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Post by mikesloft1 on Aug 7, 2011 19:25:21 GMT
In this discussion I sense a real divide i.e. 1) we are farmers and we work hard for long hours for little return and 2) you are whinging horseowners who have had it too good for too long. Surely, the reason we are all on this site and the thing that binds us together is we are ALL horseowners in some way or the other. I see it from both sides and without a doubt the rise in costs for incidentals has to have a bearing on the cost of produce and profit that farmers make. Have you noticed how much it costs you to fill up your car with diesel today as apposed to 12 months ago. Have you noticed how much food has gone up in the supermarket in the past 12 months? In the case of farmers, they are having to buy in their incidentals at a higher price and sell their produce in order to live whereas the recreational horseowner is buying produce (hay) from the farmer in order to support a hobby. There lays the difference and perhaps it deserves a little more tolerance on both sides of the divide as we are all in it together, so to speak. )
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Post by chorro on Aug 7, 2011 19:59:23 GMT
I wouldn't want to be a farmer, too much like hard work. I run a kennels and get the same, price increase, too expensive etc from people who go on 4 holidays a year, I work to pay my bills like many other people. I know how expensive things have become, 3 years ago I could buy 1,500lts of kerosene for £350 it now costs £1,100. Everyone has it hard at the moment we should try supporting each other. There are always those who are going to try make a huge profit and take advantage of a situation, just like there are others who are going to charge a fair price for a fair product.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2011 20:09:49 GMT
I agree Chorro - my OH comes from a big farming family - he got out as soon as he could. It's very very hard work for very little gain with supermarkets squeezing any profits away from the farmer. My opinion has always been if I cannot afford to feed my horses good quality hay/haylege then I shouldn't own them. I expect to be paid well for my skills at work. If a farmer produces good quality hay then I expect to pay them fairly too - we all have to earn a living
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Post by armada on Aug 7, 2011 20:11:24 GMT
I went out hacking tonight with a neighbours wife, the whole family farm arable and dairy over about 5,000+ acres. For the first year in living memory, they cut hay, on a rye grass seed cut - my favourite choice for good hay. She is over the moon, as she can have hay instead of having to feed silage, and her husband has offered us some, dont know the price yet, as it has to be weighed (its in huge square bales), but she has been told if the folk from Holland, want the lot to export - at around £200 a ton, she's gonna have to source her own again, and she is family! Needs must when the devil drives, and although I've in the last week got 100 bales of new not best quality but adequate for our needs and 40 of last years to see us over until thats fit to use, I'll still take a ton off them in case we run short next summer.
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Post by Louise Dixon on Aug 7, 2011 20:14:02 GMT
Re subsidies - I don't think any farmer 'expects' to be subsidised at all, in fact I think the vast majority of farmers would absolutely love to be farming in an economy which meant subsidies were not necessary.
However, the situation is, farmers provide food for the nation. The prices which we can get for our produce (I am talking about providing food for human consumption here, be it wheat for flour, milk, vegetables, fruit or meat) are so low that without subsidies, no one would be farming as the financial losses would not be sustainable - in a couple of years all the farming businesses would be bankrupt. There would be a mjor food shortage, and the countryside we love would be changed beyound recognition as it would no longer be managed. So the government pay subsidies to enable food production to continue. The subsidy system is not perfect, and loopholes certainly allow some to claim in what seems like a very unfair way. A much better way would be no subsidies but fair prices for produce.
