The Life of a Custom Mowing contractor

[Hay Dude]

I never knew those ran so much.

Maybe I should be paying my neighbor to hay my meadows, instead of just letting him take the hay.

Capital intensive business.

We all need this to happen.
About 10 years ago, I wrote my last hay land rent check.
If things keep going the way they are, with farming input costs going up and hay prices mostly flat, landowners may be paying hay farmers.

 

[Lastkidpicked]

Large square balers and their bales are really common here since it’s very hilly and a lot of hay is made in my area.
Round balers are less common as the bales want to run away when you dump them.

Interesting how different things are from region to region.

Around here it is almost exclusively round bales, the oil fields buy round bales by the semi load.

 

[Hay Dude]

I bought my Krone square baler from a dealer in Idaho

 

[LouNY]

Quite a mixture up here, lot's of small squares, a few big squares and lots of rounds. Many of the rounds get wrapped, both dry and haylage.
Much of the hay is this area is also chopped as haylage, probable the majority of it's chopped.

 

[Hay Dude]

Quite a mixture up here, lot's of small squares, a few big squares and lots of rounds. Many of the rounds get wrapped, both dry and haylage.
Much of the hay is this area is also chopped as haylage, probable the majority of it's chopped.

Is that because you have colder/damper climate?

 

[LouNY]

Could have a bit to do with it. But mostly because of the big dairies (2500-5000 cows) now. They don't use much baled hay mostly haylage in big bunker silos. A few years ago (15-20) it was numerous small to mid sized dairies (as few as 40,mostly 60 to 120 cows) and they almost all had silos for corn silage and haylage. With many using the ag bags for more silo space. At that time most of the dry hay was small squares. Many of the barns had mow conveyors to make handling small squares a bit less work along with mostly kicker rack wagons.
In the current time most of the round bales are for beefers with some dairys buying or making some round bales to mix into the mixer wagons for a touch of dry hay in a mixed ration.
Also many of the fields up here are also smaller then many places, some as small as 4-5 acres. On hillsides that round bales are all set on the few leveler spots in a field.

 

[Molalla1]

Could have a bit to do with it. But mostly because of the big dairies (2500-5000 cows) now. They don't use much baled hay mostly haylage in big bunker silos. A few years ago (15-20) it was numerous small to mid sized dairies (as few as 40,mostly 60 to 120 cows) and they almost all had silos for corn silage and haylage. With many using the ag bags for more silo space. At that time most of the dry hay was small squares. Many of the barns had mow conveyors to make handling small squares a bit less work along with mostly kicker rack wagons.
In the current time most of the round bales are for beefers with some dairys buying or making some round bales to mix into the mixer wagons for a touch of dry hay in a mixed ration.
Also many of the fields up here are also smaller then many places, some as small as 4-5 acres. On hillsides that round bales are all set on the few leveler spots in a field.

Now Lou, that is small.