I read that again. He doesn't have a baler. You don't have a baler. He has land that produces hay you could use.

Have him keep his 1/4 to 1/3 share and you buy his share from him at market price.

Does that fix it?

Some folks think hay is hay is hay. It's not. Think gray scale. Lots of variation. I finished baling 2 months ago. Last week, I watched land being baled a few miles from here that I would not have baled if it was given to me. No nutritional value at all. An animal would starve to death not being able to hold another bite. Garden mulch at best, with weeds gone to seed to boot. Somebody will probably feed it to something.

Other than my own, if I bale hay for others, owner gets 25% and I do all the work. Small square for equine and goats.

Talked to a different neighbor couple days back, he was offered and accepted $1000 for a guy to come in and bale his 20 acres. He asked me if he got took? Maybe......maybe not. Low quality to begin with with noxious wees, baled late. So nothing special but that was not the owner's fault.

On hay I baled next to it, mine all made 3 ton per acre, first cutting. Sold 50 pound small squares out of the field for $7 per bale. Had that been on shares, owner would have gotten (6000 / 50 = 120) 120 bales x $7 per bale = 840 $840 per acre x 25% = $210 = owner's share per acre. $210 / acre x 20 acre = $4,200 = owner's share.

But that assumes some better management than he has now. His land has potential, but it takes management and time to get there.

What little hay I have left to sell is now priced at $10 per 50 pound bale. Have verbal "will buy" response from buyers at that price for most of it.

BTW, while small square bales are considered obsolete and finding labor to pick them up that doesn't consider them toxic waste they would not touch with a 10 foot pole, there are a lot of buyers for them. Small scale people with one or two horses....or 10 goats......that do not have a tractor to pick up a 1000 pound bale. Putting them in small squares more than doubles price per ton.

I apologize to the OP. I didn't intend to hijack your thread. We are just in a bind down here and it is hurting.

Surely there’s a standing hay price average for his area.

There is here, it’s certain price per pound. A couple bales weighed afterwards to get that poundage amount.

Grass hay in MS is no doubt different than ours, which is mostly northern cool season grasses. Brome, Timothy, orchardgrass, fescue, etc. Yours is probably closer to our crabgrass, which grows green all summer. So a long harvest window and maybe multiple cuttings. Takes timing out of the equation, but you can still optimize what you get with fertility.