Any experienced hay farmers here?

My husband has this idea, and I am trying to learn if it is possible…

He thinks he would like to grow hay. He is very handy and used to be a diesel mechanic at a dairy maintaining their machinery/tractors. At the moment he works in construction. He grew up in dairy country on his grandparents’ farm.

We currently only own 5 acres, so we would need more property. How much would we need to start off?
How does farm credit work, can there be a residence on the acreage as well? Can he keep his current job while getting established? Will they finance machinery/hay sheds etc. as well?
I breed a couple of mares, should I convert that into a business to add another ‘farm income’ stream? Anyone have any advice on how to start a business plan?

Lost but trying to figure out where to start and who to talk to first?

Many farm part time, is very common to have a job “in town” and go to the farm afterwards to take care of things there.

To finance that, there are several sources you could check out.
For loans, find out who your local Federal Land Bank is and talk to them.
They will have ideas for you.
Beware of private bank companies offering all kinds of loans that look so good on paper, some are scammy.
When you get that far, it helps to have a good lawyer look any paperwork over before signing anything.

Another place to check is your local USDA Farm Service Agency
They have all kinds of farm programs supported by our taxes, their advice and work is free, just talk to them.
Some of those are programs for beginning farmers, where their advice and loans can be very helpful.

Talking to some farmers, especially hay farmers in your region, would also help.
Farming is so dependent on locality and ground farmed, just some miles over farming practices can be different.

The local Small Business Administration would also be another place to check, some there may have farming experience they can help you with.

Your local college may have an agriculture department and people there that could help, maybe even some classes on farming and haying.

There is a learning curve to farming, but if you like it, there is way more satisfaction farming than in many other jobs.
Farming can also be a lifestyle that takes much work but is very satisfying also, for those that like farming.

Good luck to you.

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Will DH have helpers?

I ask because my neighbors are my hayguys.
Father/Son team, both employed fulltime besides haying leased fields.
They cut & bale ~3ac of my property & get 2-3 cuttings - dependent on weather - average 125-150 small squares per cutting.
I help sometimes on other filelds by driving the truck pulling the wagon. While Dad is still baling, son hikes bales onto the wagon.
This week we made 2 runs to the same small field (<10ac) and loaded 180 bales each time.

Doing everything solo is going to be a long, hard haul.
About 5yrs ago I had a different hayguy - he paid HS kids $10/hr to help him.
Most kids lasted a single season.

Equipment is not cheap & used seems to always be in need of repairs.
Even with deep pockets, the weather can EffUp your season.
This is a good year, last year hardly anyone got a 2nd cutting due to drought.
Bless the Hayguys, it is not an easy job.

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Thank you, all good suggestions!

Don’t know about helpers yet, I haven’t thought through this very far yet!

Wondering if roundbales are better or go with small squares? Probably depends on type of hay?

Consider that he will need someplace to store the hay after baling. Might need to put up a pole barn, which can also house hay equipment. Needs a larger tractor with live hydraulics to power the mower and baler. So a 40-50HP machine.

Sometimes you can sell it out of the field for a slightly less cost, because you have only handled it once, stacking. Everytime you handle it, you SHOULD charge more for labor. Is there a nearby hay auction he could sell at? That can help move hay on. Labor is the killer, finding someone to stack on wagons, in the barn. Then choosing small or big bales. Selling “horse or (goats, llamas, alpacas, sheep) pet” hay, means small bales. Most folks just can’t handle big bales, will pay better for small bales. Most places sell hay by the ton, but Michigan sells most hay by the bale so it can cost more. Not sure about your area.

Then what kind of hay to grow? Grass sells well here to horse folks. Alfalfa sells too, but may be too rich for horses. Cattle folks don’t always want to pay the good money for 2nd or 3rd cut. Cattle folks do like big bales though. Learn your market, then produce what they want.

Good hay ground needs to be fertilized often so it contains needed minerals. Every cutting removes minerals from the land that need to be put back. You need to do soil tests at least every 2 years to know what your ground needs in fertilizers to produce a good product. Testing the hay is an added expense, but handy for sharing the information with buyers. You can charge more with test results in your hand! Each cutting and field can test differently, so each of the hays would need it’s own test.

On the labor part, there are now Accumulators and Grapples. Big game changers! Accumulators seem so work with springs and gravity, not powered tools. Accumulators collect the small bales off baler in bundles. Then you drive out with grapples, pick up the whole bundle all at once, stack them on the wagons, unload the bundles into the barn. Skidsteer seems to be choice for using with grapples, but smaller bundle grapples can be used on tractor loaders. Might need a weight box behind on the tractor with the grapple. You might check Utube videos to see them in action. We are very small, so need smaller versions than most of what is shown. But gracious! What a time saver!!

We hired 5 kids for loading and stacking this year. 2 guys were worthless. One lasted an hour and done. The other did not follow directions well, had to do some parts twice. The girl was excellent!! Experienced with hay, just a good worker ALL DAY. Stacked on the wagon, in the barn, no whining. Gave her a tip plus her $16 an hour pay. Other 2 guys did not know about hay, but willingly followed directions, stacked well on the wagons and in the barn, glad we found them. We can’t get anyone for only $10hr, that is minimum wage here. Easier work at other places.

On about 8 acres we got 750 bales first cutting. Then no rain. 2nd cutting got about 120 bales. Same as others around us. We should have cut earlier. That might have produced a better, early 3rd cutting, but we are learning about hay cutting ourselves. I mowed the short 3rd cutting, not able to harvest with heavy dew, short drying time (like a 4 hour window to cut or dry) before evening dew. Experts figure about 100 bales to the acre in my location. Much depends on rain and heat of the sun. As we saw, heat does nothing to grow hay without rain water. Next year I will be mowing on July 4th, whether hay is tall or short, so there is a chance of an early 3rd cutting! Ha ha. We still had to buy about 400 bales for winter. But what hay we put up, about halfway paid for the needed hay equipment. Should have it paid back in saving on purchased hay by next year. With very high hay cost last year, I figured buying hay was all cash gone forever. We can put up our own, low cost (strings, fuel, hired stackers) hay until we are worn out. Then when I sell the hay equipment, I will have my cash back.

I found a 4-bale accumulator at an auction. Looking for a 8-bale grapple to go with it. That should finish us on purchasing hay equipment. Hoping to save on finding people to work stacking wagons. Just will need them for putting hay in the barn above grapple height and filling the small barn, a few hours work .

We paid cash for our older hay equipment, buying out a retiring farmer. We had been putting aside money for a year when we saw how hay prices kept rising in 2018 and 2019, decided to go into the hay business for ourselves. We knew he took great care of his equipment, and indeed we had no issues with any of it getting the hay in. Hoping for the same next year!

Figure a year at least, to get any land in good shape, brush gone, fertilized and seeded, mowed a couple times before any harvesting, to develop good plant roots. Kind of like mowing pastures, tall and often. For me, I think mowing often makes stronger plants, before it is productive to crop the hay. Seed labels say not to cut for hay the first year. We have very heavy clay, plant turf and roots help prevent getting stuck. Not sure “real farmers” think that way! Ha ha Our land still needs some work to direct water accumulation off the fields. BUT no hay equipment or tractors, fertilizer wagons got stuck this year! I am spraying right now to reduce volunteer clover, get it back to grass. Mostly, it has been a very good year with the hay land. Just took 3yrs to get there.

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well - we’re not professionals. We hay to feed our small herd of cows and horses because I am very hay fussy. It is work. We do both small squares and round bales, for horses and cows, respectively. We don’t hire help. DH does the tractor. The kids and I ride the rack. We have always bought old, used equipment which means DH must be good at repairs. I think we probably break even w/r/t expenditures and labor versus buying hay. Crop, is as said above, year dependent. I honestly don’t think where I live that it is a money making enterprise. As more dairy farmers go out of business, though, and the number of hay makers therefore decrease, that may change.

The only real comment I have - because I depend on quality horse hay - is that if our marriage can survive haying together, it can survive anything. (this is only a small joke - as when to cut for a good weather window and when it’s dry enough are frequent debates).

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Another hay farmer here, but we don’t rely on hay as our main income. 2 of us. He does the irrigating, and cutting, and runs the round baler (small rounds, 600 lbs). I do all the turning, and run the small square baler (we don’t do many of these, just some small fields that grow grass only, necessary for a couple of my horses- other fields are alfalfa/grass). I also do the pick up (by hand) on the small squares (they are “lady’s bales”- have to be handled with care as they are my special project). We have a bale wagon that is supposed to pick up small squares, but it is a piece of junk, and doesn’t work any more (which is OK, it breaks bales, and I’d rather pick them up by hand). I have cut in the past, I can cut, but he won’t release the responsibility. I could not operate the round baler, but am fine working the small square baler (she’s old, and we get along OK most of the time.) We pick up the round bales together, him loading and unloading with the tractor, and I drive the truck and flatdeck trailer. He does most of the repairs, what he can do himself, and it constantly amazes me what he CAN do- we are very fortunate that he is so handy. The haying can’t be done by only one person, IMO. It takes at least two, or more if you have more hands available. You need multiple tractors, for various reasons… to replace a tractor that suddenly breaks down at a crucial time. And so that two tractors can work at once. We have three tractors, 2 big ones, and 1 little one. We stagger the fields we cut, as the weather allows, so as one field is drying, another is being cut. We divide our 40 acres of alfalfa/grass into 4 quadrants for cutting like this. The grass fields are just little, maybe 6 acres in all- he cuts them also in rotation so I don’t have it all to do at once.

To get enough land, and quality land to make enough hay to make it economically viable, you must look for land that is away from civilization… remote. The farther away to go from civilization, the cheaper the land is to buy or rent. You may or may not need irrigation. You may be able to find a farm that has been worked as a hay farm previously, and comes with equipment, some of which may be functional, or be able to be made functional. You will need to buy more equipment.

If you have questions about Farm Credit, I would contact them directly. They will WANT to help you, that is what they DO. We bought a tractor through them a few years ago, it worked out OK for us. Tractor was a pile of junk though. It’s fixed now, for a further $5000 cost. Not their fault. It was the fault of the machinery company that LIED about the work they had NOT done on the tractor, and claimed they had done. Then went out of business. Trust no one.

I posted recently about a small hay farm local to me that is available. We are semi remote, and semi arid. In British Columbia.

Whether or not your marriage can survive it, you will find out. Some don’t. Bad weather creates stress. But seeing 400 round bales in the barn and knowing exactly what is in each of them and what isn’t in each of them is satisfying. Old machinery is available, often cheap, sometimes functional or can be made functional. Regular people can’t afford to buy much machinery new, even with Farm Credit. Some of our machinery was new, most is older. Sometimes “older” is best, no computers makes for home repairs that are possible. It’s all a learning experience, and everyone learns as they go.

If you want to try it out, commercial hay farms and or large cattle operations that grow their own hay are constantly looking for workers, the Gang Ranch every year is begging for farm workers, as are many other operations (Blue Goose). They supply housing and a wage, and you will likely work your arse off.

Most people combine haying with other farm related activities. Having a home business (Mechanical repairs, construction, welding, cattle operation etc) that keeps one busy for the rest of the year, and can cover if your hay crop is crappy.

Your question re round bales vs small squares… Round bales are quick do do, and once baled, the bales do not have to be picked up immediately, they can stay out on the field and get rained on short term, they shed the rain. Small squares sell for more money, but are finicky to make, and must be picked up before they get rained on and stored inside a barn. So, if you have rain coming and need to get stuff baled RIGHT NOW before the rain comes, you round bale it for sure. BUT, the hay must be VERY dry to be horse quality in a round bale. That means that hot days and low humidity are necessary to get the humidity down to under 18% before baling. We like those round bales to read 15%. Small squares can be not AS dry when baled, they will continue to dry in the bale because they are not baled as tight. If a round bale is higher in water content, it will either rot or ferment. A small square bale that is slightly too damp MAY dry once in the barn without rotting. Baling hay that is not quite dry enough is called “baling it tough”, and is not recommended. A barn near us burned to the ground this year, an inferno, wet hay in large bales heats up and combusts. Don’t do this.

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Thank you again for all the detailed replies!! Finally had time to carefully read through all of them, making a list of people I need to talk to and things I need to figure out.
Trying to start a business plan, we will be taking out time, thinking maybe 2-4 years to get it all set up…

I have 11 acres in hay which is farmed by a local farmer. In the NE where I am, this acreage is not enough to justify my investing anything in hay farming equipment, and it has been barely enough acreage to entice any local farmers to add it into their activities in exchange for the hay. That is an analysis you should do. Should should also explore what type of hay you want to farm, and whether the current local price for that makes it worthwhile.

Good luck!

