I feel a hay crisis coming on !

Penny Less

Penny Less

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10 March 2009
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we have had no rain in the south east since March apart from about 10 mins the other night !
Our summer paddocks have nothing and the hay man is sucking his teeth with a sharp intake of breath " another year like last year and the one before". Anyone further up country got decent grass ?
 
We were the same until yesterday, we'd had some rain on Friday night, then some more Saturday day time...and by the looks of the ground this morning we had some torrential rain over night.

Much needed as our summer grazing has barely grown at all, hoping that the next bit of sun we get will semd it intoma crazy growth spurt!
 
We have suddenly gone "green" over the last two nights with a distinct shooting up of the grass - but its usually at knee height by now and its just at the mid calf height. Out local feed man is saying "prices will be high" already but he is loves a good crisis and a way to make a few quid
 
Supply and demand plus ever increasing fuel feet and general costs, weather not helping and grass isn't about to do a growth spurt with two spits we have had in Bedford.
 
ditto koko! pour down last night and sunshine today! weve already had a silage cut in some places!
 
I've only started having to buy my own hay in ireland and the hay man was telling me he is loading up lorry loads and selling to newmarket area for much higher than he is getting locally in ireland. I got his number from www.donedeal.ie in case any of you need to contact a supplier directly and do a deal! I paid €3.50 per bale, light smallish bales but lovely quality.
 
I was field walking this morning with the lady who has my grey boy on loan. We have had very little rain here, a couple of light showers always followed by heat and high winds drying out the gound within no time. The field that we have rested since September last year has very little, sparse grass on it, it has barely grown back at all. We really need to move him off of his winter grazing but we can't get the posts in the ground either to divide up his summer grazing and are concerned about letting him on the whole field as if it doesn't start growing soon I am seriously conncerned about what will happen for the winter. We also walked the hay field - if you can all it a hay field. There has been virtually no growth since the sheep came off it at the end of Feb :(
 
Olliecp77 said:
I've only started having to buy my own hay in ireland and the hay man was telling me he is loading up lorry loads and selling to newmarket area for much higher than he is getting locally in ireland. I got his number from www.donedeal.ie in case any of you need to contact a supplier directly and do a deal! I paid €3.50 per bale, light smallish bales but lovely quality.
Click to expand...

My local hay supplier does this too. He charged me £3.00 a bale off the field last year but said that he was able to sell it in Newmarket for £5 - £6 a bale. He's just charged me £4 a bale for the same stuff as I bought off the field last year so goodness know how much it will be this year.
 
We've had a fair bit the last few days. But the grass hasn't really grown for a few weeks before that.

Don't be fooled by the hay man. I spoke to mine a few weeks ago and he said he had more left this year than last year (when he briefly ran out) but he was "concerned" the dry weather was stopping the grass growing. Well I went for a walk around his fields last week (public footpaths!! I'm not trespassing) and the grass was mega long!!!! Waist high on places!!!!! Really shot up the last few weeks (he had fertilised it before) and much more than this time last year.
 
We didn't have much rain in central scotland for several weeks but now we have just had 3 days of it and are due anothe weeks worth so fingers crossed x
 
I was thinking exactly the same yesterday, we cut our own and sell the excess but the way it is looking we will only have enough for our own, saying that though we fertilised Friday, it finally rained overnight so it may get a spurt if we can keep getting more rain and maybe cut it a little later this year we may be ok.
 
am in the southeast myself and our grass is brilliant - I have 2 fields one being rested and the other we are sectioning off for the first time as it is a little too lush ! neighbouring fields and liveries have the same problem as me.

We have had a fair bit of rain and hopefully more to come soon (maybe the fires will be put out and the roads will re-open !)
 
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