The dairy farmer who has supplied all of our hay to date produced mostly round bales this year. According to Martin the unpredictable weather combined with the unpredictable teenage labor force made square bales too dicey a proposition for him. Now that we're down to 15 bales in the garage I am sadly on the hunt for a new source of hay.
Talking on the phone is one of my least favorite activities, and talking to strangers on the phone is far beyond my comfort zone. Professional calls are OK because I know my shit (sorry mom), but hay purchasing seems to require many awkward conversations that leave me feeling like a noob. My dream is to find a local grower who (1) tests for non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) (2) delivers, and (3) is interested in having a long-term customer. This afternoon I spoke with a farmer down the street who has 2000 bales of first-cut orchard grass ready to sell. It was cloudy and mild before it was cut, and it got rained on in the field -- everything I want to hear. If the NSC tests come back under 12% he is willing to sell me 400 bales now, and to store 200 of those bales until the spring. Now all I have to do is phone around to organize the testing...
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Wow. I sympathize with you about the calling strangers and asking weird questions. I can't even imagine the long awkward silences I'd get if I called around here looking for low NSC hay. Our growers, AFAIK, are not educated about the subtleties of hay composition.
How do you get your hay tested? Mail it off to Dairy One like everybody in the US seems to, or do you have a local company that can analyze it?
I feel lucky to have been befriended by a lady who works at Unifeed, which tests most the dairy hay in these parts. They start with a near-infrared scan (NIR) and will move onto wet chemistry analysis via whatever lab will get the results fastest -- often Dairy One. I will know from today's NIR test whether the hay is worth considering...
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