Hay prices - rumours of £12 a bale!!!!

I pay my YO £3.50 a bale, norfolk. It is a private yard though and we are concerned that there may not be enough to last between us.
 
Oh well now I may have to consider haylage. I am moving at the end of the month so will need to source my own hay as current yard doesn't sell to outsiders.
I just called 4 of my local suppliers and cheapest is £4.80 others £5.80 or £6 straw also around £3. It really is ridiculous.
 
Between £4.00 - £5.00 per small bale in South Staffs. Lots of places have ran out though so imagine this will rise quite soon.
 
I'm getting my hay at £2 a bale - it's 2009 hay but good enough for the girls to eat and they both run on fresh air so it's purely to keep their guts going overnight. YO wants rid of it by the summer so I'm getting it cheap!

Everyone else on the yard is paying £5 a bale for 2010 hay, or £13 - £17 (depending on size of horse) a week for adlib hay/haylage.
 
YO where my old girl is who is al bit of a local 'old school horseman' - dealer, transporter, hunt supporter etc, holds H&H's 'hay shortage' article totally responsible for prices going up so much this year!
We are on large round haylage, gone up from £18 last year to £25, his yield was down 30% and diesel is now costing him £700 as week.... Our YO at boys yard was prepared to pay £80 for large bales from yorkshire ( we are in south bucks ) but we told him not to be a moron and did a bit of local digging, found large square bales for £30....
 
Ive gone from a yard where we had adlib crap hay, to where the livery is cheaper but she buys in great quality hay for us a large rectangle bale is £28, this lasts my mare a month and is all she is having whilst working hard (so must be pretty good qual)
and large straw bales are £10
 
Tbh, because I live in the "garden of england" where over half of the country's veg and grains are grown there obviously are just not enough hay fields as although I can still buy straw at £1.00 bale, hay has increased from £3.00 last year to £4.50 this year. I also have to pay for delivery at £10 per load and he can only bring a max of 34 bales per delivery. The farmer that delivers has said that he has virtually used all his supplies and having asked around I have no idea where I'm going to get any more from. Local feed merchants are only suppling regular customers and they are charging £8 per small bale. I have also heard a rumour that some suppliers are holding bales in storage in the hope of being able to charge £10 per bale when every one else's stocks have run out. Unsurprisingly it was the owner of a local tack/feed shop that told me this! I don't really know who to believe but I for one will seriously struggle if prices of everything continue to rise at this same speed.
 
SpottedCat said:
Every year H&H runs some ridiculous sensationalist story about hay reaching stupid prices like this. Every year it is proven to be incorrect and people are flogging off left over stuff come spring. Seriously, this isn't journalism, this is tabloid-style drivel for the mindless masses, which isn't a story until someone prints it, people believe it, panic buy, merchants say 'shortage' and come April, hay is back at sensible prices. It is nonsense. Yes, hay is now £5/bale for me - but then again it was £3/bale when I had a pony 18 odd years ago, so given the change in fuel prices since then, that's not exactly a ridiculous increase, is it?!
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Yup ^^^
 
I paid £5 per small bale back in October, but that was with delivery added on, I only bought a few to tide us over til the farmer allowed us to use the haylage he supplies in winter.


At my other yard I have also paid £25 for a big square bale of hay though the farmer reckons he could get £50 for it, I have my doubts.
 
HHO Admin, I have a firm belief that HHO are in the most part totally to blame for the increasing hay prices. All this scaremongering and panicking is allowing hay suppliers to whack up their prices as they CAN. We get deliveries from 3 different people/companies, all have increased their prices this year. When I asked if we needed to be worried about running short, everyone said that no, they're gonna be fine for the whole winter, but why should they not increase their prices seeing as everyone else is? I have also spoken to people from other yards out of the county as well.

Perhaps a syringe of Oxyshot and an apple to those who are panicking would stop this problem from ballooning to even greater proportions.

And for what its worth, the hay we're getting this year is the best quality we've had for years, and we're feeding MUCH less of it so we think we're actually saving slightly on last year.
 
Mike007 said:
See everybody how simple was that. Yes merchants buy hay often by the bale from auctions ,also by the barn ,or bay of barn ,and also by weight. But ultimately we (yes I was a hay and straw merchant for 20 years) have to calculate the weight.
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It may be simple, but for the 'small' buyer I still think it is completely irrelevant.

I just don't care how much my hay weighs basically.

A large round lasts me 'x' many days, therefore I need 'y' amount, that, to me is simple, why complicate matters doing pointless math :confused:
 
I wish it was sensationalism round here, but it isn't. Profiteering, perhaps. My enquiries were very real and the lowest I was quoted (over the Christmas period) was £7.50. At the time I turned them down thinking THAT was ridiculous, until the next person I asked wanted £10 and I popped some happy pills for the shock...the person over the road from my house (a smallholding) bought the £10 bales, so they are getting away with it. Mad, when I saw that Scats are selling haylage at £6.12 a bale if you buy 20 (and £6.20 something if you buy 10). So, I'm buying a few haylages bales in case of another cold snap, but the hay dealers round here can take a long walk off a short pier.
 
It's still easy to find hay at £3.50 a bale, but most of those suppliers can't deliver. Others at my yard have got a plentiful supply of hay being delivered at £4.50 to £5 a bale.

I am buying haylage (very good quality, low protein) at £6 a small bale, delivered. I'm extremely alergic to hay, but I am OK with haylage, which is why I feed that instead.

For us, the panic which was being shouted about on places like this forum last year seems to have amounted to nothing. I'm seeing hay prices coming down. Only last weekend our hay suppliers put their prices down by 50p and are actively advertising for more customers!!!!
 
Im not saying the prices arent going up, they are, but they're going up because supposedly reputable reporters like HHO are making everyone panic.
 
flamehead said:
Im not saying the prices arent going up, they are, but they're going up because supposedly reputable reporters like HHO are making everyone panic.
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Exactly! Last year, all the suppliers were eagerly telling us how it's being widely advertised "there's going to be a devastating and catastrophic hay shortage" and explaining how they had no choice but to increase prices.

Now, our suppliers have just put their prices down and are needing to advertise!!!!!
 
We are £4.50 or £5 a bale round this way.

thing is its very hit or miss if the horses will eat it, as the majority of it is sour grass. As it we havent had the weather for it to grow enough before the cut.

So the horses are well off it. :( So it is turning into expensive bedding!!!
 
I am paying £5 a bale - up from £3 last year. (I believe that last year's hay was cheap so I am not complaining about paying £2 more this year as the price of equipment, fuel and labour has increased).

What I think H&H need to publish is the weight of people's bales...

For example, last year's bales would make up 4 - 4.5 days of nets for my pony (he has 6.4kg a night). This year I am only getting 3.5 days out of a bale as they are much lighter... now that is worth complaining about in conjunction with the price increase!
 
I don't feed hay as the quality here is too unreliable. A medium haylage, second cut (and as it's a large-medium verging on big bale size, I'll guess at 500-600kg) has been £23 all winter. Local farmer brings one a week for that. Feeds four for a week. Til I started adding one small chaff and speedibeet feed per day, it was costing just over 80p per horse per day to feed. I guess I'm on £1 a day now :-S
 
£2.50 for a small bale, Gloucestershire.

I've had the same supplier for about 15 years and this year was the first price increase, from £2 to £2.50. Times are hard I guess..
 
We are in South Lincs and are selling ours for between £2.50 and £3.00 for decent sized bales depending on quantity required.

We have also sold it for £2.00 @ bale to our regular customers off the field.

I think some people are just getting greedy as they know it is in short supply.
 
£6 a small bale delivered, Hertfordshire. Good quality but some are a bit light.

ets I feed hay all year so hope there are no problems before the next harvest.
 
Indiangel said:
I last bought a small hay bale about a month ago and that was £4 in Cornwall

I'm now using haylage, we're just going through so much of it all!
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this is what I've been paying, down in the far south of cornwall. A supplier another livery uses has ran out already and my supplies is almost out. Luckily we've been able to move the horses into another field with lots of grass in before they move to their spring/summer field.
 
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