Hay prices

I have just about enough haylage to see me through until mid March. I will try and source another big bale or 2 to get me to end of April. Horses go out overnight and so I will decrease usage.
I’ve managed to buy 10 big round bales that should last me 4-5 months.

I’ve had to make a management decision that has been hard. Usually I buy in small bales and hay the fields. I’ve experimented with various methods of feeding it to minimise wastage but none have been successful so they are on 5/6 hours of turnout and coming into ad lib in the stables. I hate doing it but actually they’re happy to come in out of the weather. My fields are marginally better this year than the Somme of last year but it’s going to be a struggle to keep them on it until May.
 
I'm paying £70 a bale. My supplier was warning it would be £90 so better than expected I guess. This time last year it was £35 so 100% increase 😥. One horse is on box rest and there is very little grass for the other 2, the land is saturated and churned up so going to be not much growth for a while.

One of the local fb pages has been reporting some loose horses in the road a number of times, seems they have no hay, little grass and are breaking out of the weak fencing due to hunger on a regular basis 😥
 
I'm hoping i will have enough haylage to see me thru to march, then if all goes well, I'll be down to 2 ponies on 4 acres so will buy small bale haylage if needed.
Also as time goes on my neighbour might let me have a couple of rounds of hay
 
Hay at the local feed merchants is now at £10.95 for a conventional bale. We have enough to last till probably April as it's been relatively mild so far this winter.
 
I was advised early on that although there would be hay, the quality might slip. It went up to £50 for a round bale, which I wouldn't mind if they would eat it. One of the ponies, who would usually eat anything, has developed a cough and the other two won't touch it . I tried mixing small bale haylage with it, but they just pick it out and I'm left with piles of hay to chuck on the dung heap. I have tried leaving it thinking they'll eat it if they are hungry, but without success. Today I've given in and fed just the haylage, but that's going to be very costly. My other option is to pay £70 for big bale haylage, but I don't think it's high fibre enough for natives.
 
I’ve just paid £60 for round bales of haylage, it was ‘second quality’ , the top quality stuff is £80 a bale. It’s ok though and horses live out so it’s only really so they have something to pick at. No hay left around here only small bales for £8-10. I’m hoping we’ll have a mild spring and I can get them onto some rested grass by end of March.
 
I thought I’d done well. Organised 200 small bales at a good price and have some big wrapped ones. I figured it would see me well into spring and hopefully until autumn.

Twice now they’ve failed to deliver. I want to cancel and get a refund (it is apparently a big company with professional invoices, am fairly confident for various reasons that I haven’t been scammed so that’s something) but struggling to find much else so they have me over a barrel. Fingers crossed for next Friday which is apparently attempt 3.
 
nutjob said:
One of the local fb pages has been reporting some loose horses in the road a number of times, seems they have no hay, little grass and are breaking out of the weak fencing due to hunger on a regular basis 😥
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A local facebook page is also reporting loose horses very regularly. The owner has asked for people not to open the gate and leave it open, however as the horses are out again within hours of being returned I suspect that it is the horses that are opening the gate somehow. The owner of the arable field next door should be billing them for the amount of his crop they are eating and damage that they are doing to his fields.
 
It's definitely been a difficult winter hay wise. We luckily do our own and have enough but I have had friends asking to buy some and I just dare not sell it because if we have another dry spring and summer they will need hay in the fields as well. And of course if it's as dry as last year hay will be difficult to come by again. Horse ownership is definitely getting more difficult.
 
Moral of the story? Source yourself storage, save up and buy hay at harvest and store. Risk - it might rot, burn down etc etc but that is the risk your farmers take every day. Dont blame them if yield is catastrohpically down and demand very high. They are in business and have to make a living. If in doing so they p.... you off and they do not sell you any hay next year that is their risk too. They all survive by their decisions.
 
meleeka said:
I was advised early on that although there would be hay, the quality might slip. It went up to £50 for a round bale, which I wouldn't mind if they would eat it. One of the ponies, who would usually eat anything, has developed a cough and the other two won't touch it . I tried mixing small bale haylage with it, but they just pick it out and I'm left with piles of hay to chuck on the dung heap. I have tried leaving it thinking they'll eat it if they are hungry, but without success. Today I've given in and fed just the haylage, but that's going to be very costly. My other option is to pay £70 for big bale haylage, but I don't think it's high fibre enough for natives.
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This is annoying, feel for you.
But you’d be better to sell / give away than smother your muck heap, if you can’t use as bedding.
Forage and bedding is in such short supply this year, someone with store cattle is bound to take it.
For context, some of the power station straw supplies (use mega tonnage, stacked outside) have become so wet this month are apparently unburnable, hauliers taking sodden bales back onto farms for livestock use. As a deep litter base, maybe some edible in the core, but it’s a particularly bad year for everyone.
 
