How much should I (charge/pay) for some hay that I (have to sell/need to buy) is a common question that we get around the Extension office. The problem with trying to set a price on hay is that you are often are comparing apples to pears or so to speak.
People looking to find a reasonable price for hay are left with a few options like calling around to local feed stores; reading the classified ads in the local paper; or talking to others at the coffee shop.
Feed stores are generally very reliable places to purchase hay because feed dealers are always looking for a quality product to sell to their customers. However, the price of hay found in feed stores is likely to be higher than you might find locally because the store owners need to make a profit on the product they are trying to sell to you.
Classified ads in the paper can give you a good range of what hay is selling for; however, they are generally filled with vaguely descriptive words like 'large round bales', 'second cutting', 'well fertilized', or my favorite 'horse quality'. Without calling these sellers and asking some specific questions like, 'what was the interval between the first and second cutting?', or 'how large is large' it is hard to make an informed decision based on the price in the paper.
The coffee shop can be a place of good information exchange, but unless your friends are on top of what the actual production cost of a roll of hay is to them and can accurately and consistently estimate the weight of one of their round bales of hay, then the prices they share with each other might not be high enough to cover the cost of production.
Before buying or selling hay you should consider checking the hay markets in Texas and Oklahoma. The Texas Department of Agriculture's web site hosts these reports from the United States Department of Agriculture's Ag Market News Service that are updated every Thursday (Oklahoma) and Friday (Texas).
Here is the link to the Texas and Oklahoma Hay Reports:
http://www.agr.state.tx.us/agr/main_render/0,1968,1848_9931_8197_0,00.html?channelId=9931
These reports list ranges for hay sales based on hay type and quality, with prices quoted reflecting the price of the hay FOB (at the point of sale) without added freight costs.
Leave a comment