Customers keep changing even in the Minnesota hay business.

Gary Hotovec sees the dynamic of that change over the 16 years that he has run a Wednesday “Hay Day” sale at his Hutchinson auction center. He shut down the auction center last year, but has maintained the hay sales.

“Today we’re selling primarily to local farmers within a 25-mile radius. And most of the hay comes in from that same geography,” Hotovec said. In 1994 when he bought the sale barn he estimated 90 percent of his hay sales went to dairy farmers. Today hay sales to dairy farmers are maybe 20 percent of each week’s volume with beef producers and another 40 to 50 percent to horse, goat and sheep owners.

Hay sales are a year-round event at his facility. June 3 when visited by The Land he was hosting his second “new crop” hay of this spring-summer season. A few hay sellers provide Relative Feed Value scores on hay they bring to the auction, “but we’re not heavy into the dairy area so that is less a factor,” Hotovec said. An RFV test is a must these days for larger dairies. His hay sales deal mostly in the small, square 50- to 60-pound bales.

For most of the buyers at Hotovec’s hay sales, fiber in the belly of their animals is the primary purchase requirement.

“Typically we’ll have 25 to 30 hay sellers here on any given Wednesday sale, but when we get into the January-to-March season we’ll have 55 to 60 hay sellers each sale,” he said. Hay markets have been fairly strong the past couple of years, Hotovec said, thus prices have been fairly steady. He talks of $2.50 to $3 per bale averages for these 50- to 60-pound bales but in late May they went over $4 per bale.

Hotovec deals in a wide variety of bales meaning some straight alfalfa, some alfalfa/grass, straight grass, Reed canary grass, alfalfa-timothy. “As you might expect every seller has a different situation, and it’s this variety of product that continues to keep a local auction such as ours popular to a wide variety of buyers,” he said.

Hotovec speculates that this Hutchinson auction has likely been a steady market for hay at least 40 years. Sure, there’s a bit of profit in providing a weekly hay auction, both for hay seller and the auction barn. “Sellers never tell me their production costs but they do tell me about sometimes being ‘burned’ by private treaty selling (selling on their own). So they don’t mind the small commission that we charge because they know they go home with a check,” he said. That really is the strength of a local auction that’s been around for a long time.

Hotovec is unsure how long he’ll continue the Wednesday hay sales, as he is also a licensed real estate broker and still conducts farm sales. “I really enjoy it. Lots of great friends, lots of steady customers and a convenient way to stay in touch with the pulse of our ag community.”

He already has a steady sale day assistant, Brad Thelen, a Long Prairie livestock feeder and sales promoter. “Quality is what sells, even when it comes to hay. So as long as you have variety in your hay products, you’ll have prices based on quality of that particular lot of hay,” Thelen said.

All hay gets a lot number and tag that gives the number of bales of that particular lot. “We can move through 4,000 to 5,000 bales in about an hour. Our pickup with P.A. system starts at the north end of the row of stacked bales. Then at the south end swings back to sell a few lots of big bales which are stacked separately. Buyers get here early so they can check the various lots and see what best fits their needs. It’s a neat, orderly process. Some buyers load their bales after the auction, some come back the next day,” Thelen said.