#1 Farming SCAM - You MUST Cut Hay

my friends and neighbors Chuck out at Sheraton Park Farms welcome back to the farm so today um we've had a delivery of some hay so we've got to get that in the barn but stick around I want to talk to you why I think that buying hay is probably a better option than making your own hay and why I think making your own hay is maybe a little bit of a scam hang on I'll tell you why we were going to the market yesterday the hay fairy came well not the actual pay Ferry but a guy that has some hay in a dump truck and we bought so we bought 50 rolls of hay this is 40. and we weren't here to help unload so I told him I said just put it out here in the pasture and then I'll move it because we got to do a little bit of straightening up cleaning up and getting the spot ready but this is uh 40 rolls of hay from local right here uh close to us looks like it's pretty good stuff main reason that we got this one of the main reasons that we got this this is from a farm that uses no uh chemical fertilizers herbicides pesticides no that can stuff it's it's earned sprayed hay it looks pretty good 4x4 rolls we would like to head four by five but uh this is going to work out just fine we're going to get some more later in the year but this will get us started on a good stock to put back for winter and we get questions all the time why don't you make your own hay well hang around the end I'll go over why we don't we'll talk a little bit about the economics of why we don't primarily um and a couple other reasons so but for now let's work on getting uh let's work on getting the stuff in the barn get it stacked up [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you all right before all of you haystacking Jenga Masters decide you want to jump in here is it the most efficient use of space nope does it look nice not even close but it's 40 rolls of hay in the barn in the dry that'll help us get through the winter so 10 more rolls to go we got the guy that's supposed to bring some other delivery probably one day later this week got some rain coming in so we'll probably wait till we've got a dry day 10 more rolls coming that'll give us 50. Good Start we'll probably end up buying some more later on the season so we've got plenty to get us through the winter 50 rolls of hay in the barn in the dry to get us through the winter and any um adverse event that we may run into drought we're not growing grass whatever the case may be this is an insurance policy we've got hay in the barn we can feed animals so I know the title of this probably irritated some people might have might have took some people off but let me explain uh my theory on making hay and why I think it's a scam for me maybe not for you 50 rolls of hay in the barn here locally Western North Carolina hay this year is running about 40 dollars a roll and we're talking rolled hay we're not talking square bales about forty dollars a roll now if you get it delivered you're probably going to pay a little bit more we did have this delivered but I'm going to use forty dollars as our Baseline cost on a single roll of hay so forty dollars a roll keep that in mind now we don't have any hay making equipment here on our farm I've got the tractor we've got a new Holland which would be perfect to make hay with but that's all I've got so I got to thinking what would it cost us to start making hey what would that involve how much would it cost time fuel the whole deal so here's what I came up with started doing a cursory look today on Facebook Marketplace Craigslist some other local Buy Sell Groups first off you're going to have to buy a mower now I was looking at disk mowers wasn't looking at sickle bar mowers they can be a little bit finicky and they can be a little difficult to use if conditions aren't wrapped so I'm looking at disk mowers they're all over the place mower is going to cost you between 800 and 8 000 dollars so let's just take the average cost there forty four hundred dollars to buy you a mower going to have a rake to rake it into windrows so you can come along and bail it rakes same thing anywhere between five hundred and seven thousand dollars now I'm looking at used equipment I'm not looking new this is all used equipment anywhere between five hundred seven thousand dollars for a rake average 37.50 and then you got to buy a Baler now that's going to be your most expensive piece of equipment that you're gonna have to buy Baylor anywhere between fifteen hundred and fifteen thousand dollars seven thousand dollars is going to be the average so you add all that up you're looking at fifteen thousand one hundred and fifty dollars for haymaking equipment let's just say that I'm a good negotiator and I can buy stuff a little bit cheaper let's use fourteen thousand dollars as our Baseline costs for haymaking equipment fourteen thousand dollars now one cutting of hay let's say it takes me two days to do a cutting of hay I think I'm being optimistic there and this is just me by myself no help 15 uh two days so 30 bucks an hour because I work cheap 30 bucks an hour 16 hours would be 480 dollars in labor just on cutting hay and mowing it baling it putting in the barn fuel we're gonna have to