Custom Haying (Done for Me)

I suppose I I have had it made the last few years, a farmer who provides winter feed for my sheep via taking winter feed for his dairy cows. That ended lat year though when he went out of business with the dairy farm. We then made an agreement where he would hay my first crop as winter feed for my sheep, take the second crop as grass silage as payment for haying, then I graze the 3rd crop to fatten up my sheep before going into winter.

Now he is back pedaling. After realizing how valuable hay is, he is thinking he would make more money by paying me hay stumpage and selling what bales he gets off it to his haying customers. The problem is, there is NO WAY I would ever do that. Every acre is so valuable to me as either pasture or winter feed for my sheep, and lamb is doing well right now price wise. I would make way more money then the $6 per acre hay stumpage would bring in.

I kind of suspected this would happen. People feel sorry for dairy farmers here and often let them farm fields for nothing, but he was banking on those same people letting him hay their fields for very little money (if at all) and sell the hay to make an income for himself. I still feel sorry for him as it is a struggle to be a farmer of any type, but its not like my own property taxes aren't high, and putting milk on the national food chain is different then just making hay for some womans horse. Sheep does bringin more money per acre then forest products, so I have been clearing forest land steadily and increasing my tillable land, but still have no interest in buying thousands of dollars worth of haying equipment. I cannot afford new equipment, and have no time should used equipment break down. (Even used balers go for $18,000 or so).

I was thinking I would just get someone to custom hay the fields then use what I needed to feed my sheep and sell the remaining bales for profit. I think it would be doable if I converted the corn fields back to grass fields.

Does anyone know what custom haying goes for on a per bale basis (5X5 round bale) or per acre basis?

I do not know what they are charging around here for custom baling, but I know to save any money over buying hay you need to have the equipment to cut, ted and rake the hay. If you have to have someone else mow, ted and windrow it before it is baled you might as well buy it.
So If you do not have the equipment to at least mow and rake the hay, you are going to have to make a deal with your neighbor to make your hay for a year of so until you get the equipment to do it,
Dan.

I would urge the OP to reread his own post, because I think it provides important guidance. The farmer wants a bigger piece of the action because the resources he is putting in - expensive equipment, fuel, maintenance and his own time - are very substantial relative to the cost/availability of vacant land. It shouldn't be a surprise that he would want either a substantial share of each cutting, or a per-bale payment (that would still be a discount relative to retail). When we had horses, we had a fair amount of land for growing hay, but it never made economic sense to buy the equipment. For a % or a payment we always got the hay we needed on terms we thought were fair, and kept us out of the equipment side.

Mike

There is a local CO-OP around here that it seems many farmers belong to or take advantage of. The equipment moves from farm to farm (not sure about operators)& it seems to work for them as it's been going on since before I moved here 8 years already. Don't know if it's unique to this area or how you would find out but it may be an option. My neighbors close to me all have their own but will share in a pinch, I've even run a round bailer for my one neighbor & it was pretty good (he said I could do as many fields as I wanted) even easy for a city guy, it even wrapped the plastic before I would drop them out. But just like a zero turn or most other things the novelty soon wears out.

OP does not state he had a written contract. And this is the true question (well, other than being pissed off).

There appears to be no meeting of the minds in respect to the product...cost etc.

OP could simply pay more or buy somewhere else.

If he thinks he actually had a contract he could sue for his loss ...

NoSmoke,you are only 18 yrs younger than me by birthdays,BUT your equipment expectations are WAY much younger than mine. You are using the typical new generation mindset of having to have the best & right now. In my farming lifetime,we went from baling 14" x18" bales,dropping them on the ground & then picking them up by hand & loading onto a flatbed wagon,to later on the same size bale with a bale thrower tossing them into rack wagons to then be unloaded into the barn. It was lots of hard work & not near as quick as the BIG round bales Or the BIG sq. bales. We never bought any new hay equipment either,yes we had breakdowns at unfortunate times . $18,000 We never spent that kind of money on 1 piece of equipment. If the farmer is making soooo much money from doing your hay then buy your own equipment,make your own hay & the big money. Please do not take offense if my typed out words are not perfectly socially acceptable,i mean no offense. If you were to talk face to face with me about this same issue you would not be offended by my words, but expressive talking is easier than typing the same expressiveness. By the way, the agreement you made with the farmer leaves him with less than the short end of the stick.

I am not offended at all...

We used to farm with square bales exactly as you mentioned, but that was back when we had a barn to put them in. That burned in 1994 so storage of square bales would be a problem today. (You don't have this issue with round bales). You could semi-skirt around the storage issue of square bales with tarps, but you still end up with the issue of feeding out that many square bales on a given day to the sheep. There is no way Katie could do that while I am at work building ships.

I have considered going to corn silage though. If I was going to buy tarps to cover enough square bales to feed my sheep all winter , I might as well buy plastic to cover the silage pile. I do have most of the equipment for raising the corn, and at 24 tons to the acre, it would not require as many acres to make up my winter feed, just harvesting it would be a problem. It would have to be hired out for sure though as those bad boys cost WAYYYYYY more then a $18,000 round baler. And if I could get Katie atop of the tractor, she could probably feed them everyday. I have used corn silage as winter feed in the past though and was not overly happy with the results. It did keep my grain bill down, but over all I think sheep do better on hay..or the very least; a corn/hay mixture.

