Last of the hay and straw .....

[canteron]

My supplier is running out - he may buy in hay with a high price tag, but won’t buy in straw as not worth his while/quality is rubbish.
How is it where you are - worried that if we have a hard Winter there will be a serious shortage?

 

[minesadouble]

We make a lot of hay and straw and while hay is not as plentiful as normal straw is the major issue this year. It's going to be really hard to get hold of.

 

[doodle]

Farm makes their own hay and straw and there is always plenty. Extra hay left over from last winter so started this years later too. There dosnt seem to be a shortage round here.

 

[PurBee]

Due to my fussines for good forage theres always a shortage of decent hay! I now import rather than travel hours and hours checking out new suppliers, in the vague hope its what i need.
My recent enquiries tho’ have me with a choice of organic hay palletised 25kg bales for £17 per bale to my door. Ouch!
Or 25 tonnes from italy for the most perfect hay on the planet...25 tonnes is minimum order allowed! I only need 5 tonnes ?
Yet ive found online recently another supplier who’s local and may be perfect - am testing a bale soon.

So fret not, if your area is low on bedding and local hay, there’s loads of online suppliers who’ll send you a tonne on a pallet of haylage and other bagged bedding. If youre wanting hay and not haylage ,there’s loads of cheap haulage delivery options for hay/straw in the uk if you find a farm far away with plenty of stock.

 

[Surbie]

Straw in shortage here (Surrey/London border) and prices are climbing. Likewise hay.

In October I bought in what I hoped would be enough hay to last till April/May. But the bales are all fairly light and I'm going through it faster than I anticipated, so I might not have enough to last. Crossing all fingers and toes that the price isn't too bad when I need to buy more.

 

[Mustard]

My supplier (south yorks) says he'll have enough but the quality of much of the straw is poor.

 

[doodle]

I am very glad that hay and straw included in livery!

 

[The Xmas Furry]

No shortage of hay here in NW Surrey tho prices at local feed store for collection of small bale is currently 5.99 a bale, its quite nice stuff that I saw last week in there, but I'm glad I got mine in the summer at half the price!
The bales I have are a good length and this year are quite heavy as doing 3 night nets easily for B plus a bit over for little A for 1 or 2 nights.

Straw is 4.50 a bale and still in stock locally too. (Rokers) it's nothing brilliant tho.

Large bale straw is hard to come by though.

 

[eggs]

Not a problem sourcing good hay but straw if pretty abysmal. I've swapped to chopped rape straw for the horse that was on straw previously and have to say that I like it.

 

[SussexbytheXmasTree]

Our current supplier is running out but we seem to be able to get hay elsewhere but at a higher price than we normally pay. Currently pay equivalent of about £4 a bale going up to £6 a bale.

 

[DirectorFury]

YO can’t get hold of straw for love nor money so is bedding cattle and sheep on hay! Madness.
Small bale hay is up to £7 a bale here, large bale up to £40. Thankfully I’m on full livery and YO make their own.

 

[KittenInTheTree]

No straw for sale here, and no hay either. Plenty of decent haylage, thankfully. I'm ekeing out what straw we currently have left by pulling down all of the banks in our stables. Planning on switching over to shavings after that.

 

[Surbie]

No shortage of hay here in NW Surrey tho prices at local feed store for collection of small bale is currently 5.99 a bale,

We must be fairly close - hay prices I've been quoted now range between 5.75 and 7.50 a small bale (Attlees).

 

[The Xmas Furry]

We must be fairly close - hay prices I've been quoted now range between 5.75 and 7.50 a small bale (Attlees).

Not too far away then!
Rokers were 6.25 a bale 2 weeks ago but had a huge delivery in hence it dropping under 6 a bale again. I remember back in late 2010 small bale was 8 a bale, scarey prices then ?
Frosburys are similar pricing, but add on for delivery from them.

 

[doodle]

For once it looks like Scotland is faring better. Last year very good small bale hay was £5. No idea about this year.

 

[Esmae]

Really glad I bought all mine in off the field last summer. Straw is very poor this year. Mine is clean but very short. Really feel for you guys with limited storage.

 

[atropa]

Yard makes their own hay and haylage which is included in livery so think we should be well covered..didn't we have a terrible year for straw two years ago as well? Seems to be becoming a regular occurrence.

 

[Goldenstar]

I don’t buy straw so don’t have to worry about that .
I use Haylege but it comes from a company who produce forages as a stand alone business so I don’t have to worry about supply .

 

[SEL]

YO takes hay off the old meadows so we have a barn full thankfully. I don't bed on straw but many of the other liveries do - not heard moans about prices yet

 

[planete]

Our supplier has not put his prices up yet and has not mentioned a shortage. We can get large bales of barley straw, meadow or rye haylage and meadow hay. I have switched my Cushings horse to Devon timothy haylage to avoid having to soak hay over winter and it is cheaper than the small bales of hay some of you are being sold.

 

[chaps89]

Not too far away then!
Rokers were 6.25 a bale 2 weeks ago but had a huge delivery in hence it dropping under 6 a bale again. I remember back in late 2010 small bale was 8 a bale, scarey prices then ?
Frosburys are similar pricing, but add on for delivery from them.

On the rare occasions I've picked up an emergency spare from frosburys or rokers it's always been £6 plus. £8 a small bale is frightening though!
Luckily paying £30 a round at the moment, add £5 on for delivery if that's all I'm having though but I'm very happy with that, it's nice hay too and the chap is very easy to deal with.
Straw is scarce, we pay £15 for half a Heston now, can't get smalls any more.

 

[Shilasdair]

Hay here (Glos) is £4.50 or so a small bale - but they're really heavy so not as bad value as it sounds. My normal hay suppliers told that yield was around 50 to 60% of normal years due to the dry spring so I had to find a new supplier (luckily they are great, but now not taking on any more new clients).

I think straw is hard to get as the lack of rain in the spring meant that the length of stalks (straw) on crops was too short.

 

[ILuvCowparsely]

My supplier is running out - he may buy in hay with a high price tag, but won’t buy in straw as not worth his while/quality is rubbish.
How is it where you are - worried that if we have a hard Winter there will be a serious shortage?

we ok, I always plan ahead and get the barn filled ad have regular top ups.

 

[SussexbytheXmasTree]

we ok, I always plan ahead and get the barn filled ad have regular top ups.

A lot of people don’t have access to much storage so can’t buy much ahead even if they could afford to.

 

[cauda equina]

I'm one of those people, and as the year goes on the price goes up and the quality goes down

 

[meleeka]

It’s not too bad yet down on the South coast. My round hay has gone up by £5 already but I don’t expect the supplier to run out. One local supplier has already put prices up to £60 and the quality is poor. I expect they will have to buy it in eventually so the price will go even higher.

 

[Polos Mum]

A lot of people don’t have access to much storage so can’t buy much ahead even if they could afford to.

It does seem to be storage is the issue - I wonder about people looking at renting large storage areas separately to livery. If you can buy hay off the field at £2-3 a bale then moving it twice doesn't seem so bad an idea if the risk is it's £6-7 a bale in winter. It would save money and also the stress of worrying about it.

I am a control freak so I have all my winder hay and bedding in the barn by the end of August - some winters that costs me money as there's tonnes of cheap hay, other years its good for me. I just look for security rather than cost saving

 

[PinkvSantaboots]

Not a lot of straw around I think the quality was crap so they didn't bother making it I don't use it anyway, can get big rounds of hay from next door for £40 not many small bales around though, I might have look further afield and buy in bulk luckily I do have an empty stable but that's all so not a huge space really.

 

[honetpot]

Even farmers are struggling for straw, as I feed to my cows and bed them down on it, I have put down EVA mats for them and pellets where they eat. Hay there seems to be enough so far, but we have another 3/4 to go. I tried to buy enough when it was baled off the field.

 

[Annagain]

Our yard is still using up the last of last year's haylage. We haven't even started on this year's yet and judging by the number of bales stored around the place, the yield was much higher this year. I can't see that they'll need to make any next year at this rate! The horses are still not eating much at all as we still have a fair amount of grass. Ten horses are getting through roughly a big round bale every 6 days.