Cattlemen selling herds, scrambling for hay suppliers

ANNA, Ill. -- On his Southern Illinois spread where some 450 cows and calves look to him for food, Dale Moreland finds disappointment the only thing that seems to be growing these days.

And his headaches are over hay.

The 55-year-old cattleman, like so many others in the Midwest and elsewhere, lament that the one-two punch of a spring freeze and months of drought has savaged his hay crops and kept pastures from greening, forcing producers to tap hay stockpiles months earlier than usual.

The scenario has left beef producers with few options other than selling off chunks of their herds out of worry there won't be anything to feed them through winter or jockeying to buy increasingly scarce hay elsewhere at higher prices.

"I can name several guys down here with 50 to 100 cows who normally buy all their hay, and there's just none to buy," Moreland said Wednesday, expecting to be selling off all but about 25 of his 275 calves in the next month or so "to get down to the bare minimum for winter."

"We're kind of in survival mode," he said. "It's not a good situation."

Such tales of woe aren't unusual across U.S. regions scorched by drought, cutting hay production by as much as 80 percent in Tennessee to 50 percent or more in Kentucky. Much of Virginia, which usually produces three cuttings, got only one this year.

"We don't have anywhere in the United States where we have a large excess supply of hay stocks," National Cattlemen's Beef Association spokesman Kendal Frazier said.

The tight supplies have sent hay prices higher. On average across the country, Frazier figures, alfalfa hay -- popular because of its high quality -- fetches about $25 a ton more than last year. Getting a cow through winter may require as many as two tons of hay, Frazier said.

"Say you have 300 cows -- that's $15,000" in higher costs just for hay, Frazier said. "That's why they're selling the cows."

On his farm near Anna, Moreland doesn't see any other choice. Most years, he said, he has enough hay to carry his herd through winter, with the first cutting yielding three to four bales per acre and the second crop half that. This year's cutting? Just two bales per acre the first time through "and essentially none the second," Moreland said.

"That's been it for the year," he said.

In northern Illinois, Vern Shiller is proof of just how fickle nature can be.

The 70-year-old retiree in McHenry County, which hugs Wisconsin's southern border and didn't lack rainfall this season, is swimming in hay. With four cuttings under his belt this year, he sold four semi loads of the itchy stuff to producers in Tennessee one day this week, and he's got at least another trailer load bound for Missouri "to a rodeo guy down there."

"I've got probably three more semi loads I can sell," he said. "It doesn't do me any good in inventory. If someone else needs hay, by God, we've got it. We got it priced reasonable," about $90 a ton for decent quality alfalfa.

"I hate to say my good fortune is because of someone's bad fortune," he said. "I hate to say it worked out well for me, but it has."