IT'S one of those seasons when you'll likely hear someone say: "It's a funny game, the hay game."
While rain is working in favour of grain producers this year, the wet spring is proving a barrier to high-quality fodder.
With as much as 50mm of rain falling last week, farms in southwest Victoria are sodden.
Paddocks around Timboon that have been grazed during winter are struggling to recover.
Some dairy cows have been seen walking through 200mm of mud, and fodder contractors are feeling the frustration of constant weather delays to their silage operations.
It could be as much as three weeks before paddocks can dry out for machinery operations.
Some dairy farmers north of Warrnambool managed to bale silage last week on sloping country.
This is the exception for the region, as most pastures are yet to be cut.
The challenge is to gain as much quality from the pasture material as possible and conserve it as fodder.
Newly sown ryegrass pastures are coming into head.
With each week of delay, the fibre levels of pastures are increasing and energy levels are declining.
As the opportunity to conserve high-quality silage is now slipping, some dairy farmers have taken advantage of the low prices for vetch hay.
Old-crop vetch hay with about nine units of metabolisable energy and about 16 per cent protein has been moving into the southwest dairies for $230 a tonne delivered.
New-crop prices for vetch are still in limbo.
Sellers are indicating around $170-$190 a tonne ex-farm in the Mallee, although lower prices have been achieved if bales are moved directly off the paddocks.
There are also ample stocks of cereal hay in store from last season.
This hay may prove valuable for those buyers who determine that the energy of purchased hay will be lower cost than that of their own lower-quality silage from home-grown pastures.
Around Warragul, in West Gippsland, the lighter red soils and sloping paddocks will allow contractors to move on to paddocks before forecast rain appears this weekend.
Hay producers in northern Victoria are cutting crops higher and reducing the pressures on conditioners in an effort to make higher-quality hay.
Paddocks of cereal hay that have been cut around Donald have impressive regrowth. This fresh growth could cause mould in hay if it is raked and baled with dry hay.
Given the developments in the season to date, contractors and merchants are speculating on what the weather will throw at them.
