2025 Hay Quality Award Winners – Part 1 with Grant Alday and Ben Wright

Speaker 1 0:00
Hi, it’s Steve Page here from Feed Central and Local Ag, and this afternoon, I’m with Grant Alday and just presenting Grant with his National Quality Feed Test award and his National Quality Visual award. Welcome Grant and thank you for having me. Can you give us a little bit of information on your farming operation here?

Grant Alday 00:48

Thanks, Steve, thanks for dropping in. Yes, we, my wife, Bron and I, we farm at Sea Lake in Northwest Victoria. We’re predominantly croppers, but we do always sow some hay, and then we opportunity cut hay depending on the season, whether it’s frost or weed burden or something like that. We grow wheat, barley, lupins, lentil, canola and field peas, generally. And we always make sure we have some oat and hay. And we generally grow some vetch hay as well. Last year we we cut lentil hay, wheat hay, barley and oats, so – and some vetch . So we had quite a range of hay last year, and wa sn’t all planned. Some of it was or most of it was driven by frost, and it really took us from breaking even to making a profit. So it was a, it was a somewhat difficult decision for a short period, and then it turned out to be a fantastic choice in the end. So yeah, that’s, that’s where we’re at.

Steve Page 01:53

Can you tell us, in a normal year, what would your percentage of hay production to grain production be,

Grant Alday 02:00

Area- wise, oat and hay is generally 8% to 10% of area, and vetch would be another 8% to 10% but that would depend on soil type. Sometimes that vetch will fail and be brown manured, I guess, Steve, some of the decisions around whether to cut, whether or not to cut, and what to cut. Part of it is knowing your own paddocks. If weeds are a driver we I guess you’ve got to prioritise that and have a really good look around. And that’s what we we had done. And it wasn’t purely about income, either not in the hay crop, or even perhaps to some extent in the grain crop like we just knew that there’s only so much regrowth can blend in with healthy crop up on higher ground. So if you’ve got frosted flats, there’s still moisture in the ground, you’re going to get regrowth, particularly in barley. You can have really mature plants on the higher ground, and you’ll have regrowth in that lower country. And the first thing is, yeah, it won’t yield. But secondly, what do you blend it with? It was zero regrets about cutting any of our barley because we had enough trouble trying to harvest the balance of that paddock, and it was the higher ground. So quite often you’ll come back to harvest a paddock once the regrowth has sorted itself out, and all the best grains snapped off in the wind.

Grant Alday 03:26

For us, it was like, let’s just get rid of some of the pain and harvest time that we know is coming, and let’s just cut that crop so we don’t even have to think about it. So that was one of the drivers. Another big thing to consider was the withholding period of chemical. Like, we had to count down the days on a couple of paddocks to know the day we could go in and start cutting from when we’d put a fungicide on. So we put a fungicide on wheat paddocks, not expecting them to be frosted, and then get frosted and go, Oh, okay, well, what’s the withholding period on that? Well, we won’t cut it yet. We’re gonna have to leave it three more days before we can get there. So that was a consideration too,

Steve Page 04:01

And just out of interest, going back to last season, when you got that frost and you changed a few of the paddocks back around into hay production because of the frost. How has that sort of received with your neighbors always looking over the fence and seeing what you, what others are doing? Did many of them follow you with cutting for hay?

Grant Alday 04:21

No, I didn’t, I didn’t see a lot of hay cut, but I will say that we probably sowed a little bit earlier than some, which put us in more of a frost window. And we do have a more of a frost prone farm. But there were some that were quite, that are always anti hay for whatever reason. Hearing it secondhand, there were, there were a few people that thought we were a bit stupid cutting hay, but we were comfortable with the decision. And when you’ve got a really solid grain focus, and if, if you, if it’s all about salvaging grain, and you are really, your gut just says, I don’t want to do hay. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t have the desire to go and find extra rakes or mowers or staff or anything like that. Well, if it doesn’t suit your personality and your system, and you don’t want to go outside what you normally do, well, I guess you stick with what you’re doing.

Grant Alday 05:14

I do. I do really enjoy it. I find it. Find it interesting, there’s a little bit more personality to hay than there is grain, once grains in a silo, it’s pretty much grain, but you get a loading hay during the year, and you pull the face off a bay and go, geez, that’s, that’s got a heaps better colour than I remembered, and it’s good shape, and sits on a truck, nice. And it’s, you know, what paddock it came from, and what part of a paddock, and bit of a story behind how you put it together. It’s one bit more relatable and grain at the end of the day. It’s about profit, but it’s still an it’s still a satisfying process if you do it right I think. So

Steve Page 05:51

That um that decision to go to hay there was, there would have been a few little challenges with that decision, with staff and contractors and and how did you overcome that?