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Post by workingcob on Aug 7, 2011 21:53:40 GMT
1. Farmers run businesses not charities, and if supply/demand means prices of one crop go up, then only an utter idiot would say no. This year, for example, hay & straw prices will be high in some areas (but not all) but because (ironically) growing conditions for potatoes have been so good, the price will be dire (as low as £40/tonne in some cases, compared to £160/tonne in some years) and the growing costs for both those crops will be higher in line with higher fuel, fertiliser, labour and finance costs, to name but a few. 2. Yes, farmers get subsidies - they are a dual edged sword; they mean the government & Brussels have the mandate to interfere in every aspect of your business life. For example, when, what, where and how you grow your crops (or not, if the gov thinks it's better to put grade 1 food producing land down to grass margins - which, while I love and value wildlife greatly, I find increasingly difficult to square while people around the world don't have enough food) 3. Farmers do not exist to enable people's hobbies at the lowest cost. I wonder how many of the people who rant about greedy farmers and hay prices also buy overpriced brand name bagged feed which frankly lots of horses don't need, drive flash wagons with swizzy livings when a more ordinary one would do or think nothing of laying out thousands on tack, the latest jackets/hats/boots, trainers and entry fees chasing the HOYS dream each year. Yes, I know that isn't everyone, and that some horse owners (I'm one) do other jobs to fund their passion for horses and work to a tight budget. But frankly, in both cases, it is not a farmer's job to sell you hay as cheaply as possible so you can continue your hobby. Other than those businesses which make forage for the horse market as the main/sole enterprise, most farmers make hay/haylage as a sideline to everything else. Small bales are a pain in the butt to make, labour intensive and frankly hardly worth the bother - I know because I "enjoyed" shifting nearly 1,000 of the d**n things last month. If I didn't think they'd make decent money, I would think very seriously about bothering next year and just suggest to my OH that we made more silage, to sell to other farmers. You're right - lots of farmers are also horse people & thus we should work together. The sort of farmers who host hunt meets and provide acres of land for people to ride over, or come round and shift your muck heap for a fraction of what it would cost to have it removed by a waste disposal company (or even free in some cases), or come and top your paddocks or spin on a bit of "spare" fertiliser (£350/tonne) when they have a hour. Yes, there are greedy farmers, same as any walk of life, but as a farmer's daughter, now married to a farmer, who has spent my professional life working with, meeting & writing about farmers in one form or another, I think I can say with some authority that there are many, many farmers who are decent, hard working people who deserve better than to be slagged off for making a living Cross now
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Post by honeypot on Aug 7, 2011 22:09:34 GMT
I think hay was due for a price increase but there are some out there who are taking the p***. What I can not see is why people will spend a fortune on branded feeds from feed companies who spend a fortune on packaging and advertiseing but can not bare to give someone who has worked a 12 hour day cutting,turning,baling and then stacking a crop that is so fickel as hay a decent price.
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Post by bizzylizzie on Aug 8, 2011 6:38:44 GMT
GREED Have seen straw on the net for £68 a large bale I am paying £15 and fetching them in by the trailer load!! I have just paided £30 for my haylage and that is cheep around me! They already wand £55 to £60 a bale Its going to be a hard winter for me with 21 big one's to feed 10 years ago straw in the swath was £8/acre and this week it has been reported in the farming press that it is going for £300/acre!!! This is as partly due to the shortage and partly due to the cost of fertiliser required to replace the nutrients taken by baling straw rather than returning it to the soil. Jinja - it is not that we do not grow food anymore, but a growing global population is putting pressure on the land area available to production. I think many people misconceive what a FARMER is, farmers are people who produce food, meat, milk, grain, fruit, veg. They are not always the LANDOWNER. I think the perception of a rich farmer is actually the landowner in many instances. I was a Farm Secretary until recently and some of my customers took part in the Cambridge Agricultural costings survey. The results show those farms making a profit were those with cottages that they could rent out. Tenant farmers do not have cottages to rent out and subsidise their 'farming' income.
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Post by amumwithapony on Aug 8, 2011 7:46:22 GMT
What an interesting debate.
Our hayledge has just gone up again, by £5 for a big reel. Its not a great deal, but its the 2nd increase in 3 months. We are now worrying about the winter and were very upset with the news.
However, our farmer, that we have had for the last 3 years and who we trust, has told us that last year where he got 160 reels, this year he got 80, so his profits have halved, if not more when you factor in the cost of the fuel and wrap etc, so we should really have expectef the price to double. But it didn't because at £35 a reel he is obviously still making a profit.
The only reason we are feeding hayledge now, as opposed to grass is simples. We have no grass. We have rested and looked after our grazing (about 13 acres), moved the ponies out of the big field 6 weeks ago (when normally we would still be strip grazing it) in the hope that it would grow again. It hasn't. Its as bare as could be and looks as though they have been on it all year. There is about 8 acres in the field and has been grazed for about 2 months by 7 sec a's. So if our grass hasn't grown then the farmers fields around us won't have grown either, so therefore the prices will go up.
I wouldn't be a farmer for all the tea in china, unless I had a mahosive farm with tenants on.
