Never ever would guessed that amount -- wow.
Well, what's weird about it--it's a regional cultural thing, I guess--is that hay around here (in Nebraska at least) is merely considered a "by-product" of a crop. An eminently useful by-product and a welcome by-product, but just something one doesn't think a whole lot about. In fact, there's so much of it some years (such as this year) that more of it's left to rot back into the soil, than what's baled up for livestock food.
I asked the neighbor earlier this morning; he says those who are doing this, at a thousand bucks a ton, are making $300 a ton clear profit on it (that's net, not gross, profit).
The size of hay bales vary in different parts of the country--even in different parts of Nebraska--and so it's hard to give a "picture" of what a ton of hay looks like, in bales. The truck driver yesterday had explained it to me; it seems to me that two bales each about 8' long, 3' high, and 3' wide, is a ton. But this is a very
ambiguous guesstimate.
I suppose I could ask Carl here, but he's in upstate New York and this is Nebraska, and I'm very sure there's a wide variation in the size of bales between these two areas.
A cow or a steer eats up a lot of hay; I just can't see how Texas cattlemen can make a profit, if they're paying a thousand bucks a ton for hay.