At 18:43:20 on 16.07.10, JessAndGrenville123 wrote:
I agree fernley lol david said the hay and straw grew great this year as the conditions have been really good, just the right amount of rain and sun :)

At 20:18:24 on 16.07.10, Biche wrote:
Hay round our area will be £5 for a small bale by xmas, take off the field is £4. My friend cut theres and got it in ,but says there is only half as much as it reckons to be. Cant win really if its too wet it ruins the hay,and too dry it doesnt grow enough. If we have a bad winter i think there will be alot of people selling there horses. It rained on st swithins day so not too good for 40days.

At 22:45:36 on 16.07.10, Angelalain wrote:
It seems to have rained in the west and central areas, but in East Anglia we had a very dry spring, with lots of late frosts which slowed the grass down. Since then we've had hot and dry, and very little rain at all even when everyone else has had some. we are feeding as much hay now as we were in the winter, we've not had any amount of grass growth this year, our summer fields look like the sahara and at present we are on the winter bald paddocks in the hope the grass on the summeer ones will make a bit of an effort. Goodness only knows what the hay around here will be like, we certainly haven't had ideal conditions in the East!

At 22:46:17 on 16.07.10, NMH wrote:
We've had the driest first 6 months of year pretty much ever. 1st cut silage was very small in quantity; dairy & sheep & beef farmers are really worried cos that's their best cut by a mile. Nothing later can replace a good 1st cut. Now when we should be well on the way to a 2nd cut it's had a long no-grow spell, thanks to the drought, & will be backward for the 2nd cut. Meanwhile, you must have seen it, beef cattle/sheep/heifers on very scanty dry grass, some farmers have even had to use precious forage reserves to keep them growing. All of this will have a knock on effect on hay prices next winter-there will be shortages & high prices!!!!

At 00:50:08 on 17.07.10, Rahara wrote:
I have to say we are well pleased with the haylage we got in and hope to get hay on the next cut, we had a very long dry period after the cold winter, and we really thought the grass would never grow, only down side is we had to spread fertilizer for the hay, this is the first time ever we've done this after a couple of year's of no crop. I have some pic's on this site of our field's when we lost all our hay...

At 09:54:51 on 02.08.10, Flicka wrote:
Here's another article from this weekends papers about the shortage of hay-is it as bad as they say or just providing sellers with a good reasons to put their prices up?
http://tinyurl.com/2vf98ho

At 19:01:41 on 02.08.10, chrissie wrote:
local farmers round my area are only getting one cut of hay instead of two, have ordered big bale haylage for mine its gone up to £29 per bale was £27 so not to bad but there will be a shortage of that as well.

At 15:03:35 on 05.08.10, JessAndGrenville123 wrote:
Our haylage and straw has a fixed price on a help yourself to as much as you want based on the height of you horse. Grenville is in the largest group and it costs £25 a month fir straw and £27.50 a month for the haylege and it all seems pretty good quality.

At 12:27:50 on 07.08.10, Angelalain wrote:
Fixed price at the moment! If the general price of hay goes up I can't see that yours will stay ay the 'fixed price'. Supply and demand, if someone offers to take the lot away at twice the price you are paying, is the yard owner going to turn it down? Possibly, but not without getting more money out of you in order to keep your hay supply!

At 03:09:51 on 08.08.10, Polkadotpolly wrote:
We do our own hay and I am soooo glad that we do cos the cost of hay is shocking here this winter, because we had such a drought over a huge part of the country last summer hay is in high demand and people are asking just rediculous prices for it just because they know folks out there are desperate.Personally, I think it sucks that these kind of people pray on desperate times to extort such rediculous prices whe times are sooooo tough. We still have to pay out for contractors but it is still a lot cheaper than having to go out and buy it...