Short on Hay: How to Stretch a Tight Winter Feed Supply

By the XES Netting team — bale net-wrap manufacturer · Updated August 29, 2026 · ~11 min read

There is a specific moment every fall when a producer walks the stack, counts, does some arithmetic, and realizes the number does not work. What happens next tends to be driven by whatever is easiest to do that week — usually buying hay at the top of the market or feeding harder and hoping.

Both are usually the wrong first move. This guide is the order of operations: what to do first, what to do only after that, and what the actual costs are at each step. It is a decision hub, so it leans on and links out to the individual guides rather than restating them.

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First: the national number is not your number

2026 is genuinely a short year. USDA data reported by Drovers puts the total US hay supply down about 7.2% year over year, with production down roughly 7.9% and alfalfa production about 10.4% below its ten-year average. The National Drought Mitigation Center's agriculture-in-drought tracker had roughly 62% of alfalfa hay acreage and 58% of the US cattle inventory sitting in drought areas in late August.

But here is the number that should change how you read all of that. Hay supply per head of cattle for 2026 works out to about 1.59 tons — down from last year, yet close to the fifteen-year national average. Nationally this is tight, not catastrophic.

Which means the crisis is regional, and averages will mislead you badly. The same week on the same forum, producers were describing completely different years:

"It has been very dry here. We have not seen any rain since May, and then it was not that much. The State has cut back the ditch company on water. I can only run one 10" pipe at at time, I usually am able to run two 10" pipes."

— CowboyRam · HayTalk thread 103316

"Here in southern Indiana and most of the midwest it has been the most ridiculously wet spring and summer. Everything from 6" in two days to a day of sun and then a day of rain and just enough to keep us out of the fields."

— Hawkins2015 · HayTalk thread 103316

Both of those are short-hay years. One is short because nothing grew; the other is short because nothing could be baled dry. And in the drought-persistent West it compounds across seasons:

"This is now year 5 for drought. This year probably 70% off of normal what ever that is anymore. I figure we have been off 50%-70% since this started 5 years or so."

— CF-Farmer · HayTalk thread 103316

Practical implication: do not price or plan off national headlines. Price off your own inventory count and your local market — and expect hay to be bid away from your area toward the drier one.

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Step 1: Measure the gap in tons, before you buy or sell anything

Almost every expensive mistake in a short year comes from acting on a feeling of scarcity rather than a number. You need four inputs: head count, days to be fed, intake per head per day, and a realistic waste factor.

A cow eating 2.5% of body weight in dry matter is roughly 30–35 lb/day for a 1,300 lb cow, and a 200-day feeding period at 33 lb is about 3.3 tons per cow before waste. Our how much hay does a cow eat guide works the math properly, including the bale-weight problem — most people overestimate what their bales weigh, which is how a stack that "should" last until April runs out in February.

Do this in August, not December. The producer who counts early has six options; the one who counts in February has one, and it is the expensive one. A grower who ran the numbers in July laid out exactly the shape of the answer:

"I think I'm going to end up 3,000 square bales short and 200 rnd bales short of what I planned on/what I fertilized for. So Wheat straw is going to have to do."

— CockrellHillFarms · HayTalk thread 17190

Note that he knew the gap in bales and had already picked the substitute. That is the whole exercise.

The alternative is the position most people are actually in:

"every beef cow in this part of the world has been eating hay for 3 weeks now and nobody had enough inventory to feed for 10 months."

— haybaler101 · HayTalk thread 17190

Feeding hay in June because pasture failed is the hidden killer of a hay budget. Those are winter tons being spent in summer, and they do not show up in a spring inventory count.

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Step 2: The cheapest hay you will buy this year is the hay you already own

This is the step that gets skipped, and it is almost always the highest-return one. Before you pay drought-market prices for someone else's hay, stop destroying your own.

Losses stack in two places, and both are large enough to close a meaningful part of a feed gap:

• Storage loss. Round bales stored outside on the ground, in contact with soil moisture, routinely lose a large share of their dry matter in the bottom several inches — and the bottom of a bale is a disproportionate share of its volume. Bales stored off the ground, on a well-drained base, and shedding water properly lose a fraction of that.
• Feeding loss. Unrestricted access to a bale on the ground produces waste in the 25–45% range in published feeding trials. A well-designed ring with a cone or skirt cuts that to single digits or low teens.

Put concretely: if you feed 300 bales a winter and drop waste from 30% to 12%, you have recovered the equivalent of roughly 54 bales. In a short year that is likely cheaper and more certain than any hay you could buy. The details are in reducing round bale feeding waste, round bale storage base prep, and net-wrapped bale storage outside.

