SPOKANE — With prices for hay at historic highs and still rising, some ranchers are getting rid of horses and cows they can no longer afford to feed.
“We’re getting more mature cows going through the auction now than we normally ever would,” said Ted Kerst, owner Stockland Livestock Exchange in Davenport for 25 years. “They’re cutting their losses.”
Well-bred, well-trained horses are still expensive, but there is little market for ordinary horses, he said.
“People just can’t afford to keep them,” said Heather Reither, assistant trainer at Spokane’s Double Eagle Stables, adding that bidders recently offered $25 for yearlings that she would have expected to fetch $1,000 a few years back.
The hay problem is one of supply and demand, said Phil Petersen, an agronomist for Washington State University Extension.
With grain prices high, many farmers now grow more wheat or corn.
Acreage devoted to alfalfa has dropped about 11 percent nationwide since 2003, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but the decline in the Pacific Northwest has been much greater — 13 percent in Washington state and 9 percent in Idaho since last year.
Moreover, roughly half of Washington’s crop is exported to Asia and other markets, Petersen said.
Bob McMillan, who has grown hay for 35 years on Peone Prairie, said the weather is also a factor.
McMillan figures he lost about a third of his first cutting to a June 11 hailstorm.
In much of the Northwest, including the Columbia Basin, where most of Washington’s alfalfa is grown, a late spring delayed the crop, meaning farmers will get three or four cuttings, rather than four or five, McMillan said.
The USDA said alfalfa last year sold for a nationwide average of $138 a ton, up from $90 in 2003. But local livestock owners say quality hay has taken a much bigger jump.
Reither said she is paying $150 a ton, plus $115 for delivery of a three-ton load.
Dave McCullough, who raises beef, said he paid $135 a ton early last summer but saw the price climb to $275 during winter.
Many expect the costs to keep climbing.
Kerst said avid horse owners will tough it out.
“Their horses come first,” Kerst said. “They’ll buy a ton of hay before they’ll buy steaks for themselves.”
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