# How Do You Find Your Hay?



## iridehorses (Oct 22, 2007)

Welcome to the forum.

I'm afraid that the way I do it will not help you much, basically I grow it.

When I first moved here ~9 years ago, this was before Craigslist and other sites, I knocked on doors of farms in my area that had horses. They were very helpful and gave me lists of their suppliers. Many even offered me a few bails to hold me over until I got my own supply (I made sure I had a supply going before I moved my horses down).


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## maura (Nov 21, 2009)

I asked around, and spoke to various horse people and farmers. Looked at a lot of bales. 

Found a terrific guy quite close that puts up good quality hay, and understands the preferences of horse owners. 

I call him in the summer, let him know how much I think I'll need for the winter, and pay a deposit. He delivers it to me straight out of the field. This is cheaper and more convenient _ he doesn't have to store it and it gets handled less. 

I called him this winter, well in advance of when I was out, let him know that I was running through hay at an astronomical rate, and asked him to reserve me more to be delivered when the weather broke. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is I prefer to have a relationship with the farmer, and to be know as a good customer. Just makes everything easier.


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## Vidaloco (Sep 14, 2007)

Originally I shopped the classifieds. I use straw for chickens and dog bedding and usually find it easily on Craigslist. 
For our hay, I have a sort of lease deal on a pasture of one of my farmer neighbors. I buy whatever comes off the field. That way I can dictate what size its baled in. I have a small tractor and it is less than a mile away so I pick it up myself. 
There is another fellow who is a hay supplier on the national level. He stores his less than a mile from me so we have a lot of hay within a short distance. 
He lists his on several sites including Hay For Sale - Internet Hay Exchange

I like keeping an eye on the fields as it is growing and watch when its cut, how long it lays and if it gets rained on. We pick up our bales as soon as its baled and put it up on pallets (large round bales). There is less rot on the bottoms that way.


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## BigGreyHorse (Sep 28, 2009)

I think we've done it all over the years. We've grown our own, purchased from newspaper ads, feed stores, internet listings, and word of mouth. For a while everyone we bought from had something horrible happen--heart surgery, cancer, house fire, and even death. I thought about changing our name during all that in case word spread we were "bringers of bad luck". We have had a lot of bad experiences with both large hay producers (canceling small sales in favor of truckload sales), feed store sales (rampant overcharging during hay shortages) and small hobby growers (poor baling technique and lack of field care). We've also had a lot of good experiences. Luckily, this year we found a wonderful farmer and have an abundant hay supply and we are so grateful for him. Not feeling the "where is my hay coming from" stress is a wonderful thing.


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## FGRanch (Feb 9, 2008)

I found my hay guy from a horse neighbor. I've used the same guy since moving to my new area and he's fantasitc. 

I would NEVER buy the hay without seeing it, you just never know. Because of thes shortage of hay this year I was looking around and called a guy that said he had "good horse hay" it was so full of mold. 

I have a small amount of horses (5) so we just buy all of what we need at one time usually, but don't necessarily haul it all home at the same time. He load it, haul it and unload it.


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## HorseOfCourse (Jul 20, 2009)

We just started growing and baling our own this year 

It was quite the...experience


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## snoggle (Jun 13, 2009)

Word of mouth (how most things are done here)

We get a round bale about once a week and haul it home on a small flat trailer. 

We've got to get some square bales soon from another guy so we can stock up the hayloft just in case we can't make the weekly trip. Again, we found the square bale guy by word of mouth.


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## My Beau (Jan 2, 2009)

Ours is a combination from word of mouth and craigslist. You have to ask a lot of questions when buying off of craiglist, make sure it was grown for horses, no rain, etc., etc., etc. Word of mouth is a little more lax to me because it's often my friends who already purchased and are happy with the hay who tell me about it.

They did bale the field across the street from our house this past fall and for that one we walked over and asked the guy if it was all sold. He said no, we said "great! we'll take 100" and picked them out of the field ourselves


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## Scoutrider (Jun 4, 2009)

HorseOfCourse said:


> We just started growing and baling our own this year
> 
> It was quite the...experience


Ha ha! That it is... I've helped with putting up my family's square bales since I was 9-10 years old (we bale light, it's just me, Dad, and my sister that do the hay... Mom's usually at work when we do it). We've got a few more cows now, so we bale at home what we need for the 2 horses plus whatever else we can get for the cows, and then buy roundbales (usually... this year we're buying square bales, too. No one has it to sell in our area, really, and what is for sale is _ex-pen-sive_). We've found suppliers just about every way imaginable; word of mouth, classifieds, bulletin-board ads... I think buying hay at auction is the only way we _haven't_ bought it.


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## Crimsonhorse01 (Sep 8, 2009)

Hay prices around here are ridicules. I know for some of you its cheap, but in NW wy I could get a ton of nice alfalfa grass for $60 small squares. Now since I am in the Booming Gillette area its about 120 a ton sm sq (cheapest) to $70 a Lrg Bale. Last year I paid 85? a large bale. 
I usually head across border to SD for a trailer load at $70 a ton. I think its worth the 2 hour drive to and from.


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## Alwaysbehind (Jul 10, 2009)

We did our own this year. Best thing ever.

But prior it was a combination of word of mouth and ads and simply noticing farmers.

When I first brought the horses home it was easy. A long time friend of my husband sold hay so we simply purchased from him. The next year he decided to not do hay. 

Some came from a craigslist ad. The rest came from the farmer who baled the field on our street. We simply walked up to his workers while they were out there bailing and asked if they would have any for sale, agreed on a price, etc.

How much you buy at once totally depends on how much you can store.


