First Hay Cutting

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

According to the most recent weekly hay report for Washington and Oregon most producers are busy harvesting the new crop. Chad Denny, who farms outside of Spokane, says he just finished putting his grass hay in the barn yesterday.

DENNY: I have just our grass hay done at this point, right now the alfalfa is down. The grass hay is over in Idaho and we were able to get on it early and get it in.

Denny, who also grows wheat and chickpeas, says that the weather for the most part has been cooperating.

DENNY: We're a little on the dry side, but we've been fortunate here at Fairfield we got an inch of rain last week, so we're sitting fine, but we could always use another rain at this point. I haven't seen a lot of crop stress by any means, we're doing fine that way, but I would say we're below average at this point. We just didn't get the winter moisture to recharge that profile completely and the moisture we did get came during a frost and so it just ran off and it just didn't soak in. We had fall moisture and then we've had moisture this spring but any of that stuff from the winter just went down the creek.

Ag Network's KayDee Gilkey reported Monday that hay sales seem to be light this week but there is a strong demand.

DENNY: I haven't been following the market on alfalfa that much because we feed it ourselves. So, I'm guessing it's around $200 for feeder hay is what I've heard.

As far as what's next.

DENNY: We'll do some Timothy hay. That's kind of the next round of hay that we have after we get done with the alfalfa. We don't have any bluegrass this year, I hadn't been getting the yields and the prices have been not where they needed to be. So after that it will be wheat harvest.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.