Hay cost per ton in New Jersey

New Jersey sits on the eastern edge of the Northeast hay belt, and USDA AMS weekly hay summaries consistently show Mid-Atlantic grass hay trading in the $185-$260 per ton range for large round bales, with premium alfalfa clearing $300-$340 per ton delivered. Because NJ has under 70,000 acres in hay, most supreme dairy-quality alfalfa is trucked in from Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, and that freight adds roughly $40-$80 per ton versus origin prices reported in the USDA AMS National Hay Summary.

Local cuttings follow a predictable rhythm: first cutting comes off in late May, second in early July, third in mid-August, and a fourth is possible in late September in wetter years, according to Rutgers NJAES forage budgets. Rainfall is the single biggest swing factor. A wet June can delay first cutting and push rained-on hay into the mulch market at $120-$160 per ton, while a dry summer collapses third-cutting yields and drives winter grass hay above $260 per ton, a pattern the Penn State Extension Hay Market Report has documented across the Mid-Atlantic.

For a 1,200 lb beef cow eating roughly 25 lb of hay per day through a 150-day NJ winter, that is about 3,750 lb, or 1.88 tons per cow per season. At the Rutgers-benchmarked NJ grass hay midpoint of $220 per ton, the raw hay bill lands near $413 per cow per winter; at premium alfalfa prices around $320 per ton it climbs to roughly $600 per cow. Adding the 10-15% storage and feeding waste typical of round-bale feeding (per Rutgers farm management guidance) pushes the realistic landed cost to $460-$690 per cow, which is why NJ producers increasingly stockpile fescue and extend grazing to trim tonnage bought off the open market.