My boy heard this at the sale today

Easy to see why this nation is falling apart. Some folks "enviously" have never been in business, not even a paper route as a kid, or are nuts or stupid or are trolls or all of the above.

While I understand the point you are making, I think it fails in my mind, and I will disagree with you on it. Price fixing, and creating long term shortages, and poor preperation follow that road of thinking, and I feel it leads to bad things for many people if carried to fruitation, none of which is good or Christian for anyone.....

For numerous reasons, I think that person is not being Christian any more or less than the person following market forces. and in fact the person following market forces is the better person for society as a whole..

That doesn't mean I think you or he is doing anything wrong; I only think you have a false apprasal of the situation.

And we can both happily go upon our way, no harm done by simpley disagreeing on that. Just want to voice the other side is all.

--->Paul

Not unethical. repackaging for the market is common business practice.

For example, the big rolls of hay are okay for farms but maybe the horse breeders or other livestock people need bales for easier handling. Easier to toss bales off the back of the truck.

A friend of mine has little tiny bales (4 lbs) of different kinds of hay for rabbit breeders.

Her prices are around $6 per 4 lb bale which is a lower price than the pet stores charge for smaller bags of hay.

It's a fair deal.

Have a good day!

Dang, $6 bucks for a 4lb bale. That sure puts it in perspective, dont it.

Sure is here is a ad from my area.

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Yep, should have qualified that statement with this: Weights were guesstimated.

U wont find $5 bales here of even straw

Here either.
Even crappy old CRP is more than that...

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~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

I'm pretty new here on HT, so please excuse me for saying this. It would be helpful to me to get the full benefit of reading these posts if it were posted as to where "here" is, roughly. Other websites like this I read have moderators who contact the members and ask them to please fill out the "location" info. Of course, some jokers like to put silly answers for the question, so they don't really intend to comply with the request. I'm just asking . . . . . Thanks.

This has been done up here on occasion and when people start complaining about gouging, I think they fail to consider all angles.

The actual amount one makes rebaling hay isn't just cost per round bale and value of square bales. One has to consider initial outlay (which is usually a full load not just a couple hundred dollar investment), transport costs, time spent rebaling (everybody's time is worth something), associated waste and potentially transport costs associated with delivering to a customer or an auction facility. Ultimately, with associated costs, I've never heard of anyone getting rich rebaling hay.

OLD JOE. IF youll look to the uper right of a posting, mine for instance, youll see the location most people are in. Mine says, OR I see it usta say NE Okla

No, yours says nothing about location. Most of us have Join Date, Location, Posts.

You just have Join Date and Posts...

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~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

After thinking about it a while, there is nothing unethical about it, since regular businesses buy in bulk and repackage all the time. Whether it makes economic sense is another matter entirely, as several have pointed out on this thread.

I'm glad we grow our own and also glad our neighbor will cut and bale it for 17.00 a round bale.

Straight up wheat straw here goes for $7.50. I have seen some on Craigslist for $6.

A guy about an hour and a half away was listing meadow grass hay in the barn from last year for 3 bucks. I was wanting to go look at it, but never made it.

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" Do or do not, there is no try. " - Yoda

BobbyB, over here in Bryan, I am seeing young oat hay going for $9 a square bale, young wheat hay for $8, and coastal, bermuda, and bahia going from anywhere between $5-$7 a square, depending upon quality.

Round bales: Last year's hay for about $25, this year's, $45 for Tifton/crabgrass mix, and as for everything else, $50 for cow quality and $65 for horse quality. Alfalfa, of course, is $160 a round, but that is to be expected for something that has to be trucked in from the far North.

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Peace,
Caliann

"First, Show me in the Bible where it says you can save someone's soul by annoying the hell out of them." -- Chuck

Young wheat or oat hay is one thing. I was talking about pure straw baled behind the combine. If I could find some last years hay for $25, Id buy several rolls for the garden.

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" Do or do not, there is no try. " - Yoda

Producing any product, hay or whatever has expenses that are not the same for each producer. That Christian farmer may have had very low expenses for some reason unknown to others and thus his lower price may have allowed him to sell at less and still make a fare profit. I don't think he is a fool and giving away his product. On the other hand a farmer one mile down the road from him may have had huge expenses that we can't know about and may have lost money even trying to sell well above market price.

I've been in business for many years and cost of production can be influenced by many things that most people would never think of. Identical products made in different shops can cost very different and each shop may be making the same profit. The same could be said for hay.

What makes me mad is when customers expect to purchase the product for less than my cost and accuse me of being over priced. If I sell it to them to keep them happy then I have to gouge them on the price of another product in order for me to eat. They seem happy enough with that as long as they think they got a good deal on the other.

The fact is I just can't give stuff away because people who don't understand the cost of production think it's fair. The same would go for producing hay.

What you say is true, fatrat. ~smiles~

I just know the producers around here. During the drought, one guy sold year old Alicia for $120 a round bale. The *same stuff* he had for sale the previous year for $35 a bale. His fresh Alicia he sold for $160 per round bale. I know his fields, and I know that have been irrigated for over a decade from his wells. I know his cost of production didn't go up, and I know he didn't truck it in, but his prices sure skyrocketed!

I also know he attends the First Baptist Church right down the road from me, considers himself a pious Christian, and is *constantly* going on about the sins of others, and that if you fail to lecture a gay that he or she is going to Hell for his or her sins, you will be standing there with them, burning.

Hmmm, a bit of hypocrisy there?

Some folks DID have a jump in the cost of production. The hay dealers had to truck their stuff in from out of state, and that made their prices high. Some people had to install expensive irrigation systems, and that, of course, increased their prices, as they had to pay for the new equipment. People that only had one cutting when in previous years they got three cuttings had to increase their prices as well.

But except for a few REAL Christians, the prices were uniform across the board. For most sellers, it didn't matter what their costs of production were, they charged as much as they could get for it... even though they knew that people were desperate and stock was suffering and *dying*.

(Three places over from me, I saw two cows literally drop dead from starvation. The owners were an older couple on SS. They asked the people at their church for hay. I even gave them a round bale once, although it made me have to stretch what I had left. They asked folks to TAKE the cows. I couldn't, but I know several people at that church who could have, or had the means to donate a bit of hay to those old people...or even offer to take them to the sale barn in their stock trailer. No one did.)

Prices *should* reflect the cost of production and honestly, in a drought situation like we had here in Texas, or that is currently going through the Midwest, the hay WILL be bought. Yeah, the cheaper hay will go first, but even if your costs of production were pretty high, and your hay reflects that, you aren't going to have any left in the barn at this time of year in those places, no matter if you had high production costs which were reflected in the price of your hay, or if you gouged the bejeebers out of your customers. So getting the product MOVED isn't a difficulty, no matter what.

But if you happen to be a Christian, you have to ask yourself how much Jesus approves of greed.

__________________
Peace,
Caliann

"First, Show me in the Bible where it says you can save someone's soul by annoying the hell out of them." -- Chuck

I repeat: Hay is a commodity. There is a market price that the individual seller is not creating. There are high years and low years and you hope you squirrel enough away during the high years to ride you through the low.
If you want to undersell the market, that's your prerogative, but I'm completely failing to see where it makes one a better Christian.

Yes, people should have helped that couple get their livestock to the salebarn. But that has nothing to do with the price of hay.
That's just a cost of owning livestock...

__________________
~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop