Hay Quality, Not Quantity for Equine Market

Commercial hay grower and broker Kelly Lohr puts forage quality well before quantity on his farm in the Allegheny Mountain region near Friedens, Pennsylvania.

“I don’t push to fully maximize yield on any of my acreage. I’m a little bit different that way,” says Kelly, who supplies small bales to the equine market across much of the Eastern Seaboard. “Producing high-quality hay that’s dry is my priority and it can be difficult in this area, given its high elevation and humidity.”

Kelly is satisfied if he can harvest 1,000 tons of hay, enough for 40,000-45,000 bales, from 350 acres of owned and rented land annually. “Last year was excellent for drying hay, but I didn’t hit the 40,000-bale mark and that’s fine with me. I’ll always take a dry year over a wet one.”

He says he runs out of the hay he produces every year, so he buys from local growers to meet his customers’ needs. “It is rewarding because I’m helping local growers, but sometimes it’s a little bit harder to represent and sell a crop I didn’t produce. Fortunately, I’ve built good relationships with them over the years and there’s just a lot of trust involved.”

Producing a premium product
Lohr’s farm sits at a 2,200-foot elevation in the south-central part of the state, about 40 miles north of the Maryland border. He grows stands of pure alfalfa, mixtures of alfalfa and grasses, pure grass and grass mixtures on land his dad, David, used to own and farm with Kelly for many years.

“The mixtures I grow have changed a lot over the years in response to the equine market’s particular tastes, and they do change,” Kelly explains. “When I started, much of the industry considered orchard grass to be a weed, so there was very little demand for it, but that has certainly turned around. Now if I can harvest a second or third cutting of pure orchard grass, it demands a premium price.”

Kelly staggers harvests so the acreage he gets into first is early maturing orchard grass, alfalfa or a combination of both. As the season progresses, he moves into more varieties, including pure timothy, mixtures of timothy-brome grass and timothy-orchard grass and later maturing orchard grass. Those forages make very nice products to market, he says.

He prefers to take his first alfalfa cutting in late May but notes it can be difficult to make hay for all his customers then. “This hay should only be fed to performance horses because it’s very high in relative feed value (RFV) or energy and lower in fiber.”

While Kelly markets his hay to some customers who have competition horses, the majority own pleasure and/or mature horses that do better on hay that’s lower in RFV and higher in fiber. But no matter what type of horse they own, customers prioritize hay that’s dry and free of dust, mold and insects.

“It’s my job to calculate the optimal time to harvest in order to balance high efficiency with my equipment and labor, while making high-quality products,” Kelly says. To help him do that, he runs top-quality equipment, monitors the weather and mows his forages carefully and relies on his family and quality employees: Reece McCall, a full-timer who handles most deliveries, and two part-timers, Luke Reedy and Caleb Miller. His wife, Kelly, and grown daughters, Kady and Abby, help when their schedules allow for it.

Big equipment
Kelly says he used to have a “rainbow” of farm machinery and that a piece or two of New Holland equipment was commonplace on the farm. However, an incident during the previous decade motivated him to change that. One of his tractors caught fire and burned in a shed during winter.

Afterward, although the tractor was totaled, his insurance company needed two repair estimates from two equipment dealers. “I called several for help, but the local New Holland dealer was the first to assist, even though I didn’t buy that tractor from him. That kind of responsive service really goes a long way with me.

“By working with a lot of great people over the years, my family and I’ve been blessed. Our front-line equipment is now comprised of efficient, late-model New Holland machines that help us quickly dry and harvest forages. We’ve had less downtime than we used to and when issues occur, they’re promptly handled.”

Their inventory of New Holland equipment includes three T6 Series tractors, a MegaCutter™ 512 disc mower-conditioner, Discbine® 310R center-pivot mower-conditioner, ProTed™ 3836 tedder, ProRotor™ 3223 38-ft. rake and a BC5070 small square baler.

Dual cutting
When it’s time to cut, Kelly mounts the MegaCutter to the front of his T6.155 tractor and hooks the Discbine disc mower-conditioner to the rear. The center-pivot design of the Discbine allows him to cut to the left or the right. With this trio of machines, he can cut and condition 18 acres per hour in favorable terrain and realize fuel savings because they’re mechanically versus hydraulically driven.

His MegaCutter has a cutting width of 11 feet and 6 inches and the Discbine provides a 10-foot, 4-inch cutting width. Both feature rubber chevron intermeshing rolls that crimp and crack stems with a scrubbing action, while gently handling the high-value leaves.

Kelly monitors the mown forage, wind speeds, humidity levels and cloud cover judiciously to determine the optimal time to ted, which fluffs and scatters the swaths. “It takes  a lot of attention,” he says. “If it’s tedded early in the day when there’s too much dew on the ground, it’s wasted effort, and if it’s tedded too late, the leaves shatter.”

Swaths are then raked into windrows and baled. Kelly or one of his crew pull the small square baler, which dispenses hay preservative if the moisture is 16% or higher. Although he doesn’t use it exclusively, Kelly favors New Holland’s CropSaver™ hay preservative.

“It’s a premium product that includes gentle buffering agents. It’s less acidic than others, so it’s easier on the equipment,” he says. Propionic acid, the active ingredient in CropSaver, stops the growth of mold and prevents heating, while citric acid helps maintain the hay’s green color while in storage. The non-corrosive buffered formula has a neutral pH, so it won’t harm baling equipment, the user or livestock.
 
A machine that packages the hay into 21-bale bundles is pulled behind the baler. The bundles are then picked up by  a tractor and moved to storage or loaded onto his 53-foot trailer, which can accommodate 32 bundles or 672 bales.

Under perfect conditions, hay can be cut one day and baled the next. When yields are heavy, the process can take three or four days, provided there are no rain delays.

While Kelly does all he can do to put up horse-quality hay, he ends up with some that’s rained-on or musty most years. That is marketed to local beef cattle owners who want to use small bales or to the landscape industry.