UK supermarkets control the prices they are given, whilst I think its something like 60% of our food is imported, when according to countryfile a few months ago (think it was countryfile?) the UK could be 90% self sufficient. Which I think would be a lot better for all concerned as demand would go up, supply would go and eventually we would pay a fair price for the food we put on our tables, and as an upshot farmers would make more money on food production, and things like hay and forage would hopefully come down a little in price.
I don't understand how if we can be so self sufficient as a country we import so much and send so much money abroad? All this money that leaves our country doesn't come back in as we export very little in comparison to what we import. So all we are doing is sending money away from our economy and supporting different economies.
Worthy I'm sure BUT the state of the UK's economy should dictate that we buy british whenever possible. But how many of us do that? I know if the british equivilant is only a few pence more I will, but of its a lot more expensive for the same product, then unfortunatley budgets sometimes dictate that we will be eating foreign foods.
And with the population set to grow this will only become a bigger issue as time moves on.
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Post by Louise Dixon on Aug 8, 2011 7:59:03 GMT
I think another part of the problem re food self sufficiency is what we have got used to. In the past people expected to only have seasonal goods, but we now want what we want year round. I know I am guilty of this too, I take it very badly if I can't get raspberries for my porridge! It would take quite a big shift in thinking to go back to eating only seasonal produce.
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Post by bowditchblobs on Aug 8, 2011 11:21:30 GMT
The three farmers i use for my hay and straw are very good, very helpful, i pay £3.50 for small baled hay, heavy bales thats delivered and stacked, i pay £1 for straw delivered and stacked, £25 for a large round of hay. They have all got two to three cuts of hay off this year. I do agree that some people take the p, iv seen hay at £8 per bale at feed merchants bet their getting it in at £3 to £4!!! The average hay in peterborough is £4 per bale which is fine when you think of the costs involved.
At the end of the day if feed merchants and farmers price the average horse owner out they will be forced to get rid of their equines then were would the farmers etc be? Melton market is full to the brim with unwanted horses/ponies every month now, they go for a pitance and it is only going to get worse. The whole worlds slipping in to a financial melt down, when interest rates go up thousands will lose their homes, these are bad bad times...............
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Post by viking on Aug 8, 2011 11:32:44 GMT
Quote furball....At the end of the day if feed merchants and farmers price the average horse owner out they will be forced to get rid of their equines then were would the farmers etc be?
Growing potatoes, barley, peas, rape, soft fruit, etc. etc. etc.
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kates
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Post by kates on Aug 8, 2011 11:44:24 GMT
i think i'm lucky. i only use straw when i have a show to stable the night before, a lovely girl down the road sells something and i get what i need... my boys don't need a great deal but i do like haylege, and i'm fussy, horses aren't i am, where i get my feed sell the field baled onces for £6.50 a bale, to be honest i'm happy to pay that as i know the horses like it, i like it, they will always have it and if i ring up there will reserve me a load.
Everyone needs to make money don't they! we all have to help each other. I chose to have horses, I shop around when I can, and save money elsewhere... My horses deserve the best and if it costs a little more....then so be it...
farmers do work hard, my field owner runs a roadside nursery, growing all their own crops, there where gonna have some of their land cut for hay but sadly its full of nasties so they can't...they appologised to me because they where going to sell it to me for cost?!?! Told them not to be so silly they have to make money as do we all...
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Post by bigmama on Aug 8, 2011 11:55:19 GMT
we all make choices in this life and if anyone cannot afford to keep lots of horses then cut down to just as a few or dont have em at all ...... we used to keep half a dozen ponies but now we just have two as we know we can keep those two in luxury
like us all, farmers have to make a crust and the risks and costs of making hay are astonomical
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Post by sometime on Aug 8, 2011 12:38:40 GMT
Biggest drawback to huge leaps in prices for hay and haylage for the less well off horse owner is that they are stuck. There isnt a market to cut the number of equines they keep and there isnt extra money in the pot to pay extra for feed and forage. I can see that isnt the farmers problem and I fully support those getting the profits they need for their wages I can however see lots of very hungry and starving horses hitting the headlines in winter and beyond. We all like to do what we can by cutting our own consumption down to make sure our animals get what they need but sometimes there is no more to cut. Selling them or even gifting them is often not possible and as a result everyone including the animals suffer. What the ansswer is I am not sure I suppose shooting them is the kindest way forward in a lot of cases but then again where do you find the money for that
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Post by hs on Aug 8, 2011 12:40:48 GMT
It is good that farmers are making a profit on hay as if they did not then we would be in trouble as they would look at diversifying into another crop and only making enough hay to feed their own animals.
