Diversifying into high quality hay production

[Bbmoorlands]

Does anyone have any experience producing high quality small bale hay/haylage for the equine market? I am looking to diversify my business and I was wondering if anyone had any good sources of information regarding, what varieties of grass to grow, what equipment they use and optimising crop nutrition.

Cheers,
B

 

[BDBed]

@Clever Dic

 

[Clever Dic]

Do not get too hung up on nutrition the most important thing to warrant the expense of doing the job properly is knowing your market..do you have a way in to the people who will pay decent money to make it all worthwhile .
Selling it without that and you get commodity prices.

 

[manhill]

Does anyone have any experience producing high quality small bale hay/haylage for the equine market? I am looking to diversify my business and I was wondering if anyone had any good sources of information regarding, what varieties of grass to grow, what equipment they use and optimising crop nutrition.

Cheers,
B

Learn to negotiate the weather with the gods.

 

[davidroberts30]

Learn to negotiate the weather with the gods.

and the price with every horse woman in your county

 

[Dry Rot]

There are big differences in the choice of grass to grow. The Thoroughbred and breeding market will want high quality/high nutrition where as the happy hacker/pony owner wants less nutrition as ponies tend to get too fat anyway.

 

[Still Farming]

Crystal ball to grow ,harvest and sell.
Stars align and you have cracked it possibly!

 

[Bbmoorlands]

Ah, okay cool, so not too worried about nutrition, no need for selenium or sodium etc. And any fungicides applied during growth or not? When do you try and harvest, just pre-flower? Do people grow Timothy grass or just plain Italian rye/perennial rye

 

[manhill]

Might be a good idea to have two of everything, tractor, baler,mower etc. contractor may not be available when you need him, it can be a very short window in our climate.

 

[powerontheland]

Location will have a big bearing on your market

 

[Bbmoorlands]

I am down in the South-east (Sussex), it may well be being over done down here already.

 

[Pan mixer]

Quite often this can be a race to the bottom in price, I admire @Clever Dic for what he gets up to but I don't want to have that kind of investment even here in the dry East.

Horses are simple to feed, it is the owners who are tricky - getting the money out of them can be tough too.