than ever before and it worked out cheaper being on large bales. (now running to hide) :-)
 
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Am in north herts and it WAS poor however I am hearing they are cutting and have seen it going through the village lorry after lorry and due to our recent rain they are on about a 2nd cut. So fingers crossed it wont be as bad as expected

Well I hope not and that the we are not encouagared to pay premiums due to panic! or taken advantage of!
 
I have ordered my hay for the winter but haven't been told whether there's an increase or not. But then my supplier does put prices up when they less from their crop and lower their prices when they get a good one so I can't complain. We were £25 last year and have been told that if prices are up, it won't be much more.
 
I'm about to bale 10 acres today, it's not looking brilliant, but better than last year. Hoping for a modest 50 small bales per acre. I think with a bit of luck and the right weather, we will get second cut from about 6-7 of the 10 acres.
Another 7 acres we haven't cut yet looks thick enough but very short - not quite sure what to do with that.
Some farmers are selling hay off the field around me for £4 per small bale, which is 35% increase on last years prices.
My usual supplier hasn't decided prices yet, so not sure if the time for panic has come yet or not.

ETS - my grass in the grazing fields is growing like mad! But strangely enough, it's July and it's the first ''spring flush'' this year.
 
A lot of baling has been going on this week (Lancashire) and it seems like it's going to be a good crop. A lot of places would be able to be on a 2nd cut by now with the grass we've had but it's done nothing but rain since April so the opportunity to cut hasn't presented itself!
 
Here in Suffolk, our hay was cut on Thursday and is not looking as bad as I thought it would!

Will see if we have a surplus and will sell if we do. It's lovely, clean meadow hay so will let you Eastern HHO'ers know in the next few days....fingers crossed!
 
Horse owners need to start thinking in terms of cost per tonne. Admittedly most hay is sold "per bale" because of potential problems frm "weights and measures". Big bales vary in shape and size according to the make of baler used . Hay delivered in is probably going to cost at least £250 per tonne .Huge tonnages of straw have been commited to power stations on 6 year contracts and are not available so straw will be in short supply again. Spring barley round here looks worse than last year.
It never ceases to amaze me that horse owners will pay £6 plus for a 20kg bale of woodshavings yet begrudge paying the same for decent hay . The price of hay has stagnated for the last 20 years and completely failed to keep up with inflation.As a result both quality and quantity produced have reduced . Now market forces have made it once more a valuable crop.It is not going to go back down in price. Most horse owners could do a lot worse than buy really good hay(though I suspect that many wouldnt even know what that looks like)and cut down drasticly on VERY EXPENSIVE hard feeds.
 
2 weeks ago in Chelford market, last years hay was making £270 per tonne :eek: call that panic buy!
It's pointless to quote prices per tonne on here, though - most posters don't know how much their bales weigh. My own are 50 small bales to a tonne, as are one of my normal suppliers, the other makes them slightly bigger at 40 bales to a tonne. So, depending on supplier, I will be paying, in all probability, around £175 per tonne.
Then again, it's all fairly academic, because if you need to feed your stock, you will pay whatever the price is being asked :)
I figure that my stock can't go hungry, so there is no point in worrying about prices, because at the end of the day, I will buy wherever, whatever, at whatever price I can find it.
 
So I just worked out that I'm paying about £225 per tonne of haylage this winter. That's sounds pretty good compared to £270 a tonne for hay. Feeling slightly better about my bill now
 
Probably but mine don't eat anything apart from haylage whereas if I feed them hay that stupid brown horse of mine starts to waste away and has to be shovelled full of hard feed. Ridiculous skinny creature!
 
Mike's right, the price of hay has most definitely not kept pace with inflation.

30 years ago it was £2 a bale, it was cheaper to make then too, diesel was a few pence per litre.

If everyone stopped talking about shortages and escalating prices of hay/haylage/straw it would cease to be a problem.
 
Very well said Mike007.

The problem is also people forget that diesel prices have also gone up. Do you realise how much these modern tractors drink?

We've been very lucky. We have no end of grass, and we've made half our hay so far, the yield and quality is fab. Think we'll have made enough to last us 3 years!
 
We managed to get ours baled and undercover last night. I have kept 120ish for my boy and sold the rest. Not sure what the prices will be around here but there is alot of hay cutting going on!!
 
MillionDollar said:
Very well said Mike007.

The problem is also people forget that diesel prices have also gone up. Do you realise how much these modern tractors drink?

We've been very lucky. We have no end of grass, and we've made half our hay so far, the yield and quality is fab. Think we'll have made enough to last us 3 years!
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A well timed price crash sounds on the cards. lol.
 
Just been out for a hack and we notice two huge fields being cropped and a further 5 fields ready to be cropped, there really shouldn't be a shortage this year.
 
MillionDollar said:
Very well said Mike007.

The problem is also people forget that diesel prices have also gone up. Do you realise how much these modern tractors drink?
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It cost us £200 more to fill our diesel tank this year than it did last, and that's only a 1000lt tank so not a big one and haymaking requires a fair bit of deisel.

Also, people forget the amount of man-hours haymaking takes, farmers need to charge for their time as well as cover their costs, and I bet most of them earn a hell of a lot less per hour than most of you!
 
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