New Season Hay Report – Quality, Yields & Market Outlook

Hay Matters Podcast
Recorded 16 October 2025

Tim Ford 0:02
Hi, I’m Tim Ford. Welcome to the Hay Matters podcast, where the Feed Central and LocalAg team unpack the very best of what’s happening in Australia’s fodder industry. From planting through to baling, testing and feeding, we cover the characters and the information that matters most to everyone in the supply chain.

Cara Stewart 0:24
Hi, I’m Cara Stewart, Marketing & Communications Manager here at Feed Central and LocalAg. Today I’m stepping in to be guest host of our podcast, Hay Matters, which means I get to flip things around and put Steve on the other side of the microphone. We’re also joined today by our National Sales Manager, David Clothier. Between Steve’s time on the road inspecting New Season hay and talking with growers, and Dave’s work connecting buyers and sellers across the country, they both have a front row view of what’s happening right now. In this episode, we’ll dig into how the season is shaping up, what’s moving in the marketplace, and what growers and buyers should be thinking about in the months ahead. Okay, so let’s jump into it. Steve and Dave, thanks for being with me today as we start Hay Matters.

Steve Page 1:11
Thanks, Cara.

Dave Clothier 1:12
Yeah, this is a first for the three of us. It’s been a lot of fun looking forward to it. Thanks, Cara.

Cara Stewart 1:16
It’s a first for me, so we’ll see how we go!
Steve, you’re out on the road travelling through Southern Queensland and New South Wales. Tell us about what’s been going on, what you’re seeing, the quality of the hay you’re inspecting,

Steve Page 1:30
Yeah. So the season probably really kicked off about six weeks ago.
For those not in the Southern Queensland region or Northern New South Wales, it’s been a very wet season through there for our winter crops. And there are some exceptional crops through that region. And we’ve seen a little bit more hay being made in that Southern Queensland, west of Goondiwindi, around that Dalby… up in through that region this year, and the size of the crops that have been extremely good. Some of that’s been made because the growers looked at the gross margins, sort of thing, and decided to go that way. Or they’ve just decided that due to weeds, or something like that they’ve made some hay instead. So and we’ve been very fortunate, too, with the LocalAg app, and some of that was marketed straight off the paddock. So that was a really big step forward for LocalAg and Feed Central this year. So yeah, we and we even actually saw for the first time, a vetch crop just west of Goondiwindi so that was our first that was our most northern vetch crop I’ve ever inspected, which was good to see, and that grower is going to extend that production for next season. He’s looking at increasing his area. So we’ve come – I’m down in Dubbo at the moment, on this run. So visual inspection summary, for the last four weeks, we’ve actually seen vetch hay anywhere from that Goondiwindi region right down to Griffith, and there’s about 900 tonnes of that, and of that vetch hay, 640 tonnes of that have gone A Grade.

On the cereal hay – we’ve got cereal hay anywhere from Southern Queensland through to Central New South Wales, where I am now. All these lots are fully inspected and feed tested. And we’ve also even seen our first cereal hay from Southern Western Australia in the system. So that was lovely to see. And that’s all come around due to LocalAg. Of this, we’ve had 32 fully inspected lots, a total tonnage of just over 22,000 tonnes, and that’s broken up with about 6300 tonnes of double A, about 18,000 tonnes of A Grade, and about 1000 nearly 2000 tonne of B Grade cereal hay.
So it’s really good to see those results coming through. As I say, it’s still early in the season yet. And yeah, some of this has been selling already very quickly.

Cara Stewart 4:02
So Dave, with all of this volume hitting the market, and obviously there’s some great quality vetch as Steve was just mentioning, how’s that shaping up in the market at the moment?

