The rancher I sell all my hay to is allowing Amy and I to purchase 1/2 of the grass fed (my grass and alfalfa hay) steer in November. All I have to do is pay for the total processing fee plus a buck a pound for the processed weight. Last year we bought a half of a side and it was fantastic. Ground meat so lean you had to add some fat to cook it and steaks so tender they cut with a fork and roasts to die for. Flavor is over the top too. He don't inoculate them with any chemicals either, just deeds them out on natural stuff. Speaking of hay, my first cut is all in. I loaded 2 of his flatbed (48 foot) semi trailers and his tri axle gooseneck with 1000 pound net wrapped 5 foot round bales, finished that yesterday. All loaded and gone. Counter on the bailer said 86 total. I upped the price per bale a bit to cover the increased cost of diesel and fertilizer, but not a lot. I's really a hobby for me (an expensive one) but it keeps me active and outta my wife's hair. I can double stack the trailers and the gooseneck and still be just under 13'6" with 5 foot diameter rounds. I just load them, his employees strap them down, hook up and go. Done until late summer, early fall, depending on precipitation levels. Still need to fertilize the fields with 46 granulated but that isn't a big deal. I put the pto spreader on the back of one of the tractors and fill it with 46 Urea and spread it, then I watch it grow. My new Kubota baler I bought late last year is tits. Rolls the tightest bales I've ever ran and applies 52 over the edge net wrap, all automatically. I just drive and follow the command screen. It produces a soft center (easily speared) round that is fiddle string tight except for the center. it has to come out of the barn today and get cleaned and greased. Always lots of post cleanup and service to do plus it's oil change time for the tractors (engine oil), filters and greasing. Was worth the 45 grand I paid for it, well not 45 up front. I traded in a NH 7 year old net twine round baler and Kubota graciously gave me a 5 grand ag rebate so my OTD cost was just over 10 grand and Kubota financed the balance at 0 percent interest too. If you are interested in a new Kubota tractor, they are still offering 0 percent financing on them and some have factory rebates on them as well. I've had excellent luck with both of mine. Zero issues other than required maintenance and both have pretty serious hours on them and they work hard.
You only get 2 crops of hay per year? Here in NEO, normal is 3, sometimes 4 when the weather cooperates
I've gotten to the point where it's only profitable for me to cut it 2 times, early summer and fall. I could probably cut it in between but I don't because the cost of running the equipment over X number of acres remains constant no matter how tall (or short) the forage is. Kind of like mowing your lawn. Some people cut their lawns every week no matter how tall the grass is and some people cut it based on grass height. I cut my forage based on height and how mature the alfalfa is. Been doing that for years now. I will not cut until the majority of the alfalfa has bloomed, no matter how tall the grass hay is. Besides, my disc machine prefers tall hay versus short. Just getting done with a slightly late first (because of weather) and I harvested over 40 tons of nice hay. Fall cut will likely yield 30 ton depending on moisture of course. I never have any issue selling it. In fact everything I ran this time was pre sold before I even cut it. Before we bought this farm up here in Michigan, we owned a farm in North Central Ohio near Columbia Station and I ran the same regimen on it with the same results. Been doing this stuff for over 30 years now so I've developed my own way of doing and my customers seem to approve as well. It's a nice hobby that I can make a pretty serious amount of money with.
A lot around here have started going 2 bailed crops and one haylage crop if it allows. The silage hay is a main part of the winter barn feed.
Makes sense, especially with costs now, and the fact that you don't personally have a hungry herd to feed all winter. I do it once per week, at most! Maybe once or twice I did it at 5-6 days just because it was so high, and maybe some weather was coming in if I were to wait to a full week...otherwise, the longer I can go, the better! I'm not a lawn nazi though, if its green I mow it and call it "lawn"...this property was once all farmland...and the backyard was still pasture not that many years ago. Well, as far as that goes, my neighbor makes some of the junkiest hay anyone around here has ever seen, and sells it all no problem! Lots of repeat customers, and some drive in from an hour away to get it! Nobody can figure out how he does it...
Well put brenndatomu I personally mow all my weeds the same height. It’s green larger dairy farms here are struggling to get silage.
Probably horse people. I've been to a lot of hay auctions and watched them buy pure junk and pay top buck for it. Before I retired, I used to buy hay for the owners of the company I worked for, rounds and small squares and I was a frequent auction customer. Used to go them them with a conventional Western Star pulling a 48 foot Talbert single drop. Sometimes I filled it up, sometimes I left empty. A depended on what my Delmnorst moisture meter told me. Auctioneers didn't like me at all because the Delmhorst never lied. I'd set the maximum allowable moisture content at 20% and walk around probing bales and I always had a group of buyers follow me. Nice thing about the Delmhorst is the over tolerance alarm is loud so whomever was nearby knew right away the hay I just probed was junk. I have continuous on board moisture sensing on my new round bailer. It has slipper shoes inside and they plug into the Delmhorst so I always know the RM The percentage of the hay I'm bailing continuously. The Delmhorst wasn't a cheap date but I believe in quality stuff. it's pretty fine line between quality dry hay and wet bales that will catch fire. 5% either way is what it is. My big hay customer is very particular but after 6 years of providing him high quality dry forage, he trusts me not to screw him. He knows I watch all the time.
All I do is dry forage. My new baler is capable of baling silage bales but not something I'm interested in at all. Silage bailing is hard on a machine anyway. Like bailing corn stalks, really takes it's toll on bearings and belts. Like you, I don't care if the lawn is more weeds than grass, it's all green and it all mows. Usually my wife does the mowing and her philosophy is 'scalp it' so she don't have to mow every week. Mower gas is expensive anyway.
I think so...thing that is crazy about it is that there is a bunch of weeds in it that supposedly causes horses stomach issues...I dunno, never been around 'em much...this is dairy country. I thought silage bales were nothing different, other than baled "wet", and bagged instead of wrapped/tied?
Silage here, usually cow corn, is chopped and thrown into concrete bunkers with tarps thrown over it and held down with old tires. Minerals, salt etc are in separate bunker. Than mixed at feeding.
We still have a few people using the old school vertical silos, then some still do the big long plastic silage bags, and now many of the larger farms are going to the large concrete bunkers...man can they put up some cubic yards in a hurry with these! We have one of the largest dairy farms in Ohio about 2 miles from here and the guy that does a lot of custom farming for them has a ton of huge equipment, and things happen in a hurry when they show up! The farm across the street from me is 300 acres and they chop all that corn in just part of a day, and then move on to the next place with plenty of time until dark...fortunately for us, they usually knock off by 10-11 pm...since those huge floater tires they have on everything just rattle the windows when they go flying by loaded!
It's not mine in the first place. They used to be 'mine' but we sold off the herd 2 years ago. My wife and I are real tired of 'animal husbandry'. When you have cattle you really cannot ever leave the farm for any length of time so I sold all of them off, fitted the pasturage ground, planted mixed forage on it, took down the fencing and that was that. The steer is coming from my big hay customer and he deals with all the aspects of it, my deal is I pay for the processing for the entire steer plus a buck a pound processed weight for the half I get, already wrapped and frozen for the deep freeze. I do the same deal with the deer I kill. I'll gut them out and then have the carcass processed and ready for the freezer. I'm a devout meat eater.
No doubt it is a lot of work. We don't tend to a whole herd and its not year round for us. We get 2 once the grass starts to grow in April and slaughter them around Christmas time. When my dad was alive, we got them as calves which included bottle feeding so certainly time consuming. I just love the independence of it all, kind of like cutting and splitting your own firewood.
