Alfalfa is pretty much hopeless this year. But hay? That’s another story.
As of last Tuesday, small square bales of bluestem hay were bringing $100 to $110 per ton in this part of the country while brome hay was fetching $90 to $120 a ton according to county extension agent Brian Rees. Both are well above their usual averages.
“If you’ve got it put up without it getting wet, I think the market’s going to be pretty good,” Rees said.
The key has been moisture — both this year’s and last year’s. Scorching conditions last summer thinned out the hay crop but not the demand, sending prices through the roof as cattle producers in Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado bought most of what eastern Kansas had.
Rainfall finally arrived in quantity this spring. Although that’s been great for getting the hay up, getting it dried out is something else. Usually hay has to sit for about two days to dry out to its ideal moisture, but it’s been hard to find two straight days without rain lately. And rain-damaged hay doesn’t look right, doesn’t have as much protein and just isn’t as good quality.
So while hay is doing well, supplies are only rebuilding slowly. But it’s definitely not a bad season.
“Brome hay and prairie hay are going to be a good crop,” said John Waechter of Waechter Hay & Grain. “Both are going to be above average.”
It helped, he said, that the hay only started coming up after the Easter freeze and the May flooding — the same things that murdered the alfalfa crop, which came out of dormancy a little too soon.
“That’s been a disaster this year,” he said.
Rees agreed.
“With the alfalfa, you get it up, get it started and then freeze the crap out of it,” he said, describing the conditions this year. “Some of it comes out and some of it doesn’t. Then it rains. Then you get some bugs in it. Then you get a different kind of bug in it.
“I know a lot of growers who destroyed their crop and put corn in so they could get some utilization of the nitrogen.”
Hay prices probably won’t reach the same levels they did last year, Waechter said. The demand is a little less and the overall quality of the crop is lower. But the real test of how hay will do this year, he and Rees agreed, will come later this summer when the hot, dry weather begins to set in.
“We know it’s coming,” Waechter said.