Last year I got all of my hay from a large producer and it was pretty painless. This year I’d like to have some small bales, so am looking to purchase from smaller growers.
My most burning question: can I ask to crack a bale so I can actually see the hay? Is that rude or reasonable? Do I pay for that bale, or is that the cost of doing business? Hay is pricing at ~$4/bale, so not a big deal, but I’d just like to know what’s expected.
Any suggestions on things to ask that aren’t obvious?
Anyone I have bought hay from has been willing to send a bale home with me to make sure my horses and I thought it was OK. Offering to pay for that single bale has always been met with ‘no worries’ or ‘we will figure it out later’.
I’ve always paid for the “test” bale-- no grower I’ve dealt with would let me crack a bale and not pay for it/take it with me. This year I bought some lovely local hay in (tiny for us!) 50lb. small bales and I just did it on faith that my vacuum horse would hoover it all up and he has so far. If I’d felt it was questionable, I’d have bought one, tried it out and then gone back or not, for the whole load.
Just ask if you can buy a bale to look or to buy one to take home to try. If they say you don’t need to pay for it, then there’s your answer.
[QUOTE=Calvincrowe;8310052]
I’ve always paid for the “test” bale-- no grower I’ve dealt with would let me crack a bale and not pay for it/take it with me. This year I bought some lovely local hay in (tiny for us!) 50lb. small bales and I just did it on faith that my vacuum horse would hoover it all up and he has so far. If I’d felt it was questionable, I’d have bought one, tried it out and then gone back or not, for the whole load.
Just ask if you can buy a bale to look or to buy one to take home to try. If they say you don’t need to pay for it, then there’s your answer.[/QUOTE]
My parents sell hay to horse people. This is the routine. You come and either buy a load, or ask to buy a bale. If your horse eats it and you like the quality, you come back and buy more. If you don’t, you don’t come back. We’ve never had someone just take that one bale…they always come back for the rest of what they need.
I’d say please and thank you!
Oh, that’s not what you meant. I haven’t ever had my horses not eat whatever I put in front of them, so haven’t gone the one-bale route. When moving to our new place, I got the seller’s hay supplier’s name and just bought a couple tons from him to be delivered before we got here. I brought what I had left of my old hay (that I could fit in my trailer, sold the rest) for a transition period. Of course they loved the new hay so I bought five more tons of it and have him holding another five tons for me.
I wouldn’t expect to open a bale and say “meh” and walk away. I’d buy it and bring it home and take it from there.
In PA, hay buying was pretty painless and the suppliers seemed to understand horse people. They would happily open a bale for you, replace bad bales, and let you purchase “sample bales” or small loads before committing. In general it was sold by the ton, unless you were purchasing a small load. Most had delivery available or could at least help you arrange delivery for a reasonable cost.
In my current area of TN, hay buying is a completely different ball game. I think the problem is that the majority of hay farmers here aren’t horsemen, or they treat their horses like their cattle. Most farmers want to sell in large quantities, usually by bale count. “500 bales of timothy hay, must purchase all 500.” It’s also really common that hay is sold straight out of the field by the cutting and you have to pick the bales up out of the field yourself. That method can be disastrous without a trustworthy farmer. The majority of farmers won’t deal with delivery at all-- so you need to figure out how to load and transport hundreds of bales at once. The average farmer does not replace bad bales. The average farmer is insulted if you ask to crack a bale, and you will most definitely be paying for that bale.
After getting burned and ripped off SO many times with moldy or inedible hay, I’ve learned to be extraordinarily careful around here. I’ve also learned I have to be very direct. While I’m polite, I also have to be sort of a b*tch about what I want or else they will take advantage of me. For example, I have to tell them up front that I want to purchase a few sample bales before committing. If the farmer balks at that idea, then I take my business elsewhere (and believe it or not, a lot of them around here will say no). If I have to pick it up myself, I make sure I’m clear up front exactly how many bales I can transport with my own truck and trailer. Before any money changes hands, I tell them my expectations of the hay and that I don’t want it if it doesn’t meet my expectations.
I was really blessed to FINALLY find a “horseman” in my area who supplies hay. Before that, buying hay was a living hell. I’m going to be devastated if he ever leaves the area or stops selling hay!
I’m not looking for a big load, but need ~30 50 lb bales of straight grass for my fat horse for winter. She’ll really eat anything, so I’m not worried much about turning up her nose at nice hay.
Hay is scattered here. I’m traveling at least 30 mins to look at hay, and am meeting a guy an hour away this weekend. I just have no desire to drive all that way to pick up a bale, take it home, look at it and decide if it’s something I want, then go back. I’d love to be able to drive up there, crack a bale to see what it’s like and say yay or nay. Then load up the truck with my 30 bales and go home. I’m okay at being able to look at a bale and have some idea of what it’s like by the heft and and smell and the handful I can pull out of the end, but I just feel much more comfortable about committing if I can actually see a flake.