I doubt that the price of hay will ever go down unless we have a year when there is so much hay made that storage becomes an issue.
I wonder if the price of hay will change the way people think about keeping their horses will more people be looking for grass livery and opting for good doer type natives or cobs who do not need much extra feeding?
I am on grass livery and we have had a bumper year for grass more grass than needed for our good doers who are all looking rotund :-( as the summer grazing which is usually a diet field is full of grass due to the tropical conditions. I reckon if we don't have snow this winter we will not need to hay in the fields, we only had to do it for two weeks last year.
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Post by sometime on Aug 8, 2011 12:45:38 GMT
I agree hs we keep ours out full time and only use about 4 bales of hay per year when it is snowy. We have standing forage which we have left as ours are too fat and we will let them graze that over winter and allow them to drop loads of weight over winter. They may not be show fat early on but I am sure it is healthier for them anyway. It is very flippant to say if you cant afford the hay sell them as neither option is necessarily possible
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Post by workingcob on Aug 8, 2011 13:06:24 GMT
Must admit, this subject has touched a nerve with me! We sell some hay and haylage, and because I also have horses I'm ultra fussy about how it is made and the quality of the grass going into the preserved forages. It's not just about the volume of grass - ironically, we have loads at the moment - but getting enough decent weather to cut, wilt and bale it in time. Hay needs to be down for several days, with the cut grass turned daily, to ensure it wilts and dries sufficiently (if not, this is how you get green hay and all sorts of problems!) - since the weather broke, we have simply not had stretches of dry, hot hay making weather. When we do, we will be running round like blue ar*ed flies combining several hundred acres of wheat and grass will be the last thing on our minds.
One of our farming friends (also horsey) sells a few hundred bales of surplus haylage each year. He has no problem loading it into trailers for those who come to collect, or delivering a trailer load and unloading it for other people, for no extra cost. He is also the sort of person who takes his cattle wagon to rescue his horse customers when stuck a local show after their (flash) wagon breaks down. When he told one of his customers that, after totting up costs this year (fert, fuel etc all higher) and taking into account the lower yields, he had to put his haylage up from £25 to £32 a bale to make it pay, this customer told him he was 'a robbing b*stard' to his face.
That rude person was lucky - my friend's response was to leave and quietly decide only to make enough haylage next year for family and friends, and make the rest into silage for cattle. My OH would have knocked his block off
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Post by sageandonion on Aug 8, 2011 13:49:33 GMT
In my area it is not true farmers making hay, rather 'haymen' doing deals with everyone with a spare bit of grassland to cut it for hay. There are a number of fields and patches of land which have been bought up speculatively for possible housing development in the future.
These fields aren't maintained properly or fertilised unless money can be made by having human effluent put over them (apparently they actually pay you to do this). Hay here is mainly overgrown grass, not a crop. Alternatively, these haymen buy from farmers and then oik up the cost and sell on to us horsey people.
So for me, the price of hay here has absolutely nothing to do with proper farmers and I think some haymen here are been very greedy and they are going to come acropper. Hay can be bought for £5 a small bale but there are others charging £7 which is what 2010 hay ended up at when it started to become short.
I can't afford to be loyal to my hayman charging £7 when equally good quality is available at £5 and frankly he isn't being loyal to me so I am buying from a new source as are a number of others. In the south east most horseowners are a livery, with little storage and cannot get a local farmer (there aren't any) to pop round on the tractor with a big bale.
News on the grapewine is grass growing well now and great potential for a bumper second crop.
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kates
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Post by kates on Aug 8, 2011 13:57:19 GMT
i have a question....commons...we have a common near us and everyone walks their dogs on it, well...thats been cut and bailed for hay...small bales not the big fat round ones...so how does that work financially? as can't be great quality with doggy doo and tinkle all over it? but when i went to ask said man cutting it how much it was a bail was told £6.50....so carried on using haylage...does anyone know?
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Post by hs on Aug 8, 2011 14:10:45 GMT
I do think for some people if they are struggling to afford hay then there might some cheaper ways of keeping their horses you can save a lot by having them out if they are hardy enough not just on hay but bedding - shavings seem to have gone up loads, I recently had to buy some for the first time in ages and was shocked they were £9 a bale, it did not seem that long ago that they were £6 a bale - someone is making some money there!
