Hay Market
Hay is the biggest feed cost for a cow herd or a set of backgrounded calves, and Kansas sells several kinds of it. This page looks at how the price changes with three things: hay type (alfalfa, brome grass, bluestem grass, or wheat straw), package (how the hay is baled, such as large round bales or 3x4 large squares) and quality (the USDA grade, from Fair up to Supreme).
The numbers come from the Kansas Direct Hay report (USDA Market News report 2885). Prices are dollars per ton. Only actual trades are used, so asking and offering prices, which come with no tons sold, are left out. Every average is weighted by tons sold, so a big sale counts for more than a small one. Hay pellets are left out because they are a processed feed that sells for a very different price.
Price by hay type
USDA lists straw bales as "Round" and "Large Square", so those are counted here as large round and large square. Each type's price mixes every quality grade reported for it. Alfalfa is mostly graded Fair/Good, and the grass hays are mostly graded Good, so the lines are not graded alike.
Week of Oct 5, 2026 , the most recent report. Change is from each type's previous report.
Alfalfa, $ per ton
▼ -3.2% vs. previous report
Brome grass, $ per ton
▲ +0.2% vs. previous report
Bluestem grass, $ per ton
▲ +2.8% vs. previous report
Wheat straw, $ per ton
▼ -31.8% vs. previous report
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Year by year
Yearly averages, weighted by tons sold, for the package chosen above. 2020 starts in July and 2026 ends in September.
Price by package
The same hay sells in different bales, and the package changes the price. Pick a hay type to see its four most traded packages. Ground hay is chopped in a tub grinder before it is sold, so it is only reported for alfalfa. Packages with trades in fewer than 150 weeks are left out because their lines would be mostly gaps.
Choosing one quality makes the packages comparable, because a package that is mostly sold at a higher grade will otherwise look more expensive for that reason alone. Fair/Good and Good are the two grades that most packages have in most weeks.
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Price by quality
USDA grades hay by feeding value, which is mostly protein for alfalfa. The grades used here, from lowest to highest, are Fair, Fair/Good, Good, Good/Premium, Premium, Premium/Supreme and Supreme. To keep the lines from having many gaps, they are grouped into three: Fair to Fair/Good, Good to Good/Premium, and Premium to Supreme. Each point is a month, because the top grades are not traded every week.
This section is alfalfa only, since the grass hays are almost all graded Good.
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Dataset is empty - query ran successfully, but no data was returned from the database