What are the alfalfa and grass hay prices in your area?

Question

We had a dry June and July (38 days without rain) and now we have had lots of rain the past 2 weeks. Good quality hay was put up earlier in the year, but now there is alot rotting in windrows because it won't cure.

I live in South Dakota, and round bales of grass hay is around $80/ton. Everybody seems to be hanging on to what they have.

Just curious with what's going on across the country. Thanks!

Answer 1

In South Florida alfalfa is $12.00 for a small bale , grass hay is around $50.00 for a large round bale.

Answer 2

Washington State, rumor has it... good quality alfalfa is going for $200+/ton.

Answer 3

In ohio, bales are going for about 5 bucks.  Alot of area farmers are trucking hay to tennessee for 9 bucks.  Ohio had a pretty good hay year but its dry here too.  Stocks stored for winter are not supportative to prolonged hay shortages.

Answer 4

i live in england and they hay price has rose this year due to poor hay from the flooding.

i couldnt name the price though sorry

Answer 5

For up-to-date information on market hay prices across the country, you should check out AMS's market report page.  Most reports are updated weekly.  Here is the link for hay:  http://www.ams.usda.gov/lsmnpubs/Hay.htm

Good luck!

Answer 6

Here in eastern Oklahoma we just put up 1000 squares of good bermuda hay, 60 pound bales, and they are going for $3.00 each. We also have some big rounds (800 lb) and they'll bring $22 - 28 each. I don't have alfalfa but I've been seeing it advertised for $5 a bale in the field, you haul it. After the drought of the past couple years though, when this same farm made only 670 light square bales total (!!), everyone is thrilled to death to have hay!

Answer 7

Hi Ayla, as you noted Mckaytyler was right - there are so many variables that come into play that your answer will end up changing on a daily or weekly basis.  However, for a quick-and-dirty mini-snapshot of what is going on with your regional prices are at any given time this link can be useful:

http://www.hayexchange.com/alfalfa_repor...

they seem to take data from various weekly hay reports and give you an average of what the current costs are.  Of course, local conditions will trump anything else so your mileage may vary with this product :)

If you go to their home page you can select your state and pull up ads for your state, and the surrounding states to give you a look at what is being offered for a wider region - in this view they show individual classifieds so you have more of an idea what your possibilities might be.  Of course the actual quality will not be discernable from the ads, but it will give you a general idea of how valuable people feel their hay is :)

Sites like http://www.haybarn.com can also provide some good information but like most internet sites there seems to be more activity from some states than others depending on how long the site has been around.

Another thing that we like to do is browse the local papers for our area.  Obviously this can be expensive if you try to buy a lot of papers but if you go to http://www.newspapers.com and then select your state, you can pick the papers for your local and surrounding areas and check out their classifieds to see what is currently for sale.  This takes a little more effort but it will also give you the most current prices available for any area.  We bookmark the newspapers we like to check and then we usually check them once during the week and definitely on Sundays.

Of all the ways to check prices, we like using the online versions of the local and regional papers.  That's where that newspapers.com is extremely handy - they will list every paper in your state that has an online version.  Just pick the town or city you want and they will list what papers are available.  

Good luck with your search!  We hope this gives you some other options to consider.

Y

Answer 8

I live in northeast Iowa...We don't have grass hay here, but alfalfa is:  

Small Bale:  $3.50

Medium Bale:  $5.50

Large Bale:  $7.50

...and these are square bales, for large round bales, we get $12.80.

Answer 9

So Texas

  round bales (abt 1,200 lbs) $60 fair quality

                                                 $90 top quality



square bales (75 lbs) abt $5.50 - $6

mostly coastal bermuda

I never bought alfalfa so I can't help on that

Answer 10

There are so many veritables in pricing hay that you almost need to read a market report to get a good answer to your question.  There are small square bales which will be higher priced, large square bales, somewhat cheaper, and large round bales, the cheapest way to buy hay. Then there are the differences in grade both in alfalfa and grass hays.  The prices that I'm going to give you are a range of these differences.

Alfalfa hay from $70 t0 $150 per ton.

Grass hay from $50 to $90 per ton.

Answer 11

i dont know