5 acre of timothy with some clover

[farmbob49]

Hi, I just bought a farm and have 5 acres of good drain tiled land with some timothy and clover growing on it. In the past someone just took it from the previous owner and kept it for there own. I was wondering what is a fair price to charge him to cut and bale the feed. How many bales do you think you would get from the first 2nd and 3rd cutting and total amount I should make from the 5 acres. Would it be worth it for me to buy or lease the equipment and do it myself?

[CesumPec]

making hay requires lot of expensive equipment or cheap old equipment that needs a lot of maintenance. I can't imagine it would ever pay for itself on 5 ac. Probably the best choice is to find someone who will bale it for 50% of the harvest. Take your share and sell it on CL.

[farmbob49]

I was just thinking over the next 30 years if it would pay off, but am looking to sale it to somebody right now. just not sure how much

[jwal10]

Depends on where you are at to how much hay you will get and on the weather IF you will get a 2nd or 3rd cutting. IF you can find someone to make it and you keep half that is good, otherwise it depends on where you are at to what hay is worth. Horse people pay the most for good hay and they like Timothy but not with clover unless it is put up perfectly. Too many variables to quote prices....James

[uncle Will in In.]

In or part of the world timothy and clover don't make 3 cuttings. The first cutting makes quite a bit of hay, and the second makes less. Getting it cut at the proper time means a lot on the value of the hay. If you can get it cut on the shares you are doing ok. Do it now.

[rambler]

Helps to know where you are, location makes a big difference on number of cuttings, and growth, of hay.

Price depends on your location, and how many horse people are around.

You can buy a tractor, baler, rake, mower, and trailer for $7,000 have used but serviceable stuff, and make hay. Takes a lot of time.

Used to be 50-50 split on hay, but with the price of fuel and iron, the landowner might be closer to 1/3 now a days.

In some areas hay is not in great demand and folks cut the hay to keep the weeds down, might keep property taxes down to have agricultural use. In those areas folks will just let your hay grow, be glad you have someone to mow it at all....

Paul

[Micheal]

You may find that the person who was getting the hay for his labor, time, and machinery use may not want to also "pay" for it....... depending on his need your 5 acres just may not be much to be bothered with if he had to buy it.

[dkhern]

around here if you fertilize you might get 25 rolls of hay. if hay crop is good you could sell for 25/30 roll. if dry hay can go for 65/80 per roll. cost 20 per roll baleing cost. if weather is dry you might only get 10 rolls. itss really pretty simple if conditions are good gets lots of hay but so do others price is low. it conditions are not good get less hay price goes up but hay quanity goes down. cost to bale dont change much. might not be able to even get someone to do 5 a.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Charge? You don't charge someone to bale your hay. Especially only five acres. You will be lucky to find someone willing to move their equipment to your small plot in order to bale it at all. It's expensive to move equipment.

You could offer them half of the production, or more, in order to bale it.

Last couple of years when I didn't need any for myself, I let them have ALL the hay AND found a buyer for it.

[Conhntr]

I tried to find someone for my 8-9acre field. No one was willing to bring their equiptment for that small an area. There is one person up the road who can drive his equiptment to here (under a mile) but he said he had plenty this year but would give me a call in the future if he needed more land to bale. I ended up bushhogging it last week and probably will need to do so 1 more time. You may have better luck with someone putting livestock in? I had several offers but still need to work on fence repair first.

[fishhead]

Every time you remove hay you remove nutrients so before I would give away the hay (nutrients) I would look at the cost of replacing those nutrients.

With the drought still here hay prices to a hauler might be good if you are close enough.

[rambler]

Originally Posted by dkhern

around here if you fertilize you might get 25 rolls of hay. if hay crop is good you could sell for 25/30 roll. if dry hay can go for 65/80 per roll. cost 20 per roll baleing cost. if weather is dry you might only get 10 rolls. itss really pretty simple if conditions are good gets lots of hay but so do others price is low. it conditions are not good get less hay price goes up but hay quanity goes down. cost to bale dont change much. might not be able to even get someone to do 5 a.

This exactly.

The money in hay is having a shed big enough to store a lot of hay, and be able to have good hay sitting around in those dry years to sell for the high prices. Make nothing in the over-supply years.....

Paul

[edcopp]

Originally Posted by farmbob49

Hi, I just bought a farm and have 5 acres of good drain tiled land with some timothy and clover growing on it. In the past someone just took it from the previous owner and kept it for there own. I was wondering what is a fair price to charge him to cut and bale the feed. How many bales do you think you would get from the first 2nd and 3rd cutting and total amount I should make from the 5 acres. Would it be worth it for me to buy or lease the equipment and do it myself?

It depends.

[sammyd]

If I owned the land I would consider purchasing equipment and doing it myself.
We had 1 acre tillable and decided to start buying the equipment.
We ended up making hay on many more acres than our 1. Neighbors had a couple of patches that nobody else wanted so we were able to get them for free or for halves.
Have made upwards of 80 acres of hay in some years. I like having the option to make hay when I want and if I want to.
Most hay equipment does not need expensive or extensive maintenance. In the 5 yeas we've owned our old 700 dollar baler I have replaced 1 part, other than the occasional shear bolt.
We paid 350 for a sickle mower and 250 for a crimper but I picked up a 7' haybine for free when we purchased more land along with a rake.
I bought one Allis WD for 550 and one for 450. The Farmall 756 cost 2500.
With 5 acres you can bale on the ground and pick them up with a trailer and truck later or buy a wagon or two. We paid 235 for a hay rack and 100 for the running gear.

Having a tractor and wagon on 5 acres will be necessary anyway, a sickle mower would be good to have as well so those costs wouldn't all have to go towards the hay.

[AtomicFarmer]

It's like anything else. Equipment costs money and the sky's the limit. You'd need, at minimum, a tractor of at least 40-50HP. 65-70HP is better.

Then you'll need a mower, properly sized for the tractor.

Also you'll need a rake and a tedder. You can buy one machine that does both of these.

Finally you'll need a baler, either square or round. If you get a square baler you'll either need a bale kicker on the baler or another person to drive the tractor or stack the hay on the wagon.

If you go with round bales you'll need a front loader with a bale spear for the tractor.

It sounds like a lot but if you're going to commit to running the place for a long time I'd say do it your self, with used equipment. Just don't go "too cheap". Get someone who knows what they're doing to go look at equipment with you.

[AtomicFarmer]

Oh, and don't forget the "behind the scenes" stuff-motor oil, fuel, hydraulic oil, grease and a grease gun, air compressor for tires that go flat from sitting most of the year, wear and tear parts like rake teeth and the like, hitch pins...

It sounds like a lot but once you have it you have it and are good to go.

[bluemoonluck]

You'd probably do better to fence in the 5 acres and put livestock on it

[Alice In TX/MO]

Divide it into four paddocks with electric fence and do rotation grazing.

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/sam/pasture.html

[sammyd]

There are a lot better grasses out there for grazing than timothy.
If you're gonna go that way, till it up and plant orchard and or brome

[farmbob49]

Thanks for the replies. Perhaps it's best to cut the field this year and let the nutrients back into the field, then think about getting the equipment and doing it myself.
I was thinking somebody would want to cut the field for the feed and it would only be fair to get paid for the use of the land not just give it away but sounds like making hay isn't very profitable and perhaps it's best to use the field for grazing or grow a better cash
crop for