# Baleage vrs dry hay



## BCFENCE (Jul 26, 2008)

Hows the market for baleage, can you wrap and ship pretty easy without any problems, how about the price , is the price more or less than dry hay, i know its alot of questions but with all the rain i think another window would be nice.
THOMAS


----------



## Rodney R (Jun 11, 2008)

Here in PA, I don't know how the guys do it. We lost enough money after 2 years that we stopped. The problems that we encountered - too much water to haul - a lot of weight, but not enough actual product that we could charge for. Rodents - we had a lot of trouble with animals poking holes in the bales. Once the bale was wrapped, that was it - I don't think they should really be moved, for fear of breaking the 'seal' on them. And the market got real weak, since a lot of guys were baling garbage hay and putting it in the bale. Nobody wanted to offer much for them, and we didn't sell enough to have any customer base.

Rodney


----------



## rank (Apr 15, 2009)

We've never done any, but from what I can tell by looking at the for sale ads and talking to our customers that use it, on a dry matter basis, it sells for about the same as dry hay + the cost of the wrap. Problem is, as Rodney says, you are shipping water and shipping water doesn't pay.


----------



## Jake_NEIA (Dec 19, 2008)

Thomas...

We fed/bought baleage for several years. It's only fair to sell it on a Dry Matter Basis. It's going to be very hard to sell it unless you have a local buyer...(I think). As it just doesn't pay for buyer or seller to transport water. Handling it is another issue, I absolutley despise individually wrapped bales. If I were to do baleage I would go with a tubeline wrapper...which won't work very good to sell it unless you tube it at the buyers farm.

Could you just use the baleage for your own cows and not worry about selling it? You could still sell the dry hay.

Good luck...
Jake


----------



## ecofarmer (May 29, 2009)

I do have someone that has us green bail and we deliver them with in an half an hour of it falling out of our bailer. We wraps them as he unloads them off our trucks. He pays a set amount for the hay up front at a set price. If the dry matter is over a set amount then he has to pay extra. It's a pain in the butt for our book keeping but it's the only fair way.

Once a bail is wrapped you need to put it where your going to store it. I have been told that every time it's moved you need to put 2 more layers on it.


----------