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Your county / state extension offices will have good information on the going rates for hay ground rental, custom baling fees, and hay costs. While there may be local exceptions to these norms, it will help you create your initial business plan.
Here’s the Iowa version, check your own extension office and they’ll almost surely have something similar: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a1-20.pdf
See pages 9-11 of this document for haying info

  • Goes without saying but if you're doing this on the side and keeping your off-farm jobs, those jobs will need to allow a flexible work schedule during haying season since your work is so weather-dependent.
  • Also be sure to find out how this commercial activity would affect your homeowners' insurance -- if you have helpers on the farm, you need to be 100% certain your insurance is up to snuff. There are very serious safety risks associated with haying.
  • Talk to an accountant / tax expert to find out the best way to structure the business (for example, may want to set up an LLC --limited liability company--through which all your transactions are routed, and then you as landowners would lease the hay ground to your LLC.)
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Same here in Iowa. I have a share-cropping arrangement with a hay guy where he does the work in exchange for 1/2 the hay. But only makes sense because he’s already working larger fields nearby. The value of hay from 10 acres would not justify someone bringing all their equipment over from far away, nor would it ever justify the cost of the equipment.

OP, instead of starting with “how many acres?”, let your financial analysis reveal how many acres you have to get. Let that variable “float”. Your fixed inputs are land and equipment cost, expected yield per acre based on local norms, equipment maintenance costs, local hay prices, and your expected break-even period. By this I mean: how many years are you willing to wait to break even, after which your hay revenue would be all profit. If you are depending on external financing to do this, they’re going to want to see a reasonable payback period, like 7-10 yrs. If it’s going to take you 20 years to break even on the investment, then this is not a wise investment and you may struggle to get loans for it. Stating the obvious, but the shorter the payback period, the more pressure on hay price being high, and land/equipment costs being low.
There are are other inputs you’ll need–labor costs, for example–but I’m just throwing out some basics here. Once you have your fixed inputs, from there figure out how many tons of hay you need to sell annually to achieve your desired payback period, and from THERE, you can back into how many acres it would take to produce that much hay.

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On rounds vs squares – many hay farmers around here bale 1st cutting as rounds, for sale to cattle operations, and the 2nd cutting in small squares for the horse market.

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We farm and put up a decent amount of hay to sell. My husband and 2 sons work off farm full time in addition to all they do here.

We currently put up 150 round bales to sell to an existing customer as well as several hundred square bales to 2 others.

We put up rounds and squares for all our animals as well.

We have dealt with Farm Credit on numerous occasions and they are great to work with, so I would give them a call.

Even used equipment is expensive, maintenance is expensive and time consuming and the cost from start to finish to get a bale made is expensive. If you can get decent ground and get a good stand of hay established that is a good start. There is a lot of hay out there and not all of it is near decent to feed. We go for quality not quantity and are never lacking for buyers.

Fighting the weather and the current trend in the forecasters inability to accurately forecast the weather is the biggest problem we have.

You would have to cut a LOT of hay and have it all sold at cutting to rely on it alone for income all year long.

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More good advice, thank you! I am writing it all down :slight_smile:
I know I pay $315 per ton of alfalfa, currently. I know timothy is a bit more, the rest… I will have to look up. At feed stores they sell for about $20/bale, but I don’t personally know anyone with horses that would buy their hay at TSC or Wilcos…

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Might want to start off working with someone else so you get the hang of things.

And once you have a decent reputation you could look into custom cutting other people’s property. That might give you an inside look at the people and properties in your area,
and those contacts might come in handy down the road when you started looking around for your own hayground.

Could also hire yourself out to mow, and things could expand from there.

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My direct experience with hay is stacking square bales. However, I’ve been at this farm for 20 years and have seen it cut, dried and baled. The hayfield is about 30 acres, timothy mix. The land has been farmed since 1863. The BO’s father harrowed and reseeded it when she bought the property. She does round bales for first and second cut now after the square baler pooped out. She bought the smallest Kubota that could pull haying equipment. She figures it’s a losing operation when you account for the cost of the equipment. She buys about 6,000 small squares and hundreds of round bales from farms that she has been using for years.

Her husband does the haying, but he has a regular day job and works around that schedule. Some years it is tough putting together 3 nice days to cut, tedd. rake and bale. It can take a shower and still dry, but rain soaks it and it won’t dry. Timothy mix is what everybody grows around here. Alfalfa won’t grow in Maine.

About the handling of small squares - all of the farms around me that do small squares have a baler that has a kicker/thrower on it that tosses the bales into the hay wagon. So the only handling of the small squares is out of the wagon into wherever you will store it - no need to pick the bales up out of the field.

Right at 30 seconds in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IOdK1unv48

I’m pretty sure my barn owner uses the same John Deere baler for the small squares kicked into hay wagons and large squares dropped in the field (those have to be picked up with equipment and loaded onto a trailer).

