Southwest Missouri Hay Auction

Although there was a dry window for this month's hay auction the area is very wet and has prevented nearly all production of any new crop hay so far. Several producers of Alfalfa and those looking to wrap things like rye are watching quality drop daily as there hasn't been any windows of weather long enough to get into fields. This month is basically a transition month as hay demand is generally low due to little feeding taking place as most everyone is turned to grass now, unless they have some cattle in a lot somewhere. Ample amounts of moisture provides support for the optimistic outlook most currently possess of a good growing year and plenty of new crop hay not far away. A good crowd on hand as the auction has built a reliable base of repeat customers as well as drawing several new faces each month. A much lighter supply of round bales this month with most being fair quality grasses that was mostly clean out type of hay and sold at what would have to be considered mostly steady based on quality and brought from $60-100 per ton once math was done. a few loads of Good quality grass or grass Alfalfa mix fell on either side of $150 per ton. Good to Premium quality Alfalfa, mostly in medium and large squares, once math was done sold in the $225-260 per ton range, and Premium to Supreme Alfalfa mostly of western origin figured up to $300 per ton. Small squares accounted for 1973 bales or 67% of the total offering. Demand for small squares was good to very good coming from mostly equine interest. The overall quality of the small square offering this month was outstanding with much of it being western origin Alfalfa that had a lot of miles worth of freight to get to the auction site. Once math was done the top sale was a lot of tested Supreme quality Alfalfa from South Dakota which figured out to be $618 per ton.