rabatsa said:
A local facebook page is also reporting loose horses very regularly. The owner has asked for people not to open the gate and leave it open, however as the horses are out again within hours of being returned I suspect that it is the horses that are opening the gate somehow. The owner of the arable field next door should be billing them for the amount of his crop they are eating and damage that they are doing to his fields.
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☹️ there are far too many badly kept, marginal and surplus horses in Britain.
If there’s any benefit to the forage shortage, might be that this sort of horse owner is culled out, or at least seriously discouraged.
 
sport horse said:
Moral of the story? Source yourself storage, save up and buy hay at harvest and store. Risk - it might rot, burn down etc etc but that is the risk your farmers take every day. Dont blame them if yield is catastrohpically down and demand very high. They are in business and have to make a living. If in doing so they p.... you off and they do not sell you any hay next year that is their risk too. They all survive by their decisions.
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I am lucky I have storage, but when I just had a shed I could only store about 40 small at a time. The other alternative is to buy wrapped round hay/haylage and put them in the garden. I used to buy as much as i could but saying buying in advance to store for most people is a big ask, after driving around the new housing estates space is getting tighter and where do you put your storage, if you have to pay for it who wants to take the risk for a small amount of profit, storing caravans has a better return and the bonus is most of the time you hardly see the owners.

I think we have become used to having cheap hay, I think I paid £1 a bale in 1977, which seems to be about £8 in today’s value, so could say this years prices are adjusted for the true rate of inflation. In the 1980's my step father was given straw to bale for free it because no one wanted, he would feed store cattle on it, now around here most is baled and stored for power stations.

I think the main difference horse care wise is in 1977 there was more land for grazing and horses unless they were being worked for a reason lived out 24/7 all year, and people spent less on hard feed. It was mainly oats, bran, sugar beet and perhaps some pasture nuts, now we have feeds for just about every supposed stage, there must be money in it because so many brands duplicate the same trends, you only have to look at cattle feed and compare how it is marketed. Somehow hay has been under valued as a crop/ food stuff, unless it is bagged and marketed.
 
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I was at a talk by Dengie last night who said the price of forage based feeds has shot up due to the shortages.

I can store 14 large bales here and I'm down to my last 2. My farmer is thankfully sitting on another 8 bales for me which if the grass doesn't start to grow in March will only last until April. My summer fields are under water but should get good growth if it warms up in March.

The donkeys next door get rough hay but he tells me the lady who supplies him has a large shed full of small bales horse owners usually don't want - so if my normal guy runs out mine will be on 2024 thistles.
 
Exasperated said:
This is annoying, feel for you.
But you’d be better to sell / give away than smother your muck heap, if you can’t use as bedding.
Forage and bedding is in such short supply this year, someone with store cattle is bound to take it.
For context, some of the power station straw supplies (use mega tonnage, stacked outside) have become so wet this month are apparently unburnable, hauliers taking sodden bales back onto farms for livestock use. As a deep litter base, maybe some edible in the core, but it’s a particularly bad year for everyone.
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Unfortunately there aren't any farms nearby. I think my friend may take the unused stuff, but quite how she'll transport it I'm not sure. There's 3 rounds, already opened.
 
meleeka said:
Unfortunately there aren't any farms nearby. I think my friend may take the unused stuff, but quite how she'll transport it I'm not sure. There's 3 rounds, already opened.
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Try your nearest Young Farmers? Ad on Facebook marketplace? Ideally tractor with a grab if opened, but you’d be surprised at what some people seem to scoop into transits - where there’s a will! Hope you get fixed up.
 
sport horse said:
Moral of the story? Source yourself storage, save up and buy hay at harvest and store. Risk - it might rot, burn down etc etc but that is the risk your farmers take every day. Dont blame them if yield is catastrohpically down and demand very high. They are in business and have to make a living. If in doing so they p.... you off and they do not sell you any hay next year that is their risk too. They all survive by their decisions.
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I think that’s a similar argument though to “why don’t people struggling with high rent just save up and get a mortgage”. Many people are stuck with limited storage, don’t have huge amounts of expendable income to pay £1500 for a trailer load of hay in one go but have managed just fine buying in what they need each month until this winter.

And I’m someone who can afford to bulk buy and while it’s been annoying shopping round to source hay I’ve managed, but I don’t think you can blame people who aren’t so fortunate for struggling in what has been unprecedented circumstances for many years. This winter has been tough.
 
