Web Site Uploads Drive Hay Sales For Indiana Grower
In the highly competitive horse-hay marketplace, quickly getting messages about your product to potential customers can give you a leg up. Hay grower Kenneth Klabunde’s marketing tools of choice: a smartphone and a Web site – Indianahayonline.com.
Auction Hay Prices Ignite In Upper Midwest
Prices have been moving sharply upward at Upper Midwestern hay auctions in recent weeks, reflective of fears that hay will become scarce as drought spreads. What’s more, price runups may just be getting under way, say auction managers.
Business Is Brisk For Hay-Hotline Sites
With drought crimping hay production in many parts of the country’s midsection, the race to line up supplies for the feeding season ahead has begun in earnest. One indication of how intense the search for hay is likely to become: heavier-than-normal traffic on Internet hay directories and hay hotline sites maintained by state ag departments and university Extension offices.
Hay Thefts Increase In Southwest
The growing number of hay thefts in the Southwest may slow as prices look to soften in the year ahead. At least that’s the hope of forage-industry folks in that region.
Carryover Hay To Soften Prices
The expectation that U.S. hay prices will fall off in the year ahead was bolstered by the higher-than-anticipated carryover hay-stock numbers in last week’s USDA Crop Production report. But don’t lay any wagers on how much the decline will be, advises Matt Diersen, ag economist at South Dakota State University.
Hay Prices Likely High But Not Higher
All-hay and alfalfa prices are likely to soften a tad this year from record-setting levels. But they’ll stay plenty high by historical standards, according to hay market watchers like Matt Diersen, ag economist with South Dakota State University Extension.
Why The Chinese Want Our Hay
Demand for U.S. alfalfa hay in China is likely to remain strong for some time to come. So says a representative of a company hired to help that country’s dairy industry become efficient.
“There is definitely a need for high-quality alfalfa and other feeds in China. Chinese producers are very happy with the quality of U.S. hay,” says James Su Hao, co-founder and general manager of East Rock Ltd. The company comprises six dairy-related businesses in the U.S. and Canada that want a part in developing Chinese dairies.
A Burning Market For Rained-On Hay
Most hay growers have felt the frustration of seeing rainy weather render a high-quality crop virtually useless as animal feed. But Peter Bragdon, Vassalboro, ME, thinks he might have a marketable use for such low-quality material: making “hay logs” that can burn in wood stoves, furnaces or even campfires.
This Town Has A Hay Day
To unwind after a long, often-hectic, winter auction season – that’s always the goal of organizers of the long-standing, annual Hay Day celebration in Rock Valley, IA.
Midwest Alfalfa Seed Sales Show Strength
After a slide in 2011, alfalfa plantings could be trending upward in parts of the Midwest, according to reports on spring sales from three major seed companies.
Dairy Woes Restrain California Alfalfa Prices, For Now
Slumping fortunes in the state dairy industry will likely put downward pressure on California alfalfa prices early in the 2012 growing season, says Norman Beach, vice president of San Joaquin Valley Hay Growers Association in Tracy. As the season progresses, though, he looks for supply to tighten and prices to improve.
Southeastern Hay Prices To Remain Strong
Look for grass hay prices in the southeastern U.S. to stay on the high side in the months ahead – barring any major weather turnarounds, says Curt Lacy, ag economist with University of Georgia Extension. “Right now I don’t really see anything coming along that’s going to cause hay prices to come down very much, if at all,” he says.
