THE SHRINKAGE OF MARKET HAY. 25 
protect himself against loss of water by shrinkage. He assumed that 
if hay was worth, say, $10 per ton when cured in the field, the pro- 
ducer should not receive less than this price during the remainder of 
the year. According to his theory the farmer should advance the 
price of hay sufficiently from time to time to cover the loss of water. 
In other words, he advocated that if hay is worth $10 per ton when 
made, and loses 24 per cent by winter, the producer should sell it 
for about $12.50 per ton. 
There are serious practical objections to this theory. In the first 
place, it is assumed that the price of hay remains stationary during 
the entire year, which does not happen in practice, since the price 
varies according to demand, size of current crop, local conditions, 
etc. Again, the producer does not ordinarily determine the price of 
hay. This is done in the city markets, and the price of hay sold 
locally is based, in general, on the quotations of the nearest city 
market. 
As a matter of fact, only a very small percentage of the annual 
hay crop is sold on the market while it contains an abnormally large 
amount of water, for during the time it is going through the ‘‘sweat,”’ 
in the barn or stack, which usually continues from 3 to 6 weeks, hay 
is not marketable and is not in condition even to be baled. Hence 
there is no logical reason for assuming that the water lost during this 
period of the curing process causes a loss to the producer, since the 
hay is not a marketable product until shrinkage 1 is over. 
Neither is there any valid reason for assuming that the price of 
hay at haymaking time, when both old and new hay are scarce, should 
set the price of hay for the remainder of the year. The price of new 
hay during July and August is much higher in several of the leading 
markets than during the winter months when shrinkage has ceased. 
The high price of new hay is due, in part, to the comparatively small 
amount baled, and to the fact that during July and August farmers 
are too busy with such crops as hay, corn, and small grain to haul 
hay to market. in other words, new hay often sells for more than it 
is really worth, if we consider the high percentage of water it some- 
times contains and the price of thoroughly cured hay during the 
winter months. The 20-year average monthly price (‘‘high’’) of 
timothy in four leading markets is shown graphically in figure 1. 
The amount of newly made hay sold loose from the field during the 
hay-making period is comparatively small, and the local price has no 
effect on the price of thoroughly cured market hay later on. If the 
price of new hay happens to be lower when hauled from the field than 
the price of thoroughly cured hay later, it is not necessarily because 
its large water content is taken into consideration, but more likely 
because the cost of baling is eliminated, as is also the cost of hauling 
and storing away or stacking, if the buyer does the hauling. 
