Rising costs are having some impact on the transportation of hay from Victoria to drier regions of the nation, as demand rises for fodder in northern states.
Peacock Transport director Alex Peacock, Timmering, said transport costs were having a significant impact on the final costs of fodder and many were grappling on how purchasing hay.
"Everyone's caught in between a battle the price of hay, the price of freight, and what they can get out of it, so people will try to buy the best quality hay especially if they need to cart it away a long way," he said.
While there were growing concerns about hay availability through northern NSW, southeast Queensland, and east Gippsland, many other areas were doing okay for fodder feed into spring, according to Mr Peacock.
"You do hear about the need for hay at the top of NSW, but you actually don't hear much about anything else," he said.
"We have also started making hay a bit out in the Mallee and traditionally we make about 30,000 tons of hay a year, and last year we probably didn't do about half of that."
Mr Peacock said that upcoming weather patterns were integral to how much good quality was being made locally in upcoming months.
"If weather is kind to us through harvest, there should be some reasonable to good quality hay made," he said.
"I think the exporters need a fair volume of good quality hay to satisfy their clients too."
But some farmers wouldn't be too concerned about quality, especially if they are irrigated farming operations in NSW regions like the Bega Valley.
"Give it a couple of months or six weeks, it really depends and you just have to try and work with it then," Mr Peacock said.
"Much is dependent on what cattle will do, and we are committed to what we do domestically here with our core customers, so we never have any huge amounts of above that."
Mr Peacock was recently awarded the runner up award in the best lucerne feed test category at the Feed Central National Hay Quality awards.
Feed Central managing director Tim Ford said the awards were streamlined this year due to the difficult harvest and curing conditions, but farmers were still coming up with good product.
"We normally have state and national winners but because of the extensive weather damage last year, there weren't enough quality samples to have state awards so we decided to combine entries at a national level," he said.
Mr Ford was also upbeat about hay quality, with good growth in most regions.
"Last year there was a series of ongoing weather fronts when hay was on the ground - we would be extremely unlucky to get that again this year," he said.
Recent Australian Bureau of Statistics and MLA statistics show beef cattle through the northern parts of NSW and southeast Queensland are at their highest of numbers since 2014, which has heightened demand.
Prices have also been at a wide range as some Victorian farmers have been clearing their old crop stocks to make way for new crops which have lowered prices,
According to the Australian Fodder Industry Association's most recent hay report, straw hay in south west Victoria is going for as low as $90 a tonne while prices of up to $475 a tonne for lucerne hay on the NSW north coast.
The report also confirmed that older hay is being made available to the market as farmers' clear crop space in preparation for the next season.
