How much does it cost to cut hay? and is this feasible/worth doing?

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Dexter

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I currently have a field that would be 10 acres if it was flat, but it undulates up and down and therfore is proably just over 13 acres. How much am I looking at to cut and bale? I'm in the North East.

I've got 2 youngsters on it, and would ideally like to leave them on it until the end of June. I could then keep them off until September. Is that feasible or would they need to be off all summer?

How many bales would I be looking at getting? Its very old parkland/golf course and established grazing, but it took a hammering for about 18 months before I got it and therefore is weedy in places. It certainly isnt the flat golf course like grazing it once was. I would be very unwilling to try and improve the quality as I have far too much grass as it is! I dont really want top quality hay either, as I only have to feed hay when theres a thick covering of snow on the ground, and my mare came out of the winter fatter than she went in on absolutely minimal feed/hay!

Is it worth doing? In an ideal world I'd get enough hay to see mine through the winter and be able to sell the rest to cover my costs
 
Ideally you want the horses off the paddock already, cut the hay beginning of June and bale 10 - 14 days later (weather permitting).

£1 per bale has always proved a pretty good average costing for us.

If you did leave it until June to take the horses off your would really be risking it - if we have another dry year chances are you won't get much of a crop. We sometimes double crop an old piece of pasture and in good years its fine but didn't get any last year.

Also, if it's weedy it ought to be sprayed now to get rid of them ready for cutting in 6 weeks.

Hope that is some help.
 
your horses need to be off it from around start of march till its cut, which will depend on things like fertilized or not, can you find someone reliable to come and cut,turn, bale when its ready not when he is? a crop from June till september just wont work, you need the early rains to start it off, if its eaten down then the weather dries it just won't grow tall enough, also you will have to remove the dungs you don't want them packed up inside a bale.

I have done it in the past the last time I did it got rained on and spoiled as it was left laying too long due to contractor putting bigger fields first, I then had the job of getting rid of 400 bales of hay and still had to pay for his time:mad:


If you can section off enough for your horses to use while the rest is rested to grow then great.
 
My best mate is a farming contractor. I wouldnt get preference, but I'm pretty sure I'd get it done at roughly the right time :)

I could actually take the horses off now as I have another 3.5 acres 200yds down the track, (my mare is curently out there, but I could shift her back to livery easily enough) but they arent making any impact on the grass, hence why ideally I'd leave them. Every where I look fields are dry and bare looking, but the big field just isnt. Even with the 2 boys on it its growing at a quite scary rate! We are predicted 3 days of rain and 20degree temps and I would imagine thats going to cause a huge amount of growth in a short space of time!

Theres enough keep out there that last year I ran 4 on it all over the summer and only had to feed hay when there was thick snow on the ground, even then they generally preferred to dig for grass :D

This is the field beginning of April:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6909275&l=ca005dff41&id=606503666

You can see how green it is there and it looks pretty much the same at the minute. I strongly suspect with rain and heat the grass will be ridiculous!

I'm not overly keen to go to all the hassle of cutting hay but as I'll have to top it anyway, it seems logical to cut hay. Esp as I'm not worried about yield or it being top quality.
 
If you have a local farmer who cuts his own you could try and do a deal with him. We arranged with ours to cut and bale our fields and split the yield instead of us paying, the beauty of this was that everything was done at the right time because it was his hay too and we got our hay for free. If you dont take the horses off then you will have lumps of poo in your hay!
 
With the price of hay last winter and possibly this winter as well if we don't have rain soon I'd defintely have it cut for hay.
 
If you have 10 acres and you don't need that much hay, could you not just section off grazing for your youngsters and leave the rest to grow?
That way you can leave your mare where she is, your youngsters still get their field and you get hay?
 
My broth in law cuts hay but they lost a whole meadow due to rain last year, and he always tells me farmers tend to cut their own first(its so v weather dependant).Suprised you have them on the field ?but yes a great way to save money.

He is away so I cant ask what the going rate is etc..but if you can do it!
 
we baled in sept last year due to weather and OH not being available when weather was good. We got 100 small bales from about 2 acres. The land hadnt been grazed but the yield would have been 3 or 4 times as much had we been able to make the hay in June.

The sheep absolutely loved it tho! They preferred it to the bought in stuff as there was lots of clover and timothy and herby bits.

Up here (NE Scot) the season is short but the grass doesnt half go for it once it starts going!
 
I gave up with hay 3 years ago and decided to do haylage instead, mine works out at approx 10 a large bale made. That includes the rolling, harrowing cutting, turning baling and wrapping. TO buy it in was costing me £30 a year this year. So every bale I make saves me money. I take my horses of at the end of March and leave the fields. Some have been left 12 months since the last haylage cut. When I used to make hay I reckoned on 100 bales to my acres, I had 6 acres at the time, left my horses on 2 acres and baled the rest. I would have enough hay from that to last my 4 horses all year. i would fence your horses into about 2 acres at the moment, and let the rest of the field grow. If you leave them on it they will selectively eat the base of the sward and you won;t get thick enough grass to bale. If you then cut the remaining 8 acres you will have plenty for all winter at a fraction of the cost of buying it in. Think about haylage as a choice because that doesn;t need 5 days of hot sunshine, we tend to bale on day 2/3 and have fantastic haylage.
 
I sound like I'm being difficult now, I'm not honestly :D But if it comes to a choice between penning the youngsters in 2 acres and cutting hay off the rest, or giving them the whole field, paying to top it back end of summer and buying in hay, I'm going to give them the whole field. I used less than 15 small bales last year, so even at £10 a bale its not going to be massively expensive :)

I really, really value the benefits of them having all that space and undulating terrain, trees, bushes, the stream etc, as youngsters its invaluable. For my riding horse it was a bit of a nightmare as she is a reallly good doer, hence her being moved to a smaller paddock. But for the youngstock I am simply not prepared to pen them in a small electrifed paddock, its about soo much more than grazing for them.

It just seems a bit of a waste to top the field and not cut hay, even if I gave it away for livestock. I will have a word with some local farmers see if anyone wants to split it, I know people have tried to rent the field before to cut hay. Local farmers should be the people who know best how to manage it. But thanks for all the advice. I'm no closer to a decision :D but I do now have new food for thought! and a bit of 'background knowledge' for when I approach the locals :)
 
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