I’m totally cool with paying for that open bale either way and taking it with me if it’s the hay I want. I just don’t want to commit some terrible faux pas, and I want to start developing those relationships for future years…
I just bought my first load of hay from an out of state producer. I told them about what I need (low NSC clean dust/mold free hay for easy keepers and an old mate with allergies). They sent me analyses of the different hays they have, we talked a bit about the weather conditions there and how the hay has been stored. Then I selected a hay and it was delivered today. And it’s better than I thought it’d be. I didn’t know first cut hay could be so green.
I googled ‘questions to ask when buying hay’, which was helpful. Personally, I’d need to see an analysis of the hay before buying…that’ll give you a lot more info than just looking at it.
I’ve not asked to have a bale opened, but have been able to see some that are broken or if they are actually feeding it there they might have some open to see. We’ve had hay that looked great and my horses wouldn’t eat it, so I’m in the camp of getting a bale or two to try first. I’d rather drive the 30 minutes back and forth a couple of times than to put 5 tons in the loft, find the horses hate it, then have to get it all back to the dealer or give it away (I’ve done that – not fun at all).
But if I was just getting a pickup load, which is how I view 30 or 40 small bales of grass hay, I can see just judging by what you see. At $4/bale, that’s a pretty small $ amount so not so bad if you end up with something less than ideal (different when I’m looking at spending $350/ton on 5 tons of timothy here…I want to know it is good before I write that check!). Just ask to see one open and offer to pay for the bale even if you don’t buy a load. The worst that can happen is they say no. Heck, the craigslist hay ads around here often show photos of bales open to see the insides, so I don’t think it is an unreasonable request.
[QUOTE=Simkie;8309990]
Last year I got all of my hay from a large producer and it was pretty painless. This year I’d like to have some small bales, so am looking to purchase from smaller growers.
My most burning question: can I ask to crack a bale so I can actually see the hay? Is that rude or reasonable? Do I pay for that bale, or is that the cost of doing business? Hay is pricing at ~$4/bale, so not a big deal, but I’d just like to know what’s expected.
Any suggestions on things to ask that aren’t obvious?[/QUOTE]
The cost of the (small) bale should be insignificant compared to the importance of knowing what you’re getting. Any hay supplier who didn’t get run thru their own baler will understand that.
I would personally always offer to buy the bale, even if I simply wanted to “see” the inside. It is not impossible to re-string a bale and sell it if you cut the strings and open it neatly. But I wouldn’t assume they’ll do that.
That said, seeing the inside is helpful but taking home a bale and confirming they eat it is much more valuable. Even with large rectangular bales, I’d rather front $60 and buy a whole sample bale than risk buying more that I can’t use. I have 65 bales of a cutting that we brought home and looked/smelled even nicer than the previous cutting from the same field. Horses wouldn’t touch the newer cutting. Oh well, it’s not a huge loss.
David
[QUOTE=horsepoor;8310280]
I’ve not asked to have a bale opened, but have been able to see some that are broken or if they are actually feeding it there they might have some open to see. [/QUOTE]
AWESOME idea. I’d not thought of that! Thanks!
And I wish people would show a decent pic of an open bale on the CL ad! That would at least be a starting point. A good number of the ads have no pics, and those that do…well…usually you can tell that it’s hay, at least 
Heh. Around here, you’d be stuck buying from one guy if you have to have a test. The big producer I bought from last year does test most of his hay and will supply the test. Ask anyone else? You’re going to get a blank stare. That’s just how it goes. I’ll be testing my own hay for these small bale lots.
Thanks, all, for the comments/discussion/ideas!
I think you can buy a bale and open it yourself there but you can’t open a bale you don’t buy.
I usually always buy from the same guy. Last year I needed some extra second he didn’t have and bought somewhere new, bought some sample bales that were great, then bought 200 more bales delivered and they were full of weeds including nightshade. Not at all like the samples. 
some people have no ethics but nothing much I could do about that. But I now know who not to buy hay from, for sure.
[QUOTE=Simkie;8310216]
I’m totally cool with paying for that open bale either way and taking it with me if it’s the hay I want. I just don’t want to commit some terrible faux pas, and I want to start developing those relationships for future years…[/QUOTE]
I think a greater faux pas is for a human to look at hay, sniff it or something, and declare on the spot that it’s not good enough. It may be crap, but that’s entirely opinion, and many hay sellers will not be happy with that answer especially for all of the risk and work that went into it. Bringing home a bale and seeing if they eat it is fact-based and not insulting because we all know animals are picky and that’s not a personal attack.
To avoid going to look at crap hay, it helps to ask things like “how was this cutting?” “How was the moisture” “Did the timing of the cut work out well?” “Did you need to spray preservative?”. These are conversational things that a hay grower will often share, and they frame the conversation away from their abilities and toward the things that nobody can control. Because, at the end of the day, even the best hay grower will grow bad hay. Nature is a mother.
Keep in mind that one bale of hay is just one bale of hay. You could end up with a bale that hit a weedy spot or a bale that happen to hit a spot that was abundant in alfalfa. You could sample a bale that happen to have a gob of wet hay when the rest of the field was dry resulting in a moldy spot. A more reliable sample is about the total you need (30 or 40 bales). You can generally tell if it was put up wet or had been rained on numerous times. Good luck in your search.
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