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

I paid £6.50 a small bale to save putting haylage in the filed. As my haylage is £6.50 a bale I wont bother again:) (Bury st Edmunds)
 
Enfys said:
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:
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Hardly irrelevant if you wish to compare prices. with normal string tied bales differing by as much as 20% in weight it is a bit important. I also tend to want to know how much my horse is getting .
 
Mike007 said:
Hardly irrelevant if you wish to compare prices. with normal string tied bales differing by as much as 20% in weight it is a bit important. I also tend to want to know how much my horse is getting .
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You are of course correct Mike - actually reducing bale sizes is one of the more cynical ways I've noticed the profiteering taking
 
Mike007 said:
I WISH PEOPLE WOULD TALK ABOUT HAY ON A PRICE PER TONNE BASIS ,all this per bale stuff is meaningless. :mad::mad:
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I understand what Mike is saying here, it would be the only true comparison. However to me it's irrelevant for several reasons:

I don't care how much my horses get, they live out, so they get what they need.
Some farms have heavier bales than others and are therefore better value. I do care about this normally, at the moment though, I can only find one farmer with hay to sell at a half reasonable price, so beggars can't be choosers.
I don't buy hay by the ton, therefore I don't know what a ton of it would cost. I go with my little trailer, fill it up as far as I can and pay for that.

p.s. New farmer is actually selling tightly packed heavy bales at £4.50 per small bale, which is a bonus.
 
On the Farmers Weekly Forum a few months back there was a poster on there that said that they had bought up a load of extra hay to sell for massive profit to the horsey folk......think he was in the Yorkshire area.

I'm horseless at the moment but I am helping my friend out with hers and she is paying £28 for large round bales, low moisture haylage which is virtually hay (Essex).
 
I got 30 good sized beutiful green, nice smelling hay delivered last week. My friendly farmer said he is running low but as it was end of season he only wanted £2/bale instead of the £2.50 he asked last year. I am obviously very lucky to have such a nice supplier of hay. There was no charge for delivery.
He also dropped off 5 straw bales for me free of charge the next day...
 
Well before Christmas I was paying £32 for a big 10 bale, This year I'm currently now paying £45 a big bale :( Was talking with a lady at the local feed merchants in Surrey last week who has just paid £60 a big bale, and heard a farmer is now selling his big bales for £80
 
That is crazy, I would never pay that much.
We have a brilliant supplier and have recently paid £8 a big bale of haylage. We also had a dodgy one which none of the horses ate and he came and picked up and replaced it with a better one.
 
£2 a bale from my aunty, oh how I love her as she cut 400 bales and my usual local supplier ran out weeks before christmas so I dread to think what I would be doing now with her
 
We were paying £4.50 in the summer, that went up to £5.50 in October and this week has been put up to £6.50, if we pay the bill within a week we get a discount of £1 a bale so in real terms we are now paying £5.50. We are not allowed to buy hay from other places so have no choice in pricing unless we feed haylage which is between £5.50 and £6.50 a bale locally.
 
In East Sussex (down south):
Just before Christmas I paid £35 from local farmer up the lane for a large bale of hay and can't have any more (did order 6 from him) as his sheep/lambs are eating him out of house and home.
Ordered 80 small bales of hay after Christmas from my other farmer in the next lane at £6 per bale delivered and stacked..... AM BROKE NOW! BUT DOBBINS ARE HAPPY.
I think I paid £5 a bale from him last summer.
 
Kokopelli said:
That is crazy, I would never pay that much.
We have a brilliant supplier and have recently paid £8 a big bale of haylage. We also had a dodgy one which none of the horses ate and he came and picked up and replaced it with a better one.
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You wouldn't have any choice if you lived where we do. That's cheap for a round bale in the South East, our regular farmer is selling them easily at £55 per bale.
 
Got caught on the back foot and went from 0 equines in my care to 2 from the beginning of November, so needed to get hay fast!

Currently in our area (close to M25 junct 11/M3 junct 3) small bale hay is being sold for £6.95 on average - delivered & stacked.

However - this IS very good stuff and good well packed bales, BUT the suppliers limit delivery to about 25 bales max at a time to stop those from buying lots up, so I've had 3 or 4 deliveries over the past 2 months & now am secure till I need to buy in the summer again.

I 'could' have got some at £5 per bale from 2 or 3 local outlets, but it was not at all nice & bales were loose/small, so a false economy.
 
