Producer Features

Beginner’s luck is usually reserved for bowling games and slot machines, and is often given the same credence as Bigfoot sightings, but every once in a while, it’s impossible to miss.

2016 was year one in the custom haying business for Allen Hatch, and it went something like this: “I have been running ragged, but I have learned a few things … We have had a setback or two, maybe 12.”

“When we came, there were fences here, but you couldn’t find them. They were buried in the bushes and trees, and we had to tear them out, clean them up, tear out the wire – and most of them were six- or eight-strand barbed-wire fences with hog wire in them. So it’s been a chore.”

When progressive forage growers hear the words “New Zealand,” they instantly think of rolling pastures and intensive grazing management. Those who are also in the dairy industry are likely to think about the volume of milk produced in such a tiny country.

Within 24 hours of the first hay bale hitting the ground, buyers from California were driving to Denio, in northwestern Nevada, to get a look at the hay and talk purchase contracts.

A Midwestern perspective

Daniel Funke, owner and operator of Funke Custom Baling and Hay Sales in Larchwood, Iowa, has been wrapping hay since 2010 – a year he had more ruined hay than good hay.