Hay for sale

[WayneG]

I have for sale, approximately 300 bales of brome grass hay, sisal twine tied, stored inside, weight about 50 lbs. Baled dry, stored inside. The market here is $4.00 a bale. Also available about 75 bales of straw, $2.00 a bale.

[Darroll Grant]

Wayne,
What drives your hay market? Out here it is the export market for double pressed product. A 4' long, 120 pound bale is pressed to 2', retied and may be cut lengthwise. These go into a container and overseas to Asia. With the current economic crunch the presses are running at less than half speed as the delivered product is too expensive. With the drop in the Kiwi and Aussie dollar I'd guess that forage products will go from there. Heard of 9 young chaps headed to NZ after Jan 1 to spend 3 months baling hay. Grass seed straw and alfalfa are pressed and exported locally. The strw can be easily replaced from somewhere else, but the quality alfalfa will be harder to find. At harvest alfalfa was $220/ton in the field. It has since dropped 20-40/ton and is still not moving well. There are at least 12 pressing operations within 50 miles of me with 1 to 4 presses each. With good product and crew they can press 12+ tons/hour with 24-25 tons per container.
The local fear is that if the crunch holds on for a couple more months, there is going to be mountains of grass straw to get rid of before new crop in July and August. If the demand returned to normal by mid Feb the plants can't press fast enough to move the product.

[WayneG]

Our market is set by supply and demand- The local sale barn price can jump up or down a buck or two a week- weather plays a part in how much gets taken to the sale barn. A lot of the horse people around here buy enough feed for one week, so they go every week. Not a lot of export market, I do know when the one horse track goes to buy they will start will the first pile and buy just about every pile until they make their quota- they don't care about the price- get it done in 1 trip- the market is definitly up that day. Some of the alfalfa producers do ship several states away. The $4.00 is the "going" price around here.