Dave Clothier 4:16
Thanks, Cara, right now, there’s a there’s a couple of different things. We started the year with empty cupboards. There was, there was no hay in the system from a national supply front at all. So it gives the opportunity for localised buyers that have got empty sheds, whether it be dairies or people feeding cattle… well, they’ve got the widest variety to snavel that product right now and put it into their sheds. And LocalAg for the first time, allowing advertised non harvested Lots, has given a lot of confidence to growers to potentially recoup some of their production costs, which makes it a lot sweeter for them, of course.

Other than that, yeah, the vetch has been pretty interesting, like it’s been, as Steve said, it’s been a cracking year for growing hay, there is a lot of good quality. The vetch buyers, traditionally across the east coast of Australia, particularly the south, are aware of the low yields in the south, so they are snavelling up the vetch when they can. And there has been quite a lot moving prior to feed test, which just demonstrates that there are sheds empty and people just want to secure it while they know there is good product made without any weather on it. Yeah.

Cara Stewart 5:33
So you’ve both mentioned the great quality that we’re seeing so far in the season. Steve, do you have any reasons why we’re seeing this great quality this year?

Steve Page 5:39
It’s been a bit of a tight finish. So the with the bigger yields up in Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales, like the rest of the majority of Australia, we didn’t get that spring rain that they were promised. That has actually, you know, caused it to be to be a bit of a tighter finish, and especially those regions sort of in in further west so that tighter finish does normally cause the actual crop to shut down quicker, and therefore lock those sugars and proteins in a little bit more into the leaf and stem. And that’s what we’re seeing this year. So those cereal hays are testing, or some of those cereal hays are testing extremely well. One thing I can say, just on the vetch side of things, yes, we are seeing the quality. But some of those growers we were sort of when they were just about to start cutting it – and it did come in very quickly, the crops started to set pod very quickly – so they held off due to a rain, potential rain event, coming. Some of those vetch crops have got pods in them, so that deteriorated the quality slightly on the vetch. But on that in that northern region. but I I believe down around Griffith and that, the quality down there is extremely good. So yeah, that that tighter finish has made the quality on the cereal hays that much, you know, that much better for the feed test results. And I think we’re going to continue to see that further south too, with the harder season down there.
So we’re just talking to a few people in the southern regions. Some of those areas are really struggling. So those test results, I think, will continue to come in quite strong, providing we get good curing periods. So those regions should be all right. And they, I think grain growers are also in those regions… I’ve had a few conversations on the phone, driving along with growers calling up and talking about what their options are… the gross margins for hay to grain this year probably the strongest I’ve ever seen in my nine years with Feed Central. So that’s allowing people to consider what their options are. They really do need to look at their marketing options when they’re doing that shed storage, and what their cash flow is, because it’s a totally different type of marketing system that, yeah, you need to look at than grain. You can’t just take it off the paddock and put it into one of the storage sites and sell it the next day. So sheds are important, or being able to protect it is important, for quality hay. So, yeah, that’s things need to consider. And plus, there is a fair bit more work to it too. It’s not as easy if you set up to do grain, it’s not quite as easy to do hay. So a bit more work into it, but it can be very rewarding in that if you get quality hay, and the actual process and the actual returns are there.

Cara Steward 8:43
So with the potential of so much hay being made this season. Dave, what’s that looking for the short term market, but also a longer term outlook?

Dave Clothier 8:51
The short term, as I said earlier, like there is a lot of buyers filling their sheds. The beauty of the hay season being a bit earlier and a lot of good quality hay, as Steve has just said, means that people can source the right product, potentially closer than we’ve experienced, particularly through that last dry period, so that that keeps delivered prices at a better rate for them.
It might feel quiet, but there’s a few reasons why it’s quiet, or it has been quiet in the last few weeks and one is that the forecast wet spring just hasn’t eventuated. So people were sitting back and waiting for that. People were also sitting back, waiting to see what quality of hay was being produced, where it was produced, what sort of volume, and just waiting for the market to stabilise, price wise, for the start of the season.
It’s just been the last few days, we’ve started to see that tide turn a little bit, because the dry is continuing. So there is a crystal ball element that will determine what’s going to go on. There is a lot of paddock stacked hay, just because of that hay versus grain scenario Steve was talking about, and you would you would expect that a lot of those growers are very keen to sell and are willing to negotiate price. So if you’re in the right place, you can certainly secure some very good hay if you’ve got a shed to put it in yourself.

Cara Stewart 10:18
Great. So Steve, you’re heading further south, and you’ve been talking to some growers down there. What do you expect to see next week as you head further south into the New South Wales-Victoria border?

Steve Page
Yeah, from what I’m hearing, there’s fairly large variations between what the expected yields are. I’m hearing anywhere from about two and a half tonne to the hectare in your cereals up to about six tonne. And that comes back to planting dates, subsoil moistures and what rain they did get. So some of those areas did get a little bit of rain at the right time.

I was talking to a grower the other day, a vetch grower the other day, and when I first talked to him, about 8-10, weeks ago – talked to him about vetch. He was saying that he didn’t expect to actually be making any at all, but at that stage, the warmer weather came on, they got 10 mm of rain, and he’s now made vetch hay. It’s not huge yields, but it was enough for him to go in and cut and bale. So I’m hoping that there’s been a little bit more of that, because last time I was down in in that Wimmera Malley country, it was looking very ordinary in the majority of it. So, yeah, it’s as I say, grain. Some of the grain growers are going to be making hay, as Dave said, they will be wanting to market it fairly quickly. May not have sheds, so that’s going to keep the price sort of fairly quiet down for a little while. But I think if you’ve got sheds, you got quality hay, put it in the shed, get it inspected, get it feed tested, because those results are coming back well, and, yeah, sit back and wait for the market to come back up. And I think I’m quite buoyant about where the market’s going to be in the new year. And I’m hoping we’ll see it there, and hoping we’ll have, you know, this dry weather continues for our curing period, so we can get that quality hay in the sheds

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Cara Stewart 12:43
Dave, how important is it for buyers around the storage and the feed test and visual inspection? How important is that to buyers looking at hay right now and I guess into later in the season?

Dave Clothier 13:00
Well, LocalAg allows our growers to market their hay however they like, and to sell it however they like. But the reality of having an on farm inspection and a feed test just presents the grower with the widest audience of customers, allowing them to refine searches on protein and energy and NDF and all those other things that are important to those buyers. So I think it’s critically important. The industry is becoming more and more educated and knowing what to look for. We spend a lot of time educating the market, so they are getting more particular. Having such a good hay making year means there is lots of hay to pick from. There is no doubt about that, but the storage and the sheds and the all-weather access allows particularly long term forward contracts that mean the continuity of supply of a particular grade is paramount to those buyers. So the paddock stacks just, unfortunately, don’t fit into that sphere that they’re more prompt, prompt buyers, or buyers that have their own sheds that can fill them. So yeah, sheds all weather access, on farm inspection, feed test, you are at the top of the ladder.

Cara Stewart 14:17
You agree with that, Steve, you’re nodding?

Steve Page 14:19
Yeah, yep.
Well, I’m not on the sales team, but I’m on the quality side of things. And yeah, that the buyers, if we do an inspection, the buyers want that continuity of that product right across. So not only does it come from the actual weathering if it’s stacked outside, but if we’re inspecting hay, and if, like, I had a look at a line… it ended up being two lots in a shed this morning… there was only three days or four days difference between when they’d started doing the baling and they had the baler broke down, and another three days later before they got going on the next. They were two totally different lots, beautiful hay. The first lot I looked at was a double A, and the second lot was an A grade. And it all came down to the moistures. The second lot that was on the ground a little bit longer, was bleached a little bit more, and also was a lot chaffier. So and the moisture is, rather than being up around that 13% moisture, they were down around the 10. So it was very much a chaffier, drier product with a little bit more bleaching. That’s the difference we need to be picking up.
So if you’ve got product that has two different… if there’s a variation in one lot or one paddock, and that was just one paddock, it’s better to separate it than try and put it together as one, because we have to inspect that so that the buyer is happy with every bale that he gets.

Dave Clothier 15:47
And potentially get more dollars, Steve, for one line over the other.

Steve Page 15:49
Yeah, that’s correct, that double A line, it was a major part of the line. There was about 3000 or 4000 bales in that first line, or double A and the second line was about another 800-900 bales, but if we’d put them together, it would have brought that whole lot back down to an A grade.

Dave Clothier 16:12
Hey, Steve, can I ask you a question? My old friend… mate, what advice do you give growers with paddock stacks? How? How should they go about it to maximise their return, Steve?

Steve Page 16:25
Basically, yes, single rows and hay caps are better than tarps. So if that’s the option, they’ve got, run those to begin with. Make a decent pad so that it’s raised – if possible, use a roadway. Build that up. Stack the hay in single rows, if possible, six, seven high. If they’re nice, big, solid, heavy bales. We can… I’ve seen stacked under hay caps this year, seven high, which is great. You’ve got these hay stackers that run around the paddock picking up six at a time. Pick up that seventh one, put the hay cap on it and put it on the top while that stacker keeps coming backwards and forwards. That’s a good start. And get those stacks nice and tight. Because if they start to spread later on, it will allow water down between those stacks in that row which then affects the quality. So get the stack nice and tight. And that comes back to your pad, and the actual quality of your bale also. And the hay caps.
Look the tarps. You know, tarps are hard to keep on. It’s the hay caps are better than tarps. Is my personal feeling, plus a lot safer to be putting on. You put them on the ground and put them up on top. So, and if possible, run the stack sort of east/west. So where your rain events, you know, for the regions I’m thinking of, mainly come from the west… if you’ve got your stack running east west, your rain is less likely to have affect the side of it as much so of the hay. So yeah, that’s some quick points.
Thanks, Dave.

Cara Stewart 18:15
Do you have a question for Dave, just to get him back, Steve, since he asked you one,

Steve Page 18:17
No, I haven’t got anything.

Dave Clothier 18:20
Well, I could, I could make one up on your behalf. What effect does that have on market and ex-farm pricing? Yeah, you like, I think that would be important. I think what we traditionally see year on year is a lot of these paddock stacks… as we get further into summer, they get more and more weather affected. And at the end of the day, you only bank dollars, so you need to give us a call or reach out to somebody in the market. Understand what the market is for good quality, shedded hay, and make sure you price it accordingly. To sell it. If you’re trying to match what’s coming out of a shed, you’re going to get weather damage, and you’re going to lose bales, and that will just reduce your average price considerably. So I think with paddock stacks, the key is to move it as quickly as you can and to price it accordingly.

Steve Page 19:15
Yeah, I find it nothing worse than driving on to a place that I was on sort of six to 12 months ago and still seeing those stacks stacked outside and deteriorating quickly. And yet, the grower, you know, could have sold it. He was just trying to get that extra 10-20, bucks or whatever. And in the meantime, he’s lost, you know, lost a lot more.

Cara Stewart 19:46
So pricing it right is key. Pricing it for the market to move it fast. Yeah, yeah, which is the number one question you get asked, isn’t it? Dave price?

Dave Clothier 19:47
Yeah, we do get asked price on a daily basis, and it changes from week to week, that is for sure. But you know, I think a base would be if good, shedded, cereal hay is making $300 ex- farm, I think a paddock stack – If you’ve got a lot of volume and you’re in a prompt market – it probably needs to be at least $30 or $40 under whatever that shedded price is, or you’re going to be left with bales.

Cara Stewart 20:16
Which won’t make you any money.

Dave Clothier 20:18
Well, there’ll be a liability. They’re just in your way for the next year, that’s for sure. Yeah, and potentially a fire risk as they get through the summer.

Cara Stewart 20:23
Yeah, especially since the heat’s come on very early this year, certainly up in Queensland anyway.

