COLUMBUS, Ohio — The western United States is experiencing a severe drought and it's impacting hay production. While Ohio farmers grow a lot of hay, they too are facing challenges.

What You Need To Know

  • The western United States is facing a drought, causing problems for hay production

  • Ohio farmers are facing a wet harvest, causing some hay to be of poor quality    

  • Each week, Chuck Ringwalt and Spectrum News 1 agriculture expert Andy Vance discuss topics of concern within agriculture

"Hay...is grass," agriculture expert Andy Vance said. "Different types of grass. [It] might be everything from orchard grass. Timothy, clover, alfalfa is a very specific type of plant we grow for hay that has a lot higher nutritive value for animals, so primarily used to feed ruminants: cows, sheep, those type of animals that are designed to be able to digest grasses and things that you and I can't eat."

Western states are experiencing a drought, but according to Stan Smith with the Ohio State University Extension, the situation in Ohio is different.

"We've had plenty of precipitation and in fact, too much and it's prevented us from being able to harvest hay in a timely fashion. So we've grown an abundance of hay this year, but constantly raining up until about two weeks ago has prevented the opportunity to make hay," Smith said. "So in a normal year, we'd like to start making hay the middle of May and there was a small window, probably the third week of May or right before Memorial Day, where a little bit of hay got made, but quite frankly, a lot of it has just been made here in the last week or so, prior to this most recent storm front that went through. What that does is we have an abundance of hay, but the quality is terrible."

This issue as well as others may prevent Ohio farmers from looking to the West as a possible market.

"Maybe there are some opportunities for farmers to profit," Vance said. "You've got to factor in that $6 diesel fuel, though. If we make that hay here, how do we get it there? You're going to have to put on a truck and take it there. So the cost of the hay for those farmers even worse. And then that raises questions here.

"Back to what Stan was talking about with the quality conundrum. Not every animal that I talked about earlier can consume every quality of hay, so if the hay quality is really poor and I'm a dairy farmer, let's say, in Arizona, and I'm really struggling to find hay, I don't want super low-quality hay. I need high-quality alfalfa. Now, if I'm a cow/calf producer in southern Ohio, my beef cows maybe can handle a little crummy hay. We just need that as a forage, the roughage to keep that rumen digesting the rest of the feed, so it's a really mixed bag."

Vance said farmers will still have opportunities for a better quality crop.

"You know, typically you'll be able to make two, three, maybe four cuttings in a great season, not this year, but if you can make that second, third cutting of hay, maybe it'll be a higher quality because you can get in the field and harvest it in a more timely manner than we were able to do in those wet periods of May that Stan talked about," Vance said.