Sometimes I have neighbors or passersby ask to purchase a bale of hay. Now normally we do not sell hay because we feed all the hay we produce to our livestock. Admittedly, that is a convenient excuse. Honestly, I wouldn't know what to charge. We put a lot of effort into producing a quality hay crop. It's worth a lot to me, and I'd not want to ask that price. As I began the process this year of stewarding our hay ground, I have been astonished at the prices. We all know everything has increased in price, but I'm still not over the sticker shock. This made me think, that most folks don't know what goes into making a crop of high-quality forage. I barely even knew. So for the Summer annual crop of millet hay/baleage on the farm in the photo above, I want to document the accounting and bring you along through the process. I'll complete this analysis right here in a future post, as we'll need to know what the production was in order to calculate a per bale cost. Right now I can tell you this:
- Seed $66 / bag - Historically $45 / bag. That was with the seed dealer (a friend) giving me a significant discount. Total cost $1600
- Fuel- It costs over 200 to fill the planting tractor with diesel. We used all of it planting the seed. Several more trips will be required over this land before the harvest is complete.
- Planter- Since we do not own a no-till drill, we rent one from a local feed/seed store. $450 Amazingly the same price per acre as last year, thank the Lord.
- Fertilizer - Let me first say that we don't typically use fertilizer on our pastures where we can rotationally graze and the ground is fed with manure. On hayfields, however, we are removing a lot of organic material, we need to feed that ground well to have healthy forage. We do apply manure on hayfields, and in a perfect world we would have enough manure for that to be sufficient, but we do have to supplement hay fields with fertilizer. Fertilizer historically had cost $400-$450 per ton. This application of cost $919 per ton. for a total cost of $4135.50
- Labor 10 hours (much more to come)
I'll be the first to say that it's a little weird to be talking about money in a public forum like this. I will try to go through this admittedly weird process as tactfully as possible. It will be a good exercise for me to get a good handle on what this crop of forage costs. Ultimately I also hope it's valuable for you to get a glimpse of what goes into this production. Please feel free to point out any inconsistencies, or ask any questions you may have.