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Perissa said:
Round bales are currently £75

Rectangular Bales I have seen advertised for £100

I am in Southern Hampshire.
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skint1;9337097 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 said:
I've just paid £80 for a large square bale :( it was painful! I have had no choice, the snow from november has only just shifted and they are still on their winter paddock which is just a mess now. There is nothing else for them to eat.

Come on Spring, hurry up!
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Here in Shetland, small bales of hay are around £6 to 6.50 each. One supplier recently had larger square bales at £8 a bale but there was a lot more to them than his usual £6.50 bale.

I feed small bale commercial haylage though (at between £6.50 and £8 a bale) as for all the difference in price, it seems to go that wee bit further and is easier for me to store.

ETA: Big round bales are around £45-50 a bale.
 
£3.50 - £4.50 per bale round here. I bought a load at £3.00 per bale last year which I am still using but will have to top up soon.
 
Paying £5 delivered, farmer admitted he had been very careful with it and not taken on any more customers this year, so consequently has plenty left for current buyers - so I'm all right jack!

He charges £40 for a rectangle bale, £10 more than last year, but made 20% less due to the lack of growth, so he only comes out quits price wise.
 
The farm where I keep mine grows there own and only sells to liveries. We paid £2 small bale for years, then last year went over to a combo of large round bales (approx 10 small bales) for £20 for the horses that live out, in round feeders, but small bales still £2.
This year, the yield was down by 30%, fuel prices have sky rocketed so our hay has had to go up. We only have large round bales now, £30 each but the quality is so much better than the past few years as it didn't get rained on! I'm sure I get more than 10 bales worth out of a large bale than a small one as I feed by weight rather than a certain number of sections. To ensure there's enough hay to last until this years crop is ready (months and months away, I know) whole bales haven't been going out in the fields, owners have to put out their hay daily (last year they were all eating until they nearly popped!).
I've seen small bale hay advertised at £7 a bale, then the following week re-advertised at £6 a bale. The Isle of Wight is different to the mainland as it's not that easy to travel for bargains, between £40 and £60 just to get a car across the water. I do fear, if people haven't planned well, some suppliers will make a killing with the captive audience!
 
4.50 in herts - price went from up from 3.50 and the article from H&H was pinned up in the tea room to explain why the farmer had put up the prices!

however at the yard I was at before three years ago I was paying 4.50 so what I am paying now is still reasonable. this is delivered and for a big yard YO buys in bulk for all of us (mixture of grass and stabled liveries) but we probably spend as a yard £12,000 a year on hay so it is in the suppliers' to keep our business as if he is reasonable we will stick with him when hay is more plentiful and he may not have so many customers.

grazing grass though has been much better this year - my good doer pony lives out - so we have only had to feed hay in the field during the snow and we are not needing to feed it at the moment- whereas last year we were feeding hay before xmas right the way through till April.

if hay prices go up more and more then I will be even more glad to have a good doer pony on grass livery!
 
Mike007 said:
I WISH PEOPLE WOULD TALK ABOUT HAY ON A PRICE PER TONNE BASIS ,all this per bale stuff is meaningless. :mad::mad:
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Mike007 it isn't meaningless, your average livery doesn't buy hay by the tonne but by the bale. I buy 5 or 10 bales at a time from my YO, I haven't got space to store more than that.

I have noticed that bales have got lighter over the past few years too :( I thought it was me getting stronger thus finding them easier to lift, but its not at all. My hay bales I buy off my YO at £6.50/bale weigh 16 or 17kg each. I weigh out my hay for my good doers, so I know exactly how much each bale weighs out at. I shifted a few hay bales at my friends farm last week, now those were heavy!!! I would happily pay £8.50/bale for those! But I would much rather go back to 25kg bales from all my suppliers

So making bales lighter is another way of maximising profit when dealing with small users...
 
We are currently paying £35 for large rectangular bales of quality hay but the supplier is running out. Fortunatly he has plenty of haylage which we also use and that is £35 for a large bale. Small bales are about £6 in this area (North West New Forest).
 
Actually went to a hay and straw auction last week in st ives cambs

quadrant bales hay £95 Straw £65

As soon as it was being sold at the auction it was being resold on again albeit smaller batches and for more money.

Whether merchants are 'panic buying' or hedging their bets was unknown.

But 1000 bales of barley straw size 10s went for £2 a bale and was immediately sold straight away at £3 a bale destined for newmarket the next day
 
We're selling - have recently put the price up from £3 to £4 a bale as we heard that everyone else in the area is charging £5.

We made less than usual this year and have sold 2/3 of it already without advertising at all.

Most of our cutomers are in the Cheltenham area.
 
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