This is also the one place our own product is directly relevant, so we will be plain about it. A net-wrapped bale sheds water rather than absorbing it, because the net holds a tight, smooth outer shell that lets rain run off instead of soaking into a fuzzy surface. Twine-tied bales, with wide spacing and a rougher profile, take on more water and slump more. It is not a magic fix — a net-wrapped bale sitting in mud still rots on the bottom — but if you are storing outside in a year when every ton counts, binding is one of the cheaper variables you control. We compare them honestly, including where twine still wins, in net wrap vs twine and does net wrap breathe or shed water.

If the shortage looks structural rather than one-off, this is also the year the barn math changes — a short year raises the value of every ton you save. See hay shed cost and payback.

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Step 3: Buy grazing days, not tons

Every day the herd harvests its own feed is a day you do not open the stack. In a short year this is worth more than usual, because the marginal ton of hay is expensive and possibly unavailable.

• Stockpiled forage. Defer a fescue or bermuda paddock now, graze it in late fall and early winter. Fescue in particular holds quality standing better than most species. See stockpiling forage for winter grazing.
• Crop residue. Cornstalks are the single largest underused feed resource in the Corn Belt. Grazing them is dramatically cheaper than baling them, when fencing and water allow — we compare the two directly in graze vs bale cornstalks.
• Bale grazing. Sets bales out in the field and lets cattle self-feed, saving equipment hours and distributing nutrients. It has real waste trade-offs. See bale grazing guide.

All three usually require the same input: temporary fence and water. Producers reach that conclusion fast when the hay math goes against them:

"Getting bad here as well. First cutting was 30% lower and this drought is pretty much wiping out second cut. Guess I'll be building more fence sooner than I planned."

— MistyRidgeFarm · HayTalk thread 17190

Another producer did the same thing from both ends at once — pulling stock off burnt pasture to protect it, while converting hay ground back to grazing:

"I locked heifers and bull calves up to get them off of pasture. And we are building fence on stuff we haven't had cows on in 3-4 years."

— CockrellHillFarms · HayTalk thread 17190

That is the right instinct. Pulling cattle off a drought-stressed pasture early costs you feed now but protects the stand's root reserves and next year's growth. Grazing it into the dirt in August buys a few weeks and costs you the following season.

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Step 4: Substitute the bulk, buy the nutrients

A cow needs energy, protein, and enough physical fill. Those do not all have to arrive in the same bale — and in a short year, decoupling them is usually the cheapest path.

Straw is the classic bulk substitute. It is cheap, it is often local, and its weakness is well understood: low protein, low digestibility. Used as part of the ration with a protein and energy supplement, it stretches a hay supply substantially. Used alone, it will not maintain a cow.

The forum reaches for it immediately in a short year:

"The straw I planned to sell is staying home."

— CockrellHillFarms · HayTalk thread 17190

Two things make straw work much harder:

• Ammoniation raises crude protein and digestibility meaningfully, turning low-grade straw into a legitimate forage. It requires care and correct handling. See ammoniating straw guide.
• Harvest small grain as forage rather than grain if the season is already lost. See baling wheat for cattle and, for drought-damaged corn, drought corn baleage — with the nitrate caution that comes with it. If the weather will not give you a dry-down window, wrapping at higher moisture banks the tonnage instead of losing it; that works for square bales as well as round.

Bean straw and other crop residues have a place too; see bean straw feed and nutrient value. And byproduct feeds — distillers grains, gluten feed, soyhulls — are frequently cheaper per unit of energy and protein than drought-priced hay, which is the whole reason this step sits above "buy more hay."

One warning. Substitution is a ration decision, not a swap. Drought-stressed forages carry real nitrate risk, ammoniation has handling hazards, and a straw-heavy ration will fail without supplementation. Run the ration past your nutritionist or extension livestock specialist and test the feed.

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Step 5: If you buy, buy on a test and on dry matter

In a short year the hay market fills with hay that did not sell in a normal year. Price per bale is close to meaningless — bale weights vary by hundreds of pounds, and moisture content varies the water you are paying for.

• Buy by the ton, on a scale. If you must buy by the bale, weigh a sample.
• Get a forage test — or at minimum buy from someone who has one. See how to read a hay test.
• Compare on dry matter. Hay at 20% moisture versus 12% is a real price difference disguised as the same number.
• Buy early. The market in a drought year rarely improves for buyers as winter progresses.

That last point was the whole message of one producer watching a market that had not repriced yet:

"I dont think people have any idea whats ahead of them this winter as far as hay supply and pricing.."

— eastsidehayguy · HayTalk thread 26381

Also weigh freight seriously. Hay is bulky and low-value per pound, so trucking distance frequently dominates the delivered price and can make cheap distant hay more expensive than dear local hay. For the pricing frameworks on both sides of that deal, see how to price hay and buy hay or bale your own.

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Step 6: If the gap still will not close, change the herd — early

This is the step nobody wants and the one with the best economics when the gap is large. Selling cows in September into a functioning market is a different transaction from selling them in February because you ran out of feed, alongside everyone else in your region doing the same thing.

The options, roughly in order of how little they cost you:

• Cull deeper than usual. Opens, late calvers, bad udders, bad feet, old cows. In a short year the cull threshold should move.
• Early wean. A lactating cow's requirement is far above a dry cow's. Weaning early cuts the cow's intake sharply and lets you feed a smaller amount of higher-quality feed to the calf instead. It is one of the most effective drought tools available.
• Sell or relocate a class of stock. Yearlings and replacement heifers are usually the most flexible.

Producers get to this conclusion themselves, and they get there by ranking it against the alternative:

"I guess I can always feed my squares that I haven't sold. I think I will sell cows before I do that though."

— CockrellHillFarms · HayTalk thread 17190

That is a rational trade: his square bales are a cash crop with a premium market, and burning them as cow feed destroys more value than selling the marginal cow does. Your version of that calculation will differ, but the framing is right — compare the value of what you would feed against the value of the animal eating it.

It is worth saying plainly that this is a real decision with real consequences for a herd built over decades, and rebuilding is slow and expensive when the national herd is also small. But delay makes it worse, not better.

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The order matters more than any single tactic

Step	Typical cost	Do it by
1. Count inventory, compute the gap	An afternoon	Late summer
2. Fix storage and feeding waste	Low — often pays back in one winter	Before feeding starts
3. Add grazing days	Fence and water	Stockpile deferred by late summer
4. Substitute bulk, supplement nutrients	Moderate; needs a ration	Source before everyone else does
5. Buy hay on test and dry matter	High, and rising	Early — prices rarely improve
6. Cull deeper / early wean	Painful, but best executed early	Fall, not late winter

One more framing worth keeping. Even in a bad year, the producers who came through it in these threads were the ones who had put up storage and could hold inventory rather than sell into the bottom. One summed up his own position in the plainest possible terms:

"I have enough for my livestock, but not much more."

— rjmoses · HayTalk thread 17190

That is the target. Not a surplus — just a number you have actually verified, with the waste already engineered out of it.

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Frequently asked questions

How do I know if I have enough hay for winter?

Multiply head × days to be fed × daily dry matter intake, then add a waste factor. A 1,300 lb cow eats roughly 30–35 lb of dry matter per day, so a 200-day winter is about 3.3 tons per cow before waste. Weigh a sample bale — most producers overestimate bale weight, which is the usual reason a stack runs out early.

What is the cheapest way to stretch a short hay supply?

Cutting storage and feeding losses, almost always. Outside ground storage and unrestricted bale feeding can waste 25–45% of a bale, while a well-designed feeder and a drained, elevated storage site cut that to low double digits. Recovering 18 percentage points of waste on 300 bales is worth about 54 bales — usually cheaper and more certain than buying hay.

Can cattle live on straw in a drought?

Not alone. Straw is low in protein and digestibility, so it works as a bulk component of a ration alongside a protein and energy supplement, not as the whole diet. Ammoniating straw raises its protein and digestibility enough to make it a legitimate forage. Have the ration balanced by a nutritionist or extension specialist.

Should I sell cows or buy hay in a drought year?

Compare the cost of feeding the animal through winter against its current market value, and decide early. Selling in fall into a working market beats selling in February alongside every other producer who ran out. Cull deeper than usual and consider early weaning first — weaning sharply reduces a cow's requirement without reducing herd numbers.

How much hay is there in 2026?

USDA data reported in August 2026 put total US hay supply down about 7.2% year over year, with alfalfa production roughly 10.4% below its ten-year average, and about 62% of alfalfa acreage and 58% of cattle inventory in drought areas. Supply per head is near 1.59 tons — tight nationally, but the severe shortages are regional.

When should I start planning for a hay shortage?

Late summer, as soon as you can count your final cuttings. Every useful option — deferring a paddock for stockpile, sourcing straw or byproducts, building fence for residue grazing, culling into a good market — needs lead time. By the time the stack is visibly short in midwinter, only the most expensive option is left.

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The XES Netting team manufactures bale net wrap for round balers and writes these guides so forage operators can find clear, source-cited answers. Every farmer quote in this post comes from a real HayTalk discussion, linked at the quote — go read the threads in full. 2026 supply figures come from USDA data as reported by Drovers and from the National Drought Mitigation Center's agriculture-in-drought tracker, retrieved August 2026. Storage and feeding loss ranges are typical published extension trial figures and vary widely with site and management. Ration and culling decisions should be confirmed with your nutritionist, veterinarian, or extension livestock specialist.

Featured photo: Feeding cattle hay in winter, Jackson, Wyoming by Jeff Vanuga, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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