spend some money on fuel let's say the tractor's got a 10 gallon tank on it we run two tanks through I bought it at three dollars a gallon for ease of figure so we're gonna run sixty dollars of fuel Worth to track sixty dollars worth of fuel through the tractor to cut Bale and move the hay into the barn so equipment costs labor and fuel first cutting of hay it's going to cost me fourteen thousand five hundred and forty dollars now if we take that forty dollar a roll purchase price into consideration I could buy 364 rolls of hay for the same amount of money it would cost me to cut bail buy the equipment spend the labor spend the fuel to get that same amount of hay gonna I could buy 364 rolls now there's a couple of compounding factors that that really are going to push that number the other way and make it even more expensive first off I don't have the land to do it on the way we rotationally graze and move animals around here I don't have the acreage to set aside to cut Bale and put that hay up because we're all we always have animals running across just about all the Farms so it would be difficult to stop grazing on an area to let it grow to cut and put hay up so we don't have the land to do it well I'm not going to go buy land just to cut hay off of that would be heck now the cost goes way through the roof there are folks around here in this area that will let you come and cut their fields but they want half of the hay they want half the hay crop off of it so let's just say that somebody lets us come in and cut a field we get 100 rolls of hay off of it I'm only going to get 50 of those I'm only only going to get half of it so to make this number even work now I'm going to have to cut twice as much hay to get that 364 rolls I'm going to have to cut over 700 rolls of hay just to get 364 out of it so it becomes even more expensive now a couple other things time I just don't have the time to do it we've got a lot going on here we're feeding animals we're moving animals I still have an off-farm job you have to time your timing has to be just right for hay because of weather and rain and watching that kind of thing we just don't have the time to dedicate to doing it so time becomes a major factor I don't have a trailer to haul the hay I don't have a trailer to haul the equipment I've got that dump trailer I can haul four rolls on it at a time and roll on the truck and I don't I don't have a trailer to haul the equipment to another Farm to cut the hay so I'm not even counting a trailer but we don't have a trailer to go get the hay or take the equipment to it repairs and maintenance 100 rolls of hay will last me a year and a half so we can get by you know about 75 rolls a year I think we fed you know maybe 50 days this year 60 days so 364 rolls of hay would last me four or five years well I'm gonna have to cut 700 rolls well over the course of 700 rolls because I'm splitting it with the landowner there's going to be repairs and maintenance that's going to have to be done to that equipment things are going to break tires are going to get busted you're going to have to buy more twine fill in the blank on what potentially could go wrong you're going to catch a limb and breaks I don't know what all could go wrong with this stuff but you're going to have to have some money set aside for repairs and maintenance so now your cost is going even higher and then finally if you're if you're leasing or borrowing or splitting the hay crop with another landowner they're going to want you to help with fertilizer weed control and that kind of thing so there's going to be an additional cost additional labor additional time so for us buying hay equipment and cutting our own hay just does not make any sense now for you it may and this is all contextual please don't say nobody should be cutting hay we're glad we're tickled to death for the folks that do this we're glad to help them pay for their equipment by buying hay from them paying for their land costs whatever the case may be but for us in our context it just doesn't make sense we talk about Pete you know Pete likes to cut hay make hay he's got the equipment he's got the land perfect it makes sense in his context my friend Evan over at Country View Acres Evan is a super handy guy he can fix anything so he can buy cheaper equipment maybe that needs more repairs I can't fix I can't fix a thing um so he may be able to buy that equipment cheaper and it may make more sense for him to buy the equipment and cut the hay on his farm so it's all in context but um you don't have to be cutting hay and making hay to be a farmer um and for us to go buy the equipment to make hay just to claim that we cut hay and make hay and put hay up is a little bit of a scam and it just doesn't make sense for us so don't expect to see any hay cutting videos or bailing hay videos or anything on this uh on this YouTube channel anytime in the near future but like we always say please keep sending prayers may God bless you and your families and we'll see on the next video thanks

Channel: Sheraton Park Farms

Views: 181,002

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Id: UO2tYfWzYbI

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2023