To win the hay show at the Park County Fair, your bale has to have a lot of nutritional value, which makes for a better bale on the market as well.

“The higher it is, the better the value,” said longtime Hay Show Superintendent Trent Reed. 

Some years that’s harder to achieve than others. 

“We had 21 entries but only seven came in,” he said near the end of fair week, days after seeing the latest Hay Show to completion. “We had a lot of pressure from insect problems …  alfalfa weevils really hurt the alfalfa crop this year.”

According to the Colorado State University College of Agricultural Sciences, this pest was first detected in Utah in 1904 and is the most destructive pest of alfalfa grown in low deserts. Both larva and adult stages of alfalfa weevil cause injury to plants by chewing holes in leaves and stems of alfalfa.

It is especially a problem prior to the first alfalfa cut but may also be present in the second and third cuttings.

Hay producers have to be on top of the game just to get a first cutting dried and tested in time for the show, Reed said, unless, as has happened in the past, a producer holds back a bale from the prior year’s second or third cutting. 

He recalled a local producer years before who made a point of holding back bales and competing in shows all over to great success. But in the current climate, with hay selling between $250-$350 a ton locally and more in the southern areas of the state and Colorado where the drought has been worse, bales are not sticking around, Reed said. 

Now the general manager of the Shoshone Irrigation District, Reed grew up on the family farm, raising everything from hay to the classics of beets, barley, beans and corn. 

“That’s what I did most of my life,” he said. 

When roughly 20 years ago his neighbor, then the hay show superintendent, had to step back, Reed figured it was a natural progression from judging the show and other agronomy categories the past few years before taking over the show. 

He’s seen good years and tough years since then, and in terms of nutrition content — the testing measures proteins, carbohydrates, micronutrients and more — this year’s bales were a little down from the highs. 

Still, as he knows full well in his job with the irrigation district, local farmers having a consistent source of water has put them in a much better place than most of the state, where drought conditions are not only worse, but in many areas there is much less, if no, irrigation available. 

“We’re the one pretty bright spot in the state,” he said, adding, “The weather definitely plays a factor in what actually comes into the fair. Decent moisture comes in, especially with the monsoonal flows, is a pretty big help.”