Growing your own hay

[Tscott9330]

What does it take to grow your own hay? If I cleared all my property, I could have a solid 10 or 12 acres to plant with hay. What kind of yield could I expect from this? We are in north Florida, what would grow well and feed horses. Just curious if it would be possible?

Waht about implements, what would be the minimum stuff needed? Can you rent such things?

Tom

 

[JoeinTX]

@T

Here a couple of ongoing threads about this very topic:

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/owning-operating/123853-haying-101-a-new-post.html

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/...isons/124879-baling-compact-minimum-size.html



Needless to say, this is a discussion board so there is a lot of "discussion" as to what the best machines, methods, and crops are. I'm sure it's possible for you......after getting your 10-12 acres cleared ($$$$$$)......after buying a few implements ($$$$$$$)......and get it all figured out ($$$$$$)

 

[meadowlarkponds]

What does it take to grow your own hay?

Tom,

It really doesn't take a lot to grow hay...harvesting it is a different story and better left to those who are in the business IMO. The investment in equipment to bale hay just isn't economically justifiable.

Relative to growing hay, in your area you have some good options including new hybrid bermudas and bahia grass. After many years of growing Pensacola bahia hay, I'm phasing over to a "new" Tifton 9 Bahia grass for hay. My place in East Texas is pretty similar in growing conditions to northern Florida.

The reason I'm changing over to Tifton 9 is primarily fertilizer costs. Tifton 9 according to published data produces far more forage and better forage than Pensacola....and it does not require the heavy fertilization that the bermudas require.

I'm in my first season with Tifton 9 and have an open thread running to document the results. See this link:

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/south/114058-tifton-9-bahiagrass.html

I'll probably be cutting it soon and baling and will post results. Thus far, I'm very favorably impressed with it...no fertilizer and 7 inches behind on rain and it looks great.

 

[flusher]

What does it take to grow your own hay? If I cleared all my property, I could have a solid 10 or 12 acres to plant with hay. What kind of yield could I expect from this? We are in north Florida, what would grow well and feed horses. Just curious if it would be possible?

Waht about implements, what would be the minimum stuff needed? Can you rent such things?

Tom

Check my post in this thread. It'll answer most of your questions.

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/125119-need-advice-hay-equipment.html

Don't know about renting haying equpiment. Better to hire someone with the right implements to do whatever work you don't want to do yourself.

New haying equipment is very expensive, so, if you plan to get into haying yourself, you'll need to find used equipment. And you'll have to be handy with a wrench to get pre-owned stuff into working condition.

You have one big advantage over me for hay farming---lotsa rain in FL. We're in the second year of a drought in the North Sacramento Valley. No measureable rainfall since 28 Feb and my 10 acres are not irrigated. I may be baling native grass next year instead of a real hay crop if the normal rainy season doesn't start in Nov.

 

[pitt_md]

This will be my first year growing my own hay too. I live in SE Minnesota and have 30 acres and two horses. I planted 4 acres of alphalpha/grass hay this spring and found a guy that will mow and rake for $20 per acre and bale into large squares (~800lbs) for $9 a bale. Since this is the only guy in my area that I have found that will do custom baling I'm not sure what to make of the prices. I have a lot of weeds growing in this stand of "hay". If I understand things correctly the hay/grass will choke out the weeds in a couple of years.
I do not think I want to get into the haying buiness with my own equipment though. It would take years to recoupe the cost of used equipment.