KikiDee said:
I think that’s a similar argument though to “why don’t people struggling with high rent just save up and get a mortgage”. Many people are stuck with limited storage, don’t have huge amounts of expendable income to pay £1500 for a trailer load of hay in one go but have managed just fine buying in what they need each month until this winter.

And I’m someone who can afford to bulk buy and while it’s been annoying shopping round to source hay I’ve managed, but I don’t think you can blame people who aren’t so fortunate for struggling in what has been unprecedented circumstances for many years. This winter has been tough.
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ETA - Sorry Ive quoted you when I meant to reply to the post above, but I do agree.

I've had the same hay supplier for probably 15 years and this is the first time i've ever had a problem with their hay. I don't have a huge barn. I own my field and I have a lovely barn, but I don't have a forklift or telehandler to stack the round bales that I buy. I really don't think anyone is blaming the farmers. It's not their fault the grass didn't grow properly!
 
My hay supplier says he should have enough to see his usual customers through, fingers crossed.
Thr current weather and the forward forecast don't have me hopeful this wet weather is ending any time soon, and that worries me for when we'll be able to get the horses out on good grass and start to reduce hay intake.

I have added nets inside my IBCs for field feeding now. It doesn't mean I put any less out, but does mean waste is now zero which is much better!
 
sport horse said:
. Dont blame them if yield is catastrohpically down and demand very high. They are in business and have to make a living. If in doing so they p.... you off and they do not sell you any hay next year that is their risk too.
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This hasn't been an 'aren't those farmers so greedy' thread at all. No one has blamed the farmers.
 
I’m defo not blaming farmers…but I do wish the guy I ordered from would turn up when he said he would or at least have the decency to let me know!
 
Horse owners aren’t completely innocent in all this either, I’m already seeing people who over ordered at harvest and haven’t used what they thought they would selling off their excess at crazy prices, the decent thing of course would be to sell it for what they paid for it and it would still be snapped up.
 
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sport horse said:
Moral of the story? Source yourself storage, save up and buy hay at harvest and store. Risk - it might rot, burn down etc etc but that is the risk your farmers take every day. Dont blame them if yield is catastrohpically down and demand very high. They are in business and have to make a living. If in doing so they p.... you off and they do not sell you any hay next year that is their risk too. They all survive by their decisions.
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As a YO storage and having to buy enough hay in advance is incredibly difficult. My winter hay is probably £12k, so although I buy in batches (storage currently limited) I still might have £3k of hay waiting to be sold on to the liveries at any point. Adding to which putting up a new storage barn to enable me to buy more hay, earlier and at a lower price will be about £5k and that’s with my OH doing the work. That means I need to spend about £17k between now and July (for the barn and hay) to get the cheaper price and a supply ready for next winter. I realise farmers have the same problem, of having to make and store in advance. None of this is particularly related to the issues of the last harvest, which have just made it more expensive and difficult to find a regular supply.

Equally the single horse owner might not be able to save enough or have storage to keep a winter’s worth. Realistically most keep their horses at yards where either there’s a communal supply or they have a small dedicated storage area but certainly not this large. Keeping it offsite - either at home or in a rental of some sort - means transporting small amounts at a time.

So it’s not quite as simple as just having enough storage and buying early. I’ve never blamed the farmers and appreciate there is risk in their business as well.
 
meleeka said:
He may have been making a loss on £50, but once he knew he could sell it, he put it up so that his income wasn't as low. It makes sense to me, as yields were so low, that prices would have to go up.
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Maybe it I can’t see anyone would knowingly price hay at a loss this year, it would be incredibly bad business sense to do so as we all knew that there would be a shortage and expected to have to pay more.

Saying that I’d literally sign everything I own over right now for edible hay 😩
 
Our YO promised to keep hay for our own liveries after the last harvest, increasing prices by 25 %. Since September it has been increased in price by a further 25 %. They also let slip they're selling externally (it was £10.50 at the start of the winter, no idea what it is now). Today we are told it's going up again by another £1. I'm off to collect haylage tomorrow. I'm disgusted. Profiteering like this makes me want to vomit. They're not short of hay. Most liveries have already bought externally due to the YO's high prices. I'm joining suit. Buying from the feed store is now working out at less per kilo than buying home grown, which is nuts. I hope they choke on the money, knowing that some of their liveries are really struggling financially but can't store like I can. They're exceedingly wealthy, are not buying it in and have no storage costs. It cost what it cost last year. I've been fuming all afternoon about it. I hate greedy people.
 
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