why is hay so expensive now

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karlooben

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hi guys i am new here and i wanted to ask { apart from fuel of course } why is hay now getting so expensive :confused: me like the rest of you no doubt are stuggling and after this week i will have to pay £6.75 per small bale which i dont want to do but will have to .i was paying £3.50 but my farmer friend went on holiday to austraili a for 3 weeks and came back today to find the young helper lad had bedded all the cattle on the hay and not the straw so i am now without his help and our other supplier today reckons that by the end of march we will be paying £10 per small bale in my area { am near heathrow } .:mad:
 
Hi

The reason hay prices are so high at the moment is because there was such a poor cut last year that everyone is struggling, so hay makers can get away with selling it for silly money. Especially this time of year because everyone is running out. We are paying about £5.00 to £5.50 a bale in Northamptonshire. We only got one cut of hay last year instead of two cuts of hay.

Its really depressing.

What you could do is get round bales that is what i have started to do. I pay £40 for a large round bale. There is approximately 16 small bales in one big round one, which works out at £40 divided by 16 = £2.50 per small bale. For my two ponies it lasted 5 week in the field them eating it as they wanted.

Hope this helps

Gemma
 
hi thanks for the help but its finding suppliers near me that will deleiver or have any , our large square bales are now £75 plus if you can find them they were £25 or £30 at the most .
 
oh god. it is expensive there, would it not be cheaper for you to get someone with a trailer and going a bit further out to collect some? I would begrude paying that. Poor you
 
sorry to hear your hay is so expensive, it must be getting so hard for a lot of people who are no doubt making big sacrifices to feed their horses,

the last two winters have been very bad and long so animals on farms and horses had to be indoors a lot more than in milder winters, and of course when they are inside they eat a lot more hay, at the end of milder and normal winters there is normally a surplus hay cut from the year before which sees us through to the next crop, but in the two previous winters it has mostly been used up. Last summer there was very little rain during the growing months and the hay grass just did not grow, so the crop was down by 20 to 50 percent, this of course does not apply to everywhere, but the overall crop was considerably reduced, and to top it all some places did not get a second crop of hay which is cut around september, so while there may be some people making money there is a genuine shortage on some level and in some areas, the thing to do is buy in the summer, hay is cut starting around june, if you buy it off the field you will get a good price, or get together with friends and get oganized iin the summer, some farmers or hay producer/ merchants will deliver to you your whole winters supply, then you will avoid the stress of price hikes and trying to find decent quality hay.
 
we are running out here, i was on small bale hay but it went up to £3 a bale not so bad youd think but i use a bale per day if not 2 so moved to haylage, my supplier has run out but bless him if he goes to a farm doing any work he will find me a bale, so ive got one for the next 2 weeks but after that, who knows :\
 
Opal06, where are you getting your hay? My usual suppliers have run out now, they were charging £7 and £8 for a small bale! :eek:

Have managed to find a small amount from a local farmer and topping up with bags of haylage, Just Grass, etc. Little ponies getting straw mixed with hay!

A very expensive winter!
 
i have a 14.3 cob tpye and a 11.2 cross mountain pony and a 37 yr old shetland { free from my farmer friend long story } and the two little ones share a large stable which is fine but i cant feed my little shetty haylage as it gives him really really bad diarroea or esle i would just get loads of that so i am pretty stuck as they have to stay on hay, i have just blasted the internet and theres nothing close to me :mad: and we dont have transport to travel , this cheap hay i was getting came from gravel pits behind my house and although it was old looking but only cut last year the horses adore it and it comes of in normal wedges were as just before xmas we brought hay in for £6.50 and i went though 4 bales in 3 nights worth of feed as it was recut from big bales and as soon as the strings were cut it just splintered all over the floor :(:( talk about being rippe of am now just using up the last four of them which i was keeping for emergency use .
 
I'm going to tread on a few toes here so please don't go beserk but over the years,reading through threads and looking at fields with horses in them I think people just overstock.They look at the summer grass and cram more horses on their land instead of leaving half for hay and winter grazing.
 
OMG 10 pound for a small bale???!!! I thought hay overhere was expensive (4-5 pound per bale)

I'm glad I bought it last summer, straight off the field, 85 ct per bale. 250 bales will get me through the winter. I'm short in straw. That's also expensive due to the bad summer. Most farmers couldn't harvest a second or thirth time so there's a shortage for hay and straw in whole western Europe.

An other thing: biomass plants run on straw as well; that's also a reason why the price of straw became sky-high.
 
jinglejoys you wont tread on my toes :p i have had my boys 17 yrs ,11 yrs and the old shetty almost 4 years now i think lmao its been that long i have forgotten and all my boys were rescued from death i would have 100 if i could but i cant .

think i need to move up north its cheaper i know my farmer friend wont let me down when the next cut is due but its coping until then .
 
hay is dirt cheap at £6 a bale ,We had to pay £3 a bale in 1973 now that was a BAD year. You lot have milked the farmers for too long . Hay Needs to be £6 a bale to ensure sufficient supplies of good quality hay, not the **** that has been passing for hay over the last few years. I have burnt better hay.
 
im paying £5 for small bales of good hay, can get other stuff for £4 but its cr*p so total false economy. There is alot of rubbish about at the moment, have even seen stuff with ragwort in...
 
I'm on a yard where hay is £5 per bale. BUT despite this liveries still WASTE it. I've witnessed people giving their horse a haynet outside the stable, put the horse away, sweep up the hay that's been dropped on the floor AND then throw it on the muckheap. That's just scandalous and disrespectful to the farmer and Yard owner. Hay is scarce this year so you would think that people would treat it as any other scarce resource.. You can't even blame this on town folk who don't know any better as we are out in the sticks
 
We have the same problem. We make our own hay but crop was 40% of normal yield owing to an unusual drought for this part of France.

We are now paying 300 euros/ton which is about £260 13 - to feed - sob!!
 
Herts05 said:
I'm on a yard where hay is £5 per bale. BUT despite this liveries still WASTE it. I've witnessed people giving their horse a haynet outside the stable, put the horse away, sweep up the hay that's been dropped on the floor AND then throw it on the muckheap. That's just scandalous and disrespectful to the farmer and Yard owner. Hay is scarce this year so you would think that people would treat it as any other scarce resource.. You can't even blame this on town folk who don't know any better as we are out in the sticks
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Every morning our muck trailer is full of wasted hay, loads of it. Farmer has warned that there won't be enough to last till this years is ready. 2 ladies put 2 massive hay nets in for each of their horses every night, horses waste loads so they either throw it away, or wheel it out to the field where it joins the other massive pile of rotting hay left there...
 
Can't believe how much some people are paying for hay!

We're paying £3.50 a small bale at the moment for good quality stuff and people seem to think thats a lot as most are using big bale haylage as it works out cheaper!
 
Mike007 said:
hay is dirt cheap at £6 a bale ,We had to pay £3 a bale in 1973 now that was a BAD year. You lot have milked the farmers for too long . Hay Needs to be £6 a bale to ensure sufficient supplies of good quality hay, not the **** that has been passing for hay over the last few years. I have burnt better hay.
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I actually agree with this. Horse owners need to stop expecting farmers to subsidise their hobby, and TBH most people overfeed anyway, It makes me mad to see hay chucked about, trampled into paddocks and lobbed on the muck heap...One thing I've noticed this year is ALOT less wastage!! and also less obese animals. I just make up the shortfall of hay with oat straw, sugarbeet and hi fibre cubes, hay is NOT the be all and end all, In some countries it doesn't even exist, yet horses still survive!!:rolleyes:
 
Mike007 said:
hay is dirt cheap at £6 a bale ,We had to pay £3 a bale in 1973 now that was a BAD year. You lot have milked the farmers for too long . Hay Needs to be £6 a bale to ensure sufficient supplies of good quality hay, not the **** that has been passing for hay over the last few years. I have burnt better hay.
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^ agreed :)

Same as the livery costs.
I was paying £7 per week for DIY livery in 1978 (ok, my mother was for my pony) then I was charging £20 per week DIY in 1985 - and the same in 1995, seems its STILL the going rate round here now!
So...... something else that isn't keeping in line (or anywhere near) inflation.

Its cheaper to have a horse in DIY livery for a week than for a person to stay in the most cheapest of places in a B&B for a day or 2!
 
i thought it was the farmers jobs to support all people with animals wether it be livestock or pleasure use ??? isnt that why they grow hay an straw in the first place 1 to support themselves then sell on any thing thats over to make a bit of extra money .
 
karlooben said:
i thought it was the farmers jobs to support all people with animals wether it be livestock or pleasure use ??? isnt that why they grow hay an straw in the first place 1 to support themselves then sell on any thing thats over to make a bit of extra money .
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HMM... no a farmer is running a business !!! they take on a plot of land and grow something to make a living could be potatoes etc, or grass to feed livestock for meat or milk or hay /haylage to sell on.
If they are good at the job they can and do make a decent living, Some years are better some like last year not so good, round here it was a good year for hay but south and east was dry so limited amounts of hay , hence as its late in the winter supplies are getting scarce so prices climb... simply supply v demand...
 
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Im on haylage so not sure of hay prices round here but I remember paying £2.80 a bale when I was a child and thats a good few years ago :), so IMO it hasnt gone up that much really
 
God thats so expensive i pay £2 a bale for last years, organic nice green colour smells suberb no chemicals in it, and then a pay £20 for a large bale and that has 10-12 bales in it.
Im in northants/banbury :D
 
karlooben said:
i thought it was the farmers jobs to support all people with animals wether it be livestock or pleasure use ??? isnt that why they grow hay an straw in the first place 1 to support themselves then sell on any thing thats over to make a bit of extra money .
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Lord above. I would have expected horsey people to have some grasp of agricultural happenings but clearly anyone can own a horse now.

You have GOT to be kidding with this post? :o
 
Tinkerbee said:
Lord above. I would have expected horsey people to have some grasp of agricultural happenings but clearly anyone can own a horse now.

You have GOT to be kidding with this post? :o
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Totally agree with you T and of course, they forget that long winters as we've had lately further deplete stocks of hay and straw to the general public because the farmer needs it for his own stock too so everyone is chasing after it.
I'm lucky in that we made our own haylage (although it's more like hay this time) and I have 25 bales left, that's all; normally I would have almost that amount at the end of the winter (turnout time) to tide me over until the Christmas of the next winter. It's not going to happen this time though. I do hold my hands up though and admit I'm overstocked, not helped by someone letting me down who was having two horses from me for the winter (and beyond for breeding) so there would only have been five, three of which I am desperate to sell but nobody wants youngsters in this climate so they're just taking up space - and feed/forage which would have been in the pantry for next year. I'm not the only one in this boat of course but I can see a lot of very hard decisions being made everywhere as can be seen by the huge amounts of dumped animals about now. Times are going to get a lot tougher I'm afraid and one of those things is being realistic about the price of feedstuff and what it actually costs to produce.
 
Truly believe that horse people have got to seriously consider all aspects of horse keeping, alot have no real security eg keep on livery with if shove comes to push one months notice, fail to budget for feed/bedding rises, little off road riding then complain about livery yards and farmers
 
In the 70's when I got my first pony hay 50p/ livery £5 a week/ riding lesson at a BHS school £1 and hour group lesson.
80's, hay £1, DIY livery £10
90's, hay £2-3,DIY livery £15
I think hay has been sold cheaply in realation to everything else, after all we seem to have no limit to what we will pay for a coffee that costs 20p to make.
I think people just see hay and straw as a by product of a farm and not a real asset which has a market value.
A lot of small farmers have never made enough hay for the big dealers to bother with but the year they have bought up everything. If this season there is a reasoable crop ar I think prices will drop, after all its only worth what someone can pay for it.
As to waste, I was on a livery yard where once a week I would sweep up all the loose hay on the barn floor and put it in hay nets and feed my horse for free just because they couldn't be bothered to sweep up.
 
OMG I cant believe how much your hay is, I pay £2.50 for small bale. £17 for HUGE round bale (bigger than normal round ones) -good stuff too.

haylage = one supplier is £22 for large oblong bale,or £5.00 per small bale (but I reserved my haylage in september from this guy)

I have another farmer/supplier of haylage whose haylage I have used for years but it dropped in quality this year, I think this was contracters fault, but will probably try it again next winter as last year it was near perfect. his bales are £25 per round bale.

forage is sooo expensive cos supply probs have been over ythe top.
 
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