Severely tight hay reserves will undoubtedly cause many to aggressively put up hay this spring. When the weather is right and hayfields are mowed, there will be many farmers looking over the fence at pastures as an opportunity to make more bales. While it is important to get hay reserves built back up on your farm, I would caution producers against baling pastures.
The Midwest is not home to many pasture-rich cattle producers. Thus, baling pastures will likely rob forage that could be consumed by cows during the grazing season. Cows harvesting pasture is much more efficient than a mechanical harvest. The last thing any farmer wants to do is bale grass in the spring to feed it in the summer.
Taking hay off of pastures is not free. For each ton of dry hay baled, approximately 40 pounds of nitrogen (N), 15 pounds of phosphorus (P2O5), and 50 pounds of potassium (K2O) are removed. Using January 2023 fertilizer costs, the nutrient removal of hay harvested per ton would be around $90 per dry ton. A round bale that weighs 1,200 pounds at 85% dry matter would remove slightly over $45 of N, P2O5, and K2O per bale.
While many farmers will bale their own hay and tend to not value the cost of the harvest process, it is important to consider. According to the last-updated figures provided by the University of Illinois’ farmdoc publication for cost of harvesting forages, a harvest process of mow-rake-bale would cost approximately $50 per acre. If you harvest 2.5 bales per acre, the harvest cost per bale would be $20 per bale.
Combining the cost of nutrient removal and harvesting costs yields a conservative cost of $65 per 1,200-pound bale. This cost could be higher depending on your equipment, fuel and local fertilizer prices. Other costs that should be considered would be the cost to move bales from the field to the storage site and costs due to storage loss and waste at time of feeding.
Now, with all that said, the numbers behind the cost of haying pastures can look as good or as bad as you want to interpret them to be. The good or the bad depends on what you are comparing it to.
Other costs to consider when baling pastures include poor regrowth due to low mowing heights or drought stress. Haying pastures can also remove plant diversity and leave soil unprotected. Overgrazing often occurs in pastures mowed for hay, which leads to a factorial response of the problems just listed.
While the urge to bale pastures will be as strong as ever this spring and summer, I would recommend looking at other options to build forage stores. I like cover crops, crop residues, better grazing management and purchasing hay during the growing season to increase forage reserves.