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Out of cutriosity, does she fertilize the hayfields at all? You have to put nutrients back into the land to get good products. There has to be a reason she thinks it is a losing effort in producing higher quantity of bales. You have to work with the land to get a good crop, not just cut it repeatedly. And making hay behind a full-time job, seldom produces excellent hay. Timing is off. But people do what they have to. Does he take good care of his equipment? Not suffering breakdowns is important. How many horses is she feeding a year? Are they on pasture at all? It just sounds like an amazing quantity of hay being handled!

Theresak, you need two different balers to make small squares and big (300# and up) square bales. Bale size are a bit adjustable for length of small squares, due to moisture content, density, type of hay being made like grass or alfalfa. But that baler is not able to make those 300 pound , big square bales. And the 300 pound baler is not adjustable to make the 800 pound square bales. Balers, round or square, have a built in size capacity, cannot be changed to much bigger or smaller sized bales.

goodhors, yes she fertilizers every spring. She limed it at the end of the season in 2018 which got rid of some weeds. We have had a very long drought this year. There are some areas that look tired so she is talking about over-seeding. Equipment is in good shape and she is probably beyond break even. It is quite a bit of hay but not much for this farm. The past several years there have been 40-50 horses on the farm but it has gone above 50 in the past. Haying used to be a family affair with her father and her uncle with his own tractor, and a few others. Her father passed away suddenly and her uncle retired. DH is not a farmer although he thinks he knows quite a bit. It’s not a losing operation because she gets nice hay. No pasture for the horses. The hayfield is the only open space but it could be converted to pasture. She has about 80 acres but the rest is wooded. We have some nice short trails we can put together for rides for 30 - 60 minutes. There are also longer ones off the property although the 4 wheelers have ruined a couple.

Her father came back from round baling one day complaining about losing his cell phone. His granddaughter was about 8 or 9. I got to drive her around in the Gator for about an hour while she dialed and we looked. Nothing. One day we opened up a bale for the mares and there it was. In pieces of course. She bagged it up and gave it back. It was the early days of smart phones and he never said why he needed it.

There is a lot to learn about hay farming. My husband did it for about 20yrs. You definitely can make money, if you have the land, equipment, knowledge, market, and good weather.

Good land is hard to find; most productive farmland is corn/soybeans. It can be expensive to begin a hayfield from raw dirt. Orchardgrass seed is fairly cheap, alfalfa seed is not. Alfalfa tends to sell for more, but must be harvested every 30 days (or before it reaches full bloom) for best quality. Soils must be tested yearly and treated as needed (lime, nitrogen, K, etc). Grass fields need sprayed for weeds.

Labor is expensive and very difficult to find; my husband LOVED baling hay, but ultimately finding good help to run large acreage was the downfall. You can avoid some labor with better (bigger and $$) equipment: accumulators, grapples, and bigger wagons for a start. But you still need operators for that equipment…people who won’t break it and know what they’re doing. My husband and I could manage about 200 acres ourselves…but on days when rain is imminent, having extra hands is needed.

There is an art to cutting, raking, and baling most efficiently. It takes time and practice. Breakdowns WILL happen, often on a Friday evening, with rain coming the next day. :confused: All your profit from one 10 acre field could go to fixing a broken PTO shaft.

Small squares bring the biggest price, but also have lots of labor. Round bales are easier, but far cheaper, and the round bale market typically competes with cheap, weedy cow hay selling for $30/bale. If you have ability to transport your hay to FL, you can get $550+/ton for good stuff. Selling o/a in the FL market, we had the numbers to profit about $1000/per acre on a good year. You will need storage to maximize profit; don’t sell before fall/winter, when prices are higher. Without storage, you must sell straight out of the field, for significantly less income.

Always sell by the ton. Most fair for buyer and seller, no one gets screwed by light or heavy bales. For storage and shipping purposes, I recommend baling tight, heavy bales to take up less space (hopefully handled by machine with grapple).

Equipment is expensive to purchase and maintain. You’ll need two or three tractors, if doing more than 50ac. Buying used is often buying some one else’s problems. Understanding baler knitter systems is akin to understanding quantum physics. But you’ll need to learn to the basics, or watch your hay get rained on waiting for the New Holland mechanic to get to you (btdt).

There is nothing quite like the satisfaction of watching baby grass grow, cutting it into straight parallel lines, raking into fluffy windows, and dropping bales evenly dotted all over the field. Then after 4 days of hard work, the smell of a fully filled barn, and a field as smooth and green as a golf course. And finally, listening to your horses munching contentedly on what you slaved over.

Find a local hay farmer, or university farm, and work a field with them. You’ll learn a lot.

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