So Dave, you mentioned earlier about the cupboards being empty at the start of this season, after the drought in South Australia and Victoria, affecting hay supply and emptying out the sheds. What do you think starting with empty – and obviously with the dry affecting the production of more hay, possibly this year – what do you think that looks long term? Are we going to have too much hay?

Dave Clothier 20:55
I don’t think there’s a chance of that, Cara. I don’t think we’ve got a chance of filling up the national supply, considering where we started. I think we need to look at a few factors and one of the ones that should give a lot of hay producers joy is that livestock numbers are the highest they’ve been in Australia pretty much forever. There’s more cattle on feed in Australia than ever. General, livestock prices are very strong, so there are reasons to feed. So I think we’re going to need every bale, particularly if it turns dry, we’re going to need every bale.

Cara Stewart 21:36
Yep, yep. Well, Steve, do you want to give us a wrap up of the season so far, I guess, and what you expect to see in the coming weeks as you travel further south.

Steve Page 21:43
Yeah, well, I think there is going to be a reasonable quantity of hay made, and hopefully really good quality, but we’ve got still a fair way to go yet to getting it all done and dusted. So, yeah, I’m just hoping that, as I say, it can stay dry. We can get that hay made. We can get it in a shed or get it protected and then be able to wait for the prices to come back again. So that’s yeah, that’s where I’m hoping for anyway, at the moment. But yeah, there’s a big area that’s going to need to be covered. And yeah, I’m confident that the Yeah, the quantity is going to be there, hopefully, and hopefully the quality.

Cara Stewart 22:28
Any advice for growers for the coming weeks that are looking at baling and cutting at the moment?

Steve Page 22:32
Look, what I have seen so far is there have been some challenges in those bigger crops up in sort of northern New South Wales. I had the pleasure the other day of being out in the paddock in a difficult situation for the grower, but we got together with his contractor… we were talking to his agronomist on the phone, and just they were all working together to make the best quality hay that they possibly can.
So I think if you are getting, you know, getting experienced people in and you haven’t done hay much before, listen to those contractors, understand what they’re trying to do. And, yeah, make the best possible product you can. And, yeah, don’t rush it. You know, if the contract is saying it’s not quite ready, well, listen, because the last thing we want is fires and any issues along those lines, or quality product that you know… product that should be a quality that isn’t because it was pushed into a bale too quick. So, yeah.

Cara Stewart 23:22
Great. Thanks, Steve, and Dave, I guess you get a bit of a two-fer here. So buyers and growers, any advice for the coming weeks?

Dave Clothier 23:45
Look probably the same advice for both buyers and sellers, and it’s probably telling them nothing they don’t know, and that’s just to understand their cash flow and how to best manage their fodder needs. From a grower’s perspective, generally, our advice is to, you know, sell whatever amount you need to sell initially to recover your production costs.
And from a buyer perspective, it’s a long way til next season – October 2026 – so while there’s good quality hay about you should consider securing, again, a portion of your needs now and what I think is a pretty good market for both sides, because we just don’t know what’s going to happen.
Traditionally, the market rises in the second quarter each year and as we approach winter. So yeah, I think growers should be prepared to release hay at market price, and buyers should be prepared to accept that market price today, because it’s good hay, and I think the market’s pretty competitive at the moment.

Cara Stewart 24:56
Great. Thank you. Before we wrap up, any last thoughts, words, ideas, you want to share criticisms of my hosting abilities?

Dave Clothier 25:00
Look, I think this is a really good conversation to have, because largely conversation we’ve just had right now is what Steve and I have on a regular basis. We’re just making it public, Steve, aren’t we?

Steve Page 25:11
Yep, yep, and I think Cara should come on the road with me.

Cara Stewart 25:12
You can have a chat to Tim about that.
Well, thank you both. Thanks for joining us from Dubbo, Steve, and Dave, you’re joining us from Warwick. Thank you both very much, and we will see you in the office soon.

Outro 25:41
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