Originally, i had offered to pre-purchase my farm’s alfalfa needs for the winter and was told i did not need to, that there was no worry as they had ten thousand bales. Then, Friday, when i had a delivery (of 120 bales) the guy said that they were getting 8 semis come this week. Just called my supplier and he said yes, he’s recommend i prepay. We solidified the quantity, he is moving my supply into a corner (i specified a dry corner please lol) and i am paying in advance after all. He said it was a good thing i had called as they are selling out faster than they ever have before. (in mid-Missouri, but the semis are hauling out to other states!)
I have never had a problem getting whatever hay I wanted even during droughts as once it is on a truck it is just mileage that adds to the cost. Most all the hay used in this area is trucked in anyway. There have been times where as we have contracted for an estimated years worth but found that doing so was not needed.
Cost may be higher than I wanted to pay, but that is something that is out of my control. We are fortunate to have multiple suppliers in the area who are competitive.
To minimize waste we just changed the ways we feed. And any thrown on the ground hay is not wasted as it raked up for the goats next door.
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It is not unusual to run out of hay around here. The local feed store that bales thousands of grass hay bales usually runs out in February or March and rations purchases to 5 bales per trip when the stockpile gets low. Last year they ran out before Thanksgiving. You can almost always get Hall’s compressed alfalfa bales but no grass hay. The other feed stores were in the same boat the last two years. NOBODY brings in grass hay but there are numerous sellers bringing in alfalfa from out west.
So if you have fat horses you have to go out of state to get good stuff and even they run out on April or May. I make sure I have enough stored to get me to Spring. It is damp here and hay doesn’t store all that great but the alternative is Standlee $22 a bale timothy and that is not sustainable for me.
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I can only store 12 large square bales at a time (approximately 800 lbs each). I need 16 to get through the year. I went in August and picked up 4 of the 16. I asked my hay guy then if he would have enough alfalfa to sell me 4-6 bales and the others would be a grass hay. He said sure not problem. I have one more cutting on all of my fields. When I texted him to set up a time to come get hay a few weeks ago, I asked about getting alfalfa. He said he had to make it all as baylage. The weather was wet and humid. He couldn’t get the alfalfa to be dry enough to bale in large squares. I picked up 12 bales of gorgeous 3rd cutting orchard grass. The horses are doing well on it. I travel 2 hours west to get my hay. He does a fabulous job and raises lots of different varieties and tests the larger batches. I could have chosen: Orchard, cuttings 1-3, Timothy, cuttings 1-3, Mixed grass cuttings 1-3 or Teff hay cuttings 1-3. The orchard grass I got wasn’t tested because he only got 13 bales off that particular field.
My hay guys issue with weather, even though he was 2 hours away, was the same issue for most of Virginia. It was a fairly wet and humid summer.
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one year, when we got into a bind and couldn’t find enough alfalfa, i ordered 50# bags of alfalfa cubes, palletized (i think there were 40 or so bags per pallet?). It got us through the winter, but was X-PEN-sive!!!
