With a dry week and temperatures in the mid-20s forecast for northern Victoria this weekend, the hay harvest is commencing, introducing some challenges for buyers and sellers.

Vetch hay is often one of the earliest hay crops to be cut and dairy farmers have been active in searching for crops to be purchased as either hay or silage. When free standing vetch crops are cut and cured on dry paddocks without rainfall, vetch hay can be an ideal source of soft palatable and digestible hay with a protein content like that of lucerne.

Vetch hay often tests with protein at 20 per cent and energy at 20 ME units. The current prices of vetch hay typically provide crude protein at a 50 per cent premium to that of canola meal and energy at 60 per cent premium to wheat.

Unfortunately, some early sown vetch crops have been growing in very wet soils and portions of vetch paddocks can be seen to have dead or dying patches.

These appear as darker regions as some rot has set in.

These portions of vetch paddocks are likely to be excluded from harvest as the black material cosmetically spoils vetch bales.

According to some dairy nutritionists, vetch as a conserved forage has too many risks as this type of spoilt material can contain fungal toxins that have a highly detrimental impact to cows and milk production.

Selling a standing crop with the buyer taking all the weather and quality risk can be an attractive option for growers as it removes the production and quality risks associated with curing a fine leafed plant such as vetch and removes the stresses that come from making and marketing hay a difficult crop.

This is a real threat for many growers this season as, despite the El Nino event, the trend has been wet.

Dairy farmers understand this and can negotiate a price which includes a discount for the normal costs involved with cutting, raking, baling and stacking of hay with further discounts accounting for removing harvest risk and stresses from the growers. Some standing crops of vetch in northern Victoria have been sold for $220 a tonne on a dry matter basis.

Converting this down to a hay moisture of 15 per cent and then adding in the typical costs for hay making makes this price the hay equivalent of $260 a tonne ex farm.

This is well under the typical asking prices of $320 a tonne to $380 a tonne ex Mallee farm currently offered by growers for old crop hay. If the vetch paddocks are within 10km to 20km of dairy farms, a nominal flag fall freight cost can have forage wagons of wilted vetch cost effectively compacted in a silage pit.

Dairy farmers who use a total or partial mixed ration value access to bulk silage that is high in protein and digestible fibre that can be loaded into mixer wagons and fed out in adjacent feed pads.