In the late 1940s when my dad ran out of hay, he purchased hay from a neighbor who was close enough for Dad to haul the hay home in the winter with Kate and Brownie pulling the four-runner sleigh.
The load bed for the sleigh sat on a rubber-tired four-wheel wagon in the spring and summer.
As transportation improved the opportunity for sales farther away increased. By the time a good hay truck could travel from southern Idaho to the dairy belt of the 1970s and 1980s on the Washington/Oregon coast in eight to 10 hours, the Idaho hay market had become an interstate market.
Western alfalfa and timothy now move by truck and rail to all markets in the eastern U.S. This has an impact on price and availability of hay from Idaho and Utah for the Western states’ domestic market and for export.
Export now includes several destinations in the Middle East feeding milking and racing camels, among other livestock.
Weather patterns in Canada and Australia directly affect U.S. market prices. Worldwide weather now has a dramatic effect on hay prices in the U.S. When the domestic price of hay went through the roof in 2008, the weather in Australia was kind to the region that grows oat hay, weather permitting.
The availability of good Australian oat hay at a reasonable price was one of the alternative feeds available to the Pacific Rim countries. This is one of the factors that caused the train wreck when hay prices fell dramatically in late 2008 and 2009.
The area in western Canada that grows timothy has been in drought conditions for the last few years. This helped the price for Pacific Northwest timothy climb steadily for that same last few years.
In 2011, after most of the very premium timothy was purchased at very handsome prices, it became common knowledge that Canada’s timothy-producing areas had the first decent rains in years, with a very nice timothy crop.
The Pacific Rim countries are, of course, going to make the best deal they can on the forage they need.
This has left some of the domestic exporters with more timothy on hand than they need due to market conditions. This also placed lower grades of timothy hay out of the export market and into the feeder hay market.
When the price for hay goes up, the general quality goes down. It may be just human nature, but it drives me crazy.
I will admit that there have been years when hay referred to as low-feeder or junk hay has sold late in the season for the same price as received for premium hay at harvest time.
That will be offset by the years when there has been three- and four-year-old feeder hay in ample supply.
Most of my life I have been involved in the end of the hay business that requires the best hay available, either for dairy or for export.
When prices rise constantly over a number of years, the nature of far too many hay growers is to get lazy about quality.
There are areas that have a reputation for always growing super-premium hay. Most of these areas are farther away from areas that use a lot of hay.
There is always an increased freight cost to get that hay to market. The only way those growers can compete is to always have a superior product to offer hay buyers.
How many of you recognize these areas? Christmas Valley, Oregon; Mud Lake, Idaho; Goldendale, Washington; King River, Nevada; and there are others. If you feel your area should be on this list, let me know. These are just some I am familiar with.
Most likely, these areas got the reputation they have from one grower figuring out how to make super-premium hay.
Next, this grower gained repeat buyers. After that, his neighbors realized they were not getting the same higher prices, did their homework and learned to cut young tender hay and do what it took to get it in the bale green and with all the leaves attached to the stems.
The quality is prone to be stable in these areas, no matter how the price swings. My crystal ball does not tell how long hay prices will remain at record levels. Should we have another year with a surplus of hay, there will be some hay that will seem impossible to even give away.
If the overall price of hay comes down, how will it affect your farm? What happens when the price softens before all your hay is sold and paid for? Will your hay still be on the buyers’ list because it is always high-quality? No matter what the price for hay is doing, buyers will be looking for the best hay first.
After that they will look for opportunity purchases – hay that has decent to excellent quality (usually by accident). It is a big disappointment to find a nice stack of hay in a new area and plan to go back for more hay the next season, only to find that the grower has no idea how he got the stack you liked last season.
The growers who get lazy because “anything with string around it is worth good money” may have a problem moving their hay.
Quality is king. If you stack your hay on dirt, exporters cannot use those bales. “But they took it last year,” you say? When hay is very short, some exporters will buy hay “blood, guts and feathers.”
Then they have to sort it. They export the 50 to 90 percent of your hay that is exportable. Remember that visible dirt will get a whole shipment returned from Japan.
That 10 to 50 percent of your hay the exporter cannot export is then marketed domestically, to dairies or feedlots.
These operators have no mercy when offered something they know has a problem, since if it was premium, the exporter would not be trying to sell it. The exporters factor this in when they figure out what they can afford to offer you for your hay. If your entire stack of hay was exportable, it is worth more money.
“Well, the exporters are too fussy. I’ll just sell it domestic to dairies.” Guess what eats most of the export hay when it arrives overseas? Dairy cows.
The domestic dairies do not want dirty or muddy bottom bales, or bales loaded with gopher dirt, either.
Some of them can make such hay work if the price is right. With the high price of feed grains, in addition to the high price of hay, coupled with the value of milk having been below the cost of production until the last few months, dairies are not exactly rolling in money right now.
The forecast for milk prices is not good. If you offer a dairy hay that will not export, don’t be surprised if the dairyman seems very mercenary with what he can pay for your off-grade hay.
“If it gets too mature, I’ll just bale it in small bales for the feed store guys.” The fellows who supply the West Coast feed stores all say the same thing right now.
They do not have tied up the usual tonnage of feed store alfalfa needed to get their customers into new hay. The demand for feed store alfalfa is also way down from previous years.
Many families with a pet horse had to make a choice between feeding the horse and feeding the kids. And by the time you read this, we will be only two months away from grass in some areas. Until the pet horse population rises to pre-recession levels, the feed store market may be unstable.
I was in northern Nevada a few weeks ago. One of the exporters had purchased all of the second-cutting alfalfa from one hay ranch.
The exporter had hired a professional hay tarping company to lay ground tarps for the hay to be stacked on and then fully wrapped the stacks. One of the crew pondered aloud how they could afford that extra expense.
The only way the ranch would sell the hay was “buyer takes every bale.” The way the ranch had stacked the other hay, there would be 40 percent or more that would not be export hay. The tarps guaranteed that all of the hay would be usable for the export market.
It takes a lot of work to make premium hay. Even an uncovered nine-layer- high harrowbed stack will lose 22 percent if the tops are pitched and the bottoms left. It only costs about $10 a ton to fully wrap a haystack.
My go-to-town wheels are under a 1996 Lincoln town car. It has a badge on the fenders that says “Cypress” edition. The car was about six years old when I bought it.
I finally researched what the Cypress meant, since I had never seen another one. In about a minute on the Internet, I found out that this was a special-order car with special paint, leather interior and entertainment package.
They only made about 150 of them and not one of them ever hit the showroom floor. They were all sold before they left the factory.
This is the quality your hay should have. To be pre-sold because of your reputation as a professional hay grower who knows what he is doing.
Cut it tender, bale it to preserve the leaves and protect it in the stack. Keep it healthy with proper fertilizer and watering, and keep gophers out of the hay.
A grower out of our local area expressed concern that when the short hay years passed we would not travel that far to buy hay. I told him, “If you make the quality, we will travel to buy your hay.” FG