The demand for grazing fields also might increase as more people want to rent fields rather than be on yards.
I agree with S&O I can get the huge round bales for free from a family friend who is still in farming, one of those would last me a year but I am on livery and I only have space for 3 small bales in my storage area - we all buy from the YO who buys from a farmers. We pay £5 a bale.
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Post by sageandonion on Aug 8, 2011 14:25:29 GMT
i have a question....commons...we have a common near us and everyone walks their dogs on it, well...thats been cut and bailed for hay...small bales not the big fat round ones...so how does that work financially? as can't be great quality with doggy doo and tinkle all over it? but when i went to ask said man cutting it how much it was a bail was told £6.50....so carried on using haylage...does anyone know? kates I am pretty sure that is against the law, you ought to get in touch with the Council and ask to speak to the Common Warden. Common land belongs to us all and that includes the grass and weeds on it and it should not be cultivated or profited by an individual. We all pay for it and its upkeep (the Warden and the maintenance) through our council taxes.
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Post by littlebriars on Aug 8, 2011 14:29:17 GMT
Price for net wrap £120 - 145 per roll, plastic wrap £50 - 67 per roll, hay twine £15 - 17 per pack, hesson twine £27 - 29 per pack..... plus price of diesel.
Does not take long to rack up a big bill for baling hay / haylage and straw, i should know work for a agricultural dealership and some of our customers are spending 10's of thousands on net wrap and plastic.......
We are a present baling a field of rape straw, which we have got FOC (we did supply the farmer with a full years supply of horse muck for his land :-) ), this is very hard work as our tractor and baler are out of the Arc and we dont have a serviceable bale trailer.... but we will struggle on, coming home after a full days work, to start again hand balling bales - the joy of keeping ponies :-)
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Post by amumwithapony on Aug 8, 2011 14:44:52 GMT
Having htought about what I posted earlier one thing that I do object to, and where I do think farmers make a bit of cheeky profit is when prices go up mid winter, or in times of high demand.
The hay was cut months ago, and presumably the cost that they were selling for just after the cut (not accounting for 2nd and 3rd cuts) is the price they need to sell to make a profit.
So like for us, the price has gone up just after the hayledge has been cut. Say the price is £35 in Aug/Sep/Oct, which we accept as understand not as much has been cut this year as last and when you factor in things like wrap and fuel etc we allow for that.
Lets just say that November it goes up, and then goes up again in january. Presumably this happens as demand increases, as the supplies start to reduce and everyone knows you can't get another cut in November.
I think this is what upsets people and makes people think farmers are out to make a profit on the back of it being the middle of winter. We all dread to think of what would happen if we ran out of hay completely or couldn't find a supplier in the middle of winter and probably bite our lips and pay the increase, but I just can't justify the increase when the hay is already in and done with?
Also just to respond to the point made by hs, all our ponies live out and we just dont have the grass to feed them all. We have about 13-15 acres of grazing. On that we have 2 sec a mares and foals, 1 stallion, 2 geldings, 2 mares, 1 3 yr old filly and 2 yrling fillies. And ran out of grass about 6 weeks ago.
So whilst we would love to just say 'oh lets chuck them out to save money' they are all out, and all would have starved to death by now if we hadn't fed them hayledge. And we look after our grazing properly, poo pick and rotate. Daren't have anything fertilized as last time we did that we ended up with lami so unless it starts growing PDQ we are going to have another very expensive winter.
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Post by hs on Aug 8, 2011 15:11:55 GMT
I think the last couple of years have been made worse because of snow and people needing to feed more hay than than normal.
We would not have needed any if there was no snow for the grass liveries. The horses that came in at night on a different part of the yard stayed in as the yard was so slippery it was dangerous to take them down to the field so they consummed much more hay than normal. I think there was a supply shortage and people profited from this as people would pay whatever it took to try and secure some hay. Is this morally wrong?, possibly not very nice but that is business for you people don't make money by being nice do they, it seems like it is ruthless people that end up rich.
I guess it depends on where you are in the country too as we have 9 on 18 acres rotated and harrowed but not poo picked, plus sheep and we have more grass than we need at the moment.
