Ricky Morris aka AGFARMER has an attractive operation.  Check his web site.

Tim's comment

"He rented his place out because he couldn't make any money on it, too much $$ in fertilizer."

is interesting. 

Especially when compared to the Eastern Kansas observation

"Here with native grass hay average between 1 and 1 1/2 tons to the acre. Sometimes a little more and that is with no fertilizer."

To my thinking the range grass hay can only pencil in IF the land cost is not considered a factor. With a light yield the cost to mow is the same as for a heavy yield. The cost to rake is slightly higher than the heavy yield. The cost per bale for the actual baling is the same if the windrows are built large enough or if the baler is pulled fast enough to get the same bales per hour on both the light and heavy yielding ground.

There is a rule of thumb that it requires 50 lbs N/ton of hay, and usually they are talking about 4 weeks between cutting.

This is true only if you are getting >15.5% CP hay. If the hay is 10% CP has 32 lbs N/Ton hay. In that case 32 lbs went to the hay and 18 lbs went out below the bottom of the root zone. (IF you are on sandy ground ! )

HERE if we put up 10% CP hay on a 28 day cycle, we are beating all the leaves off the grass. This not only reduces the feed value but cuts the yield almost in half ! 

In round numbers Mother Nature supplies roughly 50 lbs/A of nitrogen.

What this is saying is hay with 7% CP will use 22 lbs N/Ton for an annual yield of 2¼ maybe 2½ T/A. With some kind of legume growing with the grass will increase the overall tonnage. The quantity of the other elements removed will be in a rough proportional to the nitrogen used.

HERE we have our share of growers who put up good looking grass straw, with low feed value. To compliment this we have a good share of hay buyers who have not a clue what good nutritious hay looks like, let alone it's true worth.

I agree if the local market will not pay what quality hay is worth, we need to raise something else, and bale the bar ditches. HERE locally hay can clear more per acre than corn or cotton.

Hay buyers never change. in 1955 people would pay $0.50/bale of corn shucks, but would not pay $0.75/bale of alfalfa hay. Then to get the animals to eat the corn shucks they had to pour molasses over the hay plus give them cotton seed meal so they could digest all that fiber. We figured their ending cost per bale of feed was just over $1.00/bale for the same feed value the 75¢ alfalfa bale of hay.

Referring to the years with less than average hay, Those would be the dry years. Here with little of no fertilizer we harvest a ton of hay for every 11 or so inches of rain. Our friends at TX A&M have demonstrated it is possible to produce a ton of hay on close to 4" of useable rain. It is my opinion they would have done even better if they had supplied P & K at close to the level of nitrogen applied.

Here our annual forage yield is not proportional to the above average rainfall we may receive. Around our TX A&M U they receive a little more average annual rain than they do around Portland or Seattle. The difference is up there it rains a nice half inch of rain over a three day period. AT TAMU a half inch of rain may fall in less than 15 minutes. Texas is a perpetual drought broken by periodic flooding.