Horses in Trouble

continued

"I don't think we'll see a drop in price," says Maulbetsch, who's been baling and selling hay for thirty years. "There's not many people in the business anymore."

Maulbetsch says grain prices were at a historic high last year, and a lot of farmers switched acreage from hay to more profitable beans. And with so many horse owners getting out of the business, demand has dropped.

"We used to have loads lined up all the time," he says. "Now we're taking care of our core customers. We're not seeing the shoppers like we used to."

But he is seeing something unprecedented--enterprising competitors who are literally undercutting his hay business: "If there's weeds on a lot, anything green growing on a construction site, they cut it down and bale it up" and pass it off as cheap hay.

--M.B.   

[Originally published in December, 2009.]