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Post by amumwithapony on Aug 8, 2011 15:19:03 GMT
Send some my way love-we don't have a blade bigger than about an inch! Except on the muckhead! And though ours are welsh MOUNTAIN ponies, I doubt they would live on there happily!
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Post by hs on Aug 8, 2011 15:42:26 GMT
I wish we could do a swap - our natives are all too fat I think I would rather have too little than too much at moment as it seems easier to get the weight on, than get it off, it like the tropic where we are, sun and then rain, but might change my mind on that once the winter starts! Send some my way love-we don't have a blade bigger than about an inch! Except on the muckhead! And though ours are welsh MOUNTAIN ponies, I doubt they would live on there happily!
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Post by bizzylizzie on Aug 8, 2011 15:52:42 GMT
In this discussion I sense a real divide i.e. 1) we are farmers and we work hard for long hours for little return and 2) you are whinging horseowners who have had it too good for too long. Surely, the reason we are all on this site and the thing that binds us together is we are ALL horseowners in some way or the other. I see it from both sides and without a doubt the rise in costs for incidentals has to have a bearing on the cost of produce and profit that farmers make. Have you noticed how much it costs you to fill up your car with diesel today as apposed to 12 months ago. Have you noticed how much food has gone up in the supermarket in the past 12 months? In the case of farmers, they are having to buy in their incidentals at a higher price and sell their produce in order to live whereas the recreational horseowner is buying produce (hay) from the farmer in order to support a hobby. There lays the difference and perhaps it deserves a little more tolerance on both sides of the divide as we are all in it together, so to speak. ) I think part of the problem is that we (horsey people) look at hay prices at this time of year and compare to last year, but we do not monitor the cost of the inputs. Those sort of reports appear in farming press but the potential to hit our retail forage price does not filter through to the horsey press so it comes as a shock. Also the price of fuel, bread, meat etc has gone up a little every month so it is not so noticeable and a more gradual squeeze on the purse. I have just come home to a letter from my electricty provicer telling me that in Sept my electric is going up 11%. That was a shock! One 'price increase' we have overlooked of course is the increase in VAT which is charged on hay & haylage, 20% of the £5 bale goes to HMRC! The other indirect increase is the cost of finance, the bank have racked up the overdraft charges in the last year, and the finance interest rate on the new tractor was going to be so silly we financed it ourselves from our savings - no holiday for a while, not even a wet weekend in a caravan!!!!! I have cut back the number of ponies since 2007 when the recession problems started i had 10, i now have 3 and may go down to 2 for a while. I do think that there are some silly prices about. About a month ago i heard that someone paid £80 for a bale of haylage but it was delivered from quite far away on a lorry and unloaded with a forklift for that. The horse was fussy and would only eat this branded stuff, but i don't think that the person would do it regularly as it is not affordable. My husband was offered some grass and the lady messed him about, he offered her a fair price and she worked out that small bale haylage was £8 per bale and there are 12 to a large bale so he would get 12x 8= £96 for a 4ft round bale!!!! Bonkers or what? Strangely the field remains uncut!!!! £5 for a conventional bale of hay sounds bang on the nail to me as a lot of labour is involved in handling them. I think that people must come round to the idea of big bales and consider appropriate storage and access to their yards in future developments. We are charging £45 Inc VAT for large bales of haylage delivered in 35 bale loads. If people are not prepared to pay this then my husband says it's not worth him getting out of bed to make it as he works 80 hours a week and earns less than the minimum wage as it is! We are not affluent and i work full time plus help him and do his bookwork. I do not have horsey facilities no school or paddocks just allocated a corner of a field here and there, with temporary electric fencing, no auto water troughs, no stables just pens in the corner of the sheep shed, no concrete to bath ponies on and an ancient trailer for the odd show. If only we could make a great profit margin from Haylage...........
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Post by lucynlizzysmum on Aug 8, 2011 17:22:25 GMT
No VAT paid on hay/haylage/feedstraw/fodder! It is zero rated, like all feed (apart from an occasional can of dog food/cat food)!!
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Post by jackfrost on Aug 8, 2011 18:03:33 GMT
well done Hunter-talk about light the touch paper and run-silence in this case speaks volumes!
Working cob i applaud you in what you have said.
I still cannot put what i would really like to say as my blood pressure is still somewhat high after reading the op's original post.
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