It’s hay season in the Ozarks! 🌾

After the spring grass growth, farmers harvest hay and store it for winter feeding as hay bales. 

Farmers monitor the weather forecast and plan to put up hay during a stretch of dry & sunny days. If cut hay is rained on, the bales lose nutrition value. 

With the recent dry and sunny weather, area farmers hit the fields hard working long days to put up hay. 
 

Fast facts about Hay

🔹During the winter, each cow eats around 27 lbs of hay per day
🔹Large Hay bales can weigh between 800-2000 lbs, small bales can be as light as 40 lbs.
🔹Hay bales sell for between $30-75/ large bale. There’s no standard price for the product & many factors can affect hay price, including weather and type of grass in the bale
🔹At minimum, a farmer needs a tractor and at least 4 different types of attachments to make a hay bale, and that's not including a trailer if the bales need hauled to a storage location.
🔹A baler can only make 1 size & shape of bales.
🔹Buying all the attachments to make hay could cost over $100,000 if purchasing new, and that’s NOT including the tractor cost!

How is hay made? 

1️⃣ 🚜 Using a mower attachment, the grass is cut very short.
2️⃣ 🚜 A rake and/or Tedder attachment fluffs up the hay to encourage drying 
3️⃣ 🚜 The baler attachment is pulled over the winrow of grass, picks it up, forms it into a bale and finishes by tying strings or net wrap around the outside to hold it together
4️⃣ 🚜 Using a spear attachment, bales are gathered and loaded onto a flatbed trailer, hauled to the storage location & unloaded.

Conditions were perfect - weather wasn’t this year’s hay season challenge. 

It was the price of diesel. 💸
And the price of fertilizer 💸💸
And finding enough labor to help in the fields 💪🏼

Farming requires huge capital investments - in land, animals and machinery.

When regular input costs like fuel and fertilizer skyrocket on the farm, you’ll see the effect as higher prices in the grocery store. 

Us farmers are feeling the pinch of rising costs just like you. 

We’re all in this together.