RFD Livestock Report 10-13-26 Mike Hamilton Madison Co.-Hay Market

It's been a wild year for the hay market.

Lot of cuttings in the Midwest, quality running a little shorter, and then, of course, you have the drought out West.

It's pretty dry in the West.

We witnessed it ourselves.

We was on a vacation out West, and it's extremely dry.

As far as local here, yeah, there was a lot of hay made.

Every hay producer I know had trouble making good hay because it was so humid and seemed like we were getting rain every few days.

It was hard to get it dry.

But there is a lot of hay in Madison, Jersey, and all the surrounding counties.

How does that add up for your hay season? Typically, you guys look to start weekend sales in December?

Yeah, we start the first Saturday in December, and we run every Saturday through the end of March.

Your typical customer, Mike, has that changed a bit? Do you still kind of serve the, a wide array of livestock producers, beef cattle, dairy cattle, horses?

Yeah, and actually, we've picked up a few llama producers, growers.

So yeah, we've, we serve everybody big and small.

Uh, we picked up a few feed yards in Southern Iowa.

That's been a help.

It keeps us going through the summer on private treaty.

Yeah, we still serve a lot of our, uh, harsh customers that started with us 31 years ago.

The only thing is they're my age, and they've went from small squares to the three-by-threes so they don't have to handle them.

Mm-hmm.

So it works out good.

What do you expect, given all of those variables we mentioned earlier, what kind of pricing season, uh, are you gearing up for? What do you think?

Well, the good hay, like it has been the last couple years, is gonna be high.

It already is.

The good alfalfa and the, especially the good grass mix that was put up right, very hard to find, and, uh, there's gonna d- be just a lot of that grinding type hay that was either overmature or got rained on, didn't get put up right.

It's been a wild year for the hay market.

Lot of cuttings in the Midwest, quality running a little shorter, and then, of course, you have the drought out West.

It's pretty dry in the West.

We witnessed it ourselves.

We was on a vacation out West, and it's extremely dry.

As far as local here, yeah, there was a lot of hay made.

Every hay producer I know had trouble making good hay because it was so humid and seemed like we were getting rain every few days.

It was hard to get it dry.

But there is a lot of hay in Madison, Jersey, and all the surrounding counties.

How does that add up for your hay season? Typically, you guys look to start weekend sales in December?

Yeah, we start the first Saturday in December, and we run every Saturday through the end of March.

Your typical customer, Mike, has that changed a bit? Do you still kind of serve the, a wide array of livestock producers, beef cattle, dairy cattle, horses?

Yeah, and actually, we've picked up a few llama producers, growers.

So yeah, we've, we serve everybody big and small.

Uh, we picked up a few feed yards in Southern Iowa.

That's been a help.

It keeps us going through the summer on private treaty.

Yeah, we still serve a lot of our, uh, harsh customers that started with us 31 years ago.

The only thing is they're my age, and they've went from small squares to the three-by-threes so they don't have to handle them.

Mm-hmm.

So it works out good.

What do you expect, given all of those variables we mentioned earlier, what kind of pricing season, uh, are you gearing up for? What do you think?

Well, the good hay, like it has been the last couple years, is gonna be high.

It already is.

The good alfalfa and the, especially the good grass mix that was put up right, very hard to find, and, uh, there's gonna d- be just a lot of that grinding type hay that was either overmature or got rained on, didn't get put up right.