Big hay in big sky country

Brandon Flynn checks his hay as it approaches baling moisture. Most of his alfalfa fields are raked in the morning and then baled at night.

From its headwaters, the Missouri River takes a circuitous route through Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. It then forms Nebraska’s eastern border before slicing through its namesake state from Kansas City to St. Louis, where it ultimately greets the Mississippi River. The Missouri constitutes the longest river in the U.S., and its longest single state trek occurs in Montana, where it originates just north of Interstate 90 near Three Forks.

Not far north of the river’s headwaters, southeast of Townsend, Mont., the Missouri is the primary source of water for sixth-generation farmer Brandon Flynn, who owns and operates Flynn Hay & Grain along with his wife, Vanessa, their four children (ages 10 to 17 years old), and his mother, Peggy, who still does all of the swathing and helps with other field operations when available. Flynn took over the operation in 2017 after his father, Joel, passed away.

Through the generations, the look of the Flynn’s farm operation has evolved and grown, but today’s version touts a hay focus and the addition of a recent partner, a young farmer named Jordan Shearer. The partnership with Shearer, who has a neighboring farm, involves the sharing of labor and equipment between the two business entities.

“We serve several different hay markets, so we try to keep our hay enterprise diversified as well,” Flynn explained. “We have stands of pure timothy, orchardgrass, and alfalfa, but we also have a lot of alfalfa-orchardgrass acres. This allows us to meet any customer’s needs.” In total, the operation makes about 1,700 acres of hay each year. Most of those acres are irrigated with pivots. The farm raises an almost equal number of acres of cereal grains and operates 1,600 acres of dryland ground.

Located between two mountain ranges, the farm’s valley location only averages about 10 to 13 inches of precipitation per year, most of which comes during the winter. Flynn’s irrigation water is mostly derived from the Missouri River and is controlled through an irrigation district. “We generally never have water availability problems,” Flynn noted.

All of Flynn’s fields are soil sampled on grids and fertilized accordingly. He typically applies phosphorus and potassium to alfalfa both before (March or April) and after first cutting. Grass fields receive a nitrogen application. “I’ve become more interested in soil health the past several years,” Flynn said. “This has led me to do more experimenting with biologicals, and I think, in some cases, we’ve seen some positive results.”

Most of Flynn’s small square bale production is targeted for the equine market in Kentucky. That market has proved to be stable for both hay volume and price.

Interseeds orchardgrass

The Montana haymaker uses Roundup Ready alfalfa when seeding a new field. Like the pure orchardgrass fields, alfalfa is typically harvested three times per year. Timothy only yields one or two good cuttings. “We start looking for a cutting window around June 1, but that didn’t happen in 2023,” Flynn lamented. “Our first cutting was closer to July 1 because of an unusually wet June.”

Alfalfa fields are harvested for four or five years, then they are interseeded with orchardgrass in the spring. “This allows us to get another three to four years from those stands and supplies us with some alfalfa-grass hay,” Flynn said. “Once the field is terminated, we’ll usually leave it out of alfalfa for three years, using wheat or sometimes potatoes as a rotation crop.”

Fields are cut with a Case IH 16-foot disc mower that gets traded every two to three years. “That’s one piece of equipment that we like to keep fresh,” Flynn noted. The farm runs three Vermeer basket rakes and one Twin Star basket rake. A Krone tedder is used on grass fields.

“For alfalfa, whatever is raked during the morning is usually baled that night, generally between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., depending on the time of year,” Flynn said. “Grass fields get baled during the day.”

The farm runs six in-line Massey Ferguson small square balers, three 3x3 balers, three 3x4 balers, and one 4x4 baler, which is typically only used on outside rounds where there has been grass or weed encroachment. “We moved from 4x4 bales to 3x4s a few years ago because we can get more tonnage on the trucks for shipping out of state,” Flynn explained.

For the big square bales, Flynn hires a custom service using Stinger units to pick up and move bales from the field to storage. Small square bales are stacked and moved with three New Holland bale wagons belonging to the farm.

“Lately, hay storage has been a bit of challenge,” Flynn explained. “We lost five big hay sheds that we leased but were recently sold by the owner. We currently have three other open-sided hay sheds of our own that we use and are temporarily storing hay in our machine shed. Once those facilities get full, we’ll have to tarp the remaining production, although it won’t all get a full wrap.”

Diverse markets

Most of Flynn’s 120-pound small square bales and 3x3 bales get shipped to Kentucky’s equine market. The farm’s 3x4 bales are targeted for the beef market as feeder hay in Montana and other Western states. As is the case with many hay producers, Flynn and Shearer also co-own a 120-cow beef herd, and that’s where most of their lower quality 4x4 production gets fed.

Flynn said they truck hay themselves that stays in Montana. Out-of-state shipments, which comprise most of their production, are trucked by a third party. “Our Kentucky horse market has been pretty stable both in terms of volume and price,” Flynn noted. “Horse customers rarely request a forage test. They just want green,” he chuckled.

In contrast, Flynn does test his alfalfa hay that is targeted to dairies in Washington state. “They usually take an early first cutting or our third cutting, which is often our highest quality hay,” he said.

As all hay producers are aware, the hay market was significantly down in 2023 compared to 2022. “It wouldn’t be so bad if our input costs had dropped accordingly, but they didn’t,” Flynn bemoaned. “I guess that’s just part of being a hay producer. Markets are going to fluctuate, and you have to adjust. Even though we’re pretty far north, our challenges aren’t much different than everybody else’s. We all struggle with weather, labor, and high input costs. I’d say we have fewer insect pest problems than those farther south,” he added.

As for the future, Flynn hopes the farm’s viability will continue with the same kind of metaphorical length characterized by the neighboring Missouri River, and that one or more of his children will show an interest in the business. Already, his 17-year-old son has proven to be a big help on the operation and is leaning toward a farming career. It sounds like another generational farming headwater has been formed.

This article appeared in the July XL 2024 issue of Hay & Forage Grower on pages 6-8.

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