The cheapest alternative might be to get a flail chopper and wagon for grass silage. The cost is negligible for those two pieces of equipment, but I have heard some people say the long cut of a flail chopper ensiles well enough, and I have heard others say that it does not. I don't know the answer on that one. The good thing about it though, if something breaks down...because you are harvesting it as you go, you don't have 30 acres down with rain coming in and a whole crop ruined. I like that aspect of it.

So no real easy answers for me.

Winter feed has a lot of value for feeding my sheep, and yet selling hay for him is lucrative. Without me he is out of some corn fields and grass silage ground, and without him, I have to find another way to get winter feed. I was hoping we could both work something out, but it does not seem like that will work. Time for plan b I suppose.

davidmcbeth3 wrote:OP does not state he had a written contract. And this is the true question (well, other than being pissed off).

There appears to be no meeting of the minds in respect to the product...cost etc.

OP could simply pay more or buy somewhere else.

If he thinks he actually had a contract he could sue for his loss ...

Whoa, whoa, whoa....suing is out of the question. I would never do that in the first place, and it is not as bad as it reads.

Last year he said he would put up first crop as hay for me, and take second crop as grass silage and as payment for haying. Last fall he said he did well and was alright with the situation. Just to be sure this Spring I asked him again if we were good to go, but before I told him I had cash in my back pocket to pay him for custom haying it, he said we would do the same thing. Only when he was planting the corn fields (totally unrelated to this issue) did he start back peddling...but this is also an expensive time for farmers (seed, fertilizer, fuel, etc) so even if it was unrelated, it was probably weighing on his mind.

BTW: This is agriculture so no contract is needed according to state law and this includes most States and Providences. If a farmer has previously farmed a tract of land and the landowner (new or old) decides they do not want them farming it, they can kick him off the land, BUT the farmer is entitled to compensation for any improvements (ditching, drainage, tiling, fertilizer, lime, etc) costs he put into that land because it no longer benefits them. No written contract is needed to enforce this.

In my case, a handshake agreement was made by my Grandfather in 1988 when he retired from farming potatoes to allow this farmers father to raise corn and grass silage. It was automatically extended to my father when he got the farm, and then now to me. The funny thing is, the originators are long since dead and yet we carry on.

No one is pissed off...just scratching our heads to try and figure out how to make two farms work by using the same piece of land.

Oh the decisions we face in life !! Check with the next closest farmer on what he would offer,then see if you can work out a plan with your current guy. A plan that will benefit both of you,a plan that will not break either of you,a plan that will make both of you rich !!!

No Smoke,
I do custom hay, and my own hay all summer and fall. The profits pay for, taxes, repair parts, fuel, twine, hired help, fertilizer, tires, new pieces of equipment.
Farming of any kind is a love of the land, growing crops and critters. And your freedom .
Not one day did I ever get big pockets of cash to keep for play money.
..........Just some thoughts from the other guys side of the field.

Dave

NoSmoke wrote:
Whoa, whoa, whoa....suing is out of the question. I would never do that in the first place, and it is not as bad as it reads.

Last year he said he would put up first crop as hay for me, and take second crop as grass silage and as payment for haying. Last fall he said he did well and was alright with the situation. Just to be sure this Spring I asked him again if we were good to go, but before I told him I had cash in my back pocket to pay him for custom haying it, he said we would do the same thing. Only when he was planting the corn fields (totally unrelated to this issue) did he start back peddling...but this is also an expensive time for farmers (seed, fertilizer, fuel, etc) so even if it was unrelated, it was probably weighing on his mind.

BTW: This is agriculture so no contract is needed according to state law and this includes most States and Providences. If a farmer has previously farmed a tract of land and the landowner (new or old) decides they do not want them farming it, they can kick him off the land, BUT the farmer is entitled to compensation for any improvements (ditching, drainage, tiling, fertilizer, lime, etc) costs he put into that land because it no longer benefits them. No written contract is needed to enforce this.

In my case, a handshake agreement was made by my Grandfather in 1988 when he retired from farming potatoes to allow this farmers father to raise corn and grass silage. It was automatically extended to my father when he got the farm, and then now to me. The funny thing is, the originators are long since dead and yet we carry on.

No one is pissed off...just scratching our heads to try and figure out how to make two farms work by using the same piece of land.

That's nice ! Figure it out ... solve the issue. Good luck.

We are having a good stretch of nice hot weather so everyone is getting their hay in.

Myself I am waiting for mine to be done anytime. The guy that puts it up go side-tracked this year when his baler broke, but has another and is getting it done elsewhere first. It means I get more bales per acre, but less protein and not as preferred by the sheep. That is not so good, but after discussing things with him a few weeks ago, he realized the situation we were both in. He dislikes haying 1st crop for me and taking 2nd crop as payment...preferring of course to just pay me hay stumpage and sell the bales at retail cost...but that will never happen. The sheep are too valuable for that, and he realizes that it is silly for me to pay for hay when I got excess amounts of it here.

There are a few things I can do to make it more agreeable terms for him, like maintaining my current flock and not growing it, as well as putting up some more sheep fence and splitting pastures that the sheep barely use. That will allow for more hay produced that he can sell since I really only care about having my sheep fed. And finally there is the plan that has been in place all along...put more woods into farmland. Considering how valuable farmland now is (in Maine tillable land is beating out house lots on a price/per acre basis), that makes the most sense.

All in good time I suppose.