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

I went through this recently since we moved to a new area. Like the others, I knocked on the doors of my nearest horse owning neighbors, and got probably a dozen phone numbers from the lot of them. Then I stated making calls to find someone who tests their hay for content from a certified lab, and that came down to only one, who hadn't done it, but was willing to. He sent me the analysis results, I looked at his hay and was happy with it, and since his fields are just a little way from my house he brought it straight to me off the fields with no delivery charge, so bonus! We stacked 700 bales because I wasn't sure how much my 4 horses would go through and I wanted to make sure I had enough to get through winter - however I have a lot of loft storage in my barn. I have a standing order for next year with the same hay guy - and that's what I've always done in the past. When you find your supplier you stick with them, and in return they can always be counted on to help out in emergencies


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## Walkamile (Dec 29, 2008)

Hey Rosebud, welcome to the HF.

I buy mine from my cousin (organic dairy farmer) and have always had great hay.

A girlfriend buys hers from Canada. They deliver and stack for her at a reasonable price.

Just a thought, but maybe if there are any horse clubs near you , you could ask them where they purchase their hay, and sometimes a tack shop is a great resourse for this type of info.

Good luck to you!


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## snoggle (Jun 13, 2009)

Crimsonhorse01 said:


> Hay prices around here are ridicules. I know for some of you its cheap, but in NW wy I could get a ton of nice alfalfa grass for $60 small squares. Now since I am in the Booming Gillette area its about 120 a ton sm sq (cheapest) to $70 a Lrg Bale. Last year I paid 85? a large bale.
> I usually head across border to SD for a trailer load at $70 a ton. I think its worth the 2 hour drive to and from.


Those prices would kill me! :shock: I don't think we could afford to have horses at those prices. We pay $25/round bale (we pick it up) and, depending on the time of year, $2 - $3 for a square bale, usually 50 cents more per bale if it is delivered. 

Those are the prices for "horse quality" hay. We buy lower quality hay for $15/round bale to use as bedding, because you can't really buy straw around here. We get it from our regular hay supplier, it's not moldly or anything, just not as good a cutting. Our horses leave the lower quality hay alone because they prefer the good stuff, but at least this way if they eat a little bit of bedding, it isn't a big deal. We can get sawdust to use as bedding (I prefer that to the hay) for free, but we have to pay someone to haul it for us, so it isn't worth it for now. We need to get a bigger truck!


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## sandy2u1 (May 7, 2008)

I agree with those that said the best way is word of mouth. That way you don't have to go looking at all those lousy bales first. I'd ask the vet, farrier or the local tack store owner. They will know who has the best hay at the best prices. We use a different supplier for our rounds and our squares. The guy who brings our rounds bales has great round bales but really loose squares, so we gotta use 2.


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## spence (Nov 8, 2009)

it's almost funny how we get ours. we live on a place that's actually owned by my family, however none of us farm it (wife and i do, just got to wait on the old fella to retire...). and he's supplying us our hay this winter, and as long as there is enough of it, probably will as long as we live down here. he hauls it in for his calves from his house (less than 10 mile drive), and we pay him $35/round. it's not TOP quality, but it's not bad stuff. our three guys go through a bale every 7 to 9 days.

we've got a couple dozen squares up in the hay barn. most of it we picked up free, it was actually cut for horses but the guy wasn't happy with it for some reason. friend just said to pick up as much as you can/want. the rest is leftovers that we bought from the school/ranch/kid's camp that we worked at for our trip back from up north. that crap ran us 4.25/bale. probably 60 lbs on average. i'm not feeding them any time soon, they'll stick around to feed when we go anywhere overnight.


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## gypsygirl (Oct 15, 2009)

where i board we grow our own hay. which is awesome. i usually help out & its a ton of work bc we grow so much, but its really good quality & the BO lets us use as much hay as we want. he also sells straight alfalfa to outside people because we would never even come close to using it all. if there is a bad bale we just burn it out front & its not a big deal.

when the BO sells it its for about $1.50-$2 per bale


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## Rowzy (Mar 1, 2010)

I first bought my hay from the feed store but that got to be really expensive. At one point orchard grass was 20 dollars a bale for 100 lbs bales.
Now I go to craigslist and find people. I try to stick with the same person but it can be hard to find them again (I tend to loose the contant info). The most I've ordered at a time is 5 tons, but I only have 2 horses.
I only use square bales, and I try to find them under 100lbs because its just me that has to haul them around sometimes. Round bales aren't as common as horse hay around here, I think it has to do with the fact that it rains so much that they hay doesnt stay good long enough or something.


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## Rowzy (Mar 1, 2010)

snoggle said:


> We pay $25/round bale (we pick it up) and, depending on the time of year, $2 - $3 for a square bale, usually 50 cents more per bale if it is delivered.


Just saw this... Hay around here can run for 250+ ton, 300 delivered. I was paying 350 a ton at one point when gas prices were the highest. What I got last summer was cheap for 160 a ton, but it was also lower quality hay and he delivered for free. It was local, western washington hay which is lower quality hay and can be hard to find in horse quality. Eastern washington hay is the more expensive stuff but its the best quality we can get around here.


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## jiblethead (Dec 14, 2009)

There is a farm in town that always has nice hay. Stored inside, never wet. It's $30 for a 1,000 lb. round bale. Love that place


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## rum4 (Feb 28, 2010)

I had my horses at a stable, made a friends with the hay guy and then moved my horses to my farm and kept getting the hay from the same guy as the barn I moved from used.


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## whiskeynoo (Mar 17, 2010)

my dad grows and bales it and when he does its always hard work. he also sells it too, but its usually in the winter time, our hay shed looking pretty empty the now like


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## my2geldings (Feb 18, 2008)

Local adds in the newspaper. I found a great supplier through word of mouth, a new guy who was just starting. Really honest and great prices. Search your newspapers.


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