Wisdom Needed! To hay or not to hay....

I have a small acreage farm and raise a few cattle.  40 acres total, 1 - 8 acre hay pasture, 5 - smaller pastures totaling about another perhaps 6 hayable acres, the rest is oak savanna (ok for grazing, but not much else).  Yes, It is a tad hilly.  I currently have someone "make hay" from the 1 - 8 acre pasture.  I get about 24 tons (single cutting) x $80/ton (2013 prices) for processing the hay.  Depending upon how many cows I am wintering over, I may purchase an additional 8 tons or so ($140/ton in 2013).

 

The other pastures are just too small for the hay maker to get into.  His equipment is too large and high production oriented for the smaller pastures.  The hay maker comes in with two 125 lb. balers with 150 HP 4X4 tractors, stack wagon and squeeze and can stack a max. 11 high into my barn.  He stacks right next to my hay bunk and makes it easy to feed-out. All of this works out really well for me as I only handle the bales when I feed it out vs. loading onto a  trailer, unloading and stacking and then feeding it out! 

 

 I should probably feel lucky that someone will do all of this on such small acerage.  My wife and I started out 20 years ago buying hay in the field and throwing bales into a pick-up, bought an 18 foot flatbed, started hiring a kid or two (not easy to coordinate fickle kids with our fickle spring weather!), bought an old hay elevator and really thought we had found nirvana!  We built the tall barn with 18 foot eaves and started buying our hay delivered, eventually re-worked the largest pasture and started having our hay made.

 

There are really only two downsides to my current plan:

 

1) My pasture drys out quick and I usually have to wait until the second weather opening to have the hay put up.  It usually means it is 1/2 dried up by the time it is baled.

2) There is more hay available to bale in the smaller pastures.

3) The hay maker is a little older than myself and I'm not sure how long he will be offering his services.

 

Would it be foolish to attempt to buy the equipment and do this myself?

 

I would need a big 4X4 tractor (to pull a bale stacker on my hills), mower, rake and at least a pull-behind bale stacker (I will not pick small bales out of the field it is too slow and too much effort for just the two of us we can rely on.  Additionally, I would be forced to use the 60 lb. bales as even the 80 lb bales are heavy for me now.).  Since I would only be able to stack one stacker height (say 7 bales), I would need to have additional storage for stacks.

 

My guess is that buying all I need used would be $40K - $50K, a lot of effort to get it all reliable, plus probably $1K/year in maintenance?  Over the long-run, I don't think I would be saving any $'s. Especially adding in more barn storage for the equipment and shorter stacks.

 

Moving to round bales seems problematic as feeding out into a hay bunk doesn't work, and I don't know that they could be stacked efficiently?.  It would save needing a bale wagon, but I would need a tub grinder and covered space to operate it?

 

I would appreciate your thoughts and advice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wisdom Needed! To hay or not to hay....