Grant Alday 06:04

Yeah, it was a bit frustrating because, because it was such a poor season, we didn’t think we needed extra staff to help with our oat and hay. We just didn’t think we’d have enough work to bring in a couple of backpackers. We had a couple of backpackers coming for harvest, but not for hay. So once we swung to hay, it kind of became our harvest, or more of our harvest. So straight away, find another tractor, find two more staff, find two more beds, just organise a contractor to cut some hay, convert one of the headers to be able to cut some hay, and that all you know, that all changed pretty quickly.

Grant Alday 06:41

Like for fortunately, we didn’t have to unwind any grain contracts or anything like that. That was all fine. And thankfully, we we had plenty of seed that we you know, when we went and cut lentils, we cut a couple of 1000 bales of lentil hay. That was fine. We already had seed in the silo, so that side of it was all ticked that box. Yeah, yeah, we It only took us a couple of days to work out. Well, that’s the right direction to go, and then it’s just a matter of working out how, how we can make it happen. So that was, it’s not a mess, it’s not a massive, massive thing, but it was, it just turned things on its head a little bit. So when you bring people over for harvest and do hay and then you’ve got to ask them whether they’re prepared to paint a house to get extra hours. It’s not ideal, but they were happy with it, and it worked out well.

Steve Page 07:27

Grant, I just wanted to touch base on the marketing again, of of hay, the difference with your cash flow situation with grain compared to hay. Would you like to elaborate on that a little bit for us.

Grant Alday 07:42

Yeah, as I mentioned in the past, the greatest amount of income out of hay is coming out of export oat and hay, and that’s really quite predictable. We know when that is going to occur. So in that respect, it’s no different to grain. Most years. Now, the interest rates have gone a little bit higher. If you decided to cut a paddock and the domestic market was pretty poor. Yeah, that would definitely be a consideration. There’s some challenges around storing something and not knowing when you’re ever going to sell it, but I don’t know. I guess we’d still tolerate that. We just know that if it’s the right thing to do. It’s the right thing to do.

Grant Alday 08:21

But probably the challenges are around insurance and mice as much as cash flow. Like, I think, depending on an individual, like, if you’ve got the capacity to borrow and your bank’s happy to lend, if you’re not in a great financial position, well, you run the numbers and say, Well, can I carry that hay? Or can’t i If you can carry it? Well, then the next thing is, Will mice be an issue? Will fire be an issue? Some of the issues around insurance now are getting really, really tough. Distances between sheds, maximum dollar values in sheds. And I guess last year, with all the frost damage and a little bit, of grain in some of our hay. I was reasonably confident we’d be able to sell our hay at pretty decent money. I thought we would get our sheds empty. And obviously the demand grew and grew, and it was very easy to empty sheds. But in saying that, we put a lot of effort into making mouse bait stations like we probably, we probably made 50 bait stations to put between four hay sheds, so we had mouse bait absolutely everywhere, just to be sure there weren’t any issues. And well, as it turned out, it may not have been necessary, but we hardly saw a mouse, so it was good. Yeah.

Steve Page 09:40

And can you elaborate a little bit on how this season’s going for you? You’ve, you told me just a few minutes ago that you got the last load of last year’s season’s hay going out this week, and so you’ve got empty sheds. There’s a lot of empty sheds around. Are you going to be able to fill them all again this year? Or how’s the season going for you?

Grant Alday 10:00

I’ll be shattered if we have to fill our sheds. Means we’ve had another frost, but we’ve got a little bit of oat and hay that came up well, but very little. We’ve got got some wheat hay. We deliberately sowed as wheat hay because we didn’t get a germination on last year’s volunteer wheat. So it’s wheat on wheat as hay. It was supposed to be oats on wheat. So it looks good. So anything sown before Anzac Day that got 8,10, 12 ml of rain on the right soil type got up and looks good. But if you look at a district so west of Sea Lake, look at an NDVI map today, there’s, there’s a few paddocks around I’m happy with a couple of hours, and I see a couple of our neighbors have got really good bike really good biomass, but it’s still not going to be big tonnages. So, yeah, I just don’t know where that will end. We may cut a paddock or two a barley yet that was sown before Anzac Day, but we’ll have a good look around and make that decision soon, I guess.

Steve Page 10:57

So what do you what are you thinking? You talked about 9000 bales last year. What do you think your hay production is heading towards at the moment, I know it’s still early, but for this coming season,

Grant Alday 11:11

Oh, I haven’t crunched numbers but if it was, so I don’t know, I’d say, typically, we might only do the top my head, 4, 5, 6000 bails. So 10 was a lot to do for us, and so I’d be thinking this year, we might be looking at three, perhaps. It just depends what extra paddocks we decide to cut. All right, our priority, really is to be grain growers. Hay, we do the absolute best we can do. We really want to produce a good product, but to a real significant extent, it’s there to support grain production long term. I don’t know it’ll it’ll be an opportunity thing. I think if we cut any more than two or 3000 miles.

Steve Page 11:50

Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Grant, it was lovely having to catch up and the conversation. And thank you for all the information you’ve come through with today. And congratulations again on the award.

Grant Alday 12:02

Thanks again, Steve, appreciate you dropping in.

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Steve Page 12:34

Hi, it’s Steve Page here again from Feed Central, Local Ag, and I’m back in the shed with Ben Wright from Central West Contracting. And congratulations, Ben, you’re the Heaviest Cereal Bale National Award winner for Feed Central for this year. And, yeah, just having a look here with your shed and some maintenance that you’re doing on the Krone. Can you tell us a little bit about that lot that you did to get that National Heavy Bale award.

Ben Wright 13:01

Yeah, it was a bit of wheat and a bit of wheat and straw. Sorry, yeah, it was a, I think it was harvest with, like, Rotary header. So it would have been, it was pretty, pretty fine when we bailed it, I guess would have packed in pretty, pretty nicely, they were some not bad looking bales from memory. And, yeah, just be the nice bit of moisture on them, bale them up and pressed up quite well.

Steve Page 13:22

Right oh yeah, you’ve got an eight string Krone here. And yeah, on that, on that lot that you did, the average, what average moisture of those bales was 14.2, the actual eight string Krone baler. Can you tell me a bit about it? What’s the advantages? Disadvantages, maintenance wise? How are they all going?

Ben Wright 13:43

Yeah, yeah, they’re definitely an advantage. At times, bailing more more denser bales, more strings, the whole help hold the bales together with extra pressure.

Steve Page 13:55

Yeah, sort of what capacity can you do? How many bales Can you knock out an hour or Yeah? How that goes for you?

Ben Wright 14:01

Yeah, at times. At times you can good cereal hay. Oh, good cereal winrose. You sort of can get up to that bale every 20 seconds if you, if you sort of swing off the tractor pretty hard, which I know you don’t average that per hour, but it’s at times that sort of punch punches out a fair, fair few an hour, I guess so there anyway.

Steve Page 14:21

And you’ve had a couple different types of balers before. I know you had a six string before, one of these eight stringers. You’ve got two eight stringers there going now, yeah, so can you tell us the difference between those in capacity?

Ben Wright 14:34

Yeah, we had had two six stringers before. The current two eight stringers. The six stringers are good, but, like I say, I had a few string dramas, VFS issues, like in the feeder system, because just not as heavy duty as what the eight stringers are. And, yeah, just not, not as, not as heavy as the as the eights. So.

Steve Page 14:55

What, what string type do you use? And is there a reason for that?

Ben Wright 14:59

You. Yeah, we’ve been running the Pope Blue Tiger Triple X for the last few years. It seems pretty, pretty soft on the knotters, good price and easy to get. But other than that, it’s, yeah, same seems to work really well for us in the two balers. So.

Steve Page 15:15

And the advantages of getting those heavier bale weights? Do you want to talk about that?

Ben Wright 15:20

Yeah, definitely. Um, so, storage, suppose storage, really, one of the big things. Storage, more, more tons per cubic meters, and then transport, obviously, with more tons per, like, dollar per k so and

Steve Page 15:34

Less handling, less handling in the paddock, getting to the shed and and working that way. Yeah,

Ben Wright 15:39

that’s right, less, less bales to pick up and all that stuff. So, yeah, that works, definitely, definitely an advantage.

Steve Page 15:45

And how many bales Do you normally try and get out a year with these eight stringers?

Ben Wright 15:50

Oh, they usually do about, oh, anywhere from 15 to 20,000 each, I suppose so, something like that’s usually a pretty Yeah, not a bad season. So can’t complain about that.

Steve Page 16:00

And what sort of maintenance program do you have with these?

Ben Wright 16:05

Yeah, whatever’s, whatever’s looks like it’s worn or looks like it’s gonna wear out during the season, just gets replaced. Yeah, a lot of money gets spent on the VFS. Yeah. VFS, knotters, bushes, yeah, all that sort of stuff, bearings.

Steve Page 16:20

Every year, or every two years?

Ben Wright 16:22

Nah, every year. Every year just depends on the on the severity of the of the maintenance, I suppose, like last year, we spent a fair bit on on the balers. So this year is a bit of a lighter, lighter service. I guess you could say so not as, not as in, as intense as last year was.

Steve Page 16:39

And how often are you going to turn these balers over? And would you go back to another Krone?

Ben Wright 16:44

Yeah, we’ll go back to another Krone. There is a new model out. So I might give that a few more years and see how the how the new model pans out, I guess, and go from there.

Steve Page 16:53

Right oh. Thanks Ben. Thank you. And congratulations on that award again, and all the best for the coming season. You thank you for listening to the Hey Matters podcast. If you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast or getting your brand in front of our national audience of 20,000 plus farmers, growers and agribusinesses, get in touch with the team at Feed Central to find out how. This podcast is proudly presented by Feed Central and Local Ag. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes.