The supplier was almost embarrassed to charge what he had to

I thought the hay crisis was a British farming story. A dry spring, a bad harvest, not enough in the barns. Anna Louise says it plainly in her introduction to this episode: she has been searching late into the night, ringing suppliers two counties away, finding rationing signs on the haylage, worrying about keeping horses fed. I recognise that. I think most of us do. We feel it from our end of the supply chain: the empty shelves, the rationed bales, the rising prices. But I had absolutely no picture of what it looks like from the other end.

Then we sat down with Nick Nunn.

Nick runs NP Nunn from Newmarket. His operation supplies hay, bedding, and feed to racing yards, stud farms, and livery yards across the UK. He also supplies, in the same week, to the Amir of Qatar and to Godolphin in Dubai. His yard processes around 20,000 bales of wood shavings a week. Hay is, in his own words, "a small part" of the business. I mention all of this because the scale matters: Nick is not a small local merchant caught short by the weather. He is a serious, experienced operation with reach, resource, and relationships built over 30 years. And even he has been scrambling.

Here is what this crisis has actually required of him. Last summer's drought hit UK grass growth at the worst possible moment. Nick estimates his hay crops were 50% down on the previous year, and the previous year was already poor. To keep his customers supplied, he began importing from France, Belgium, Ireland, and Germany. The French hay (crow hay, from the Cro region) is comparable to a quality meadow hay; the Irish supplies, which he has been routing to his racing yard clients, came from a supplier who "stood by" the commitment and held stock back specifically for them. The consistency of supply that premium clients demand, the same quality bale-to-bale, week-to-week, has meant sourcing from multiple countries simultaneously and analysing samples and reports before committing.

It is not, as Nick puts it, "a straightforward operation." A lorry sent to collect a load on a Tuesday was held at the border for 28 hours. With all the correct paperwork. It was simply held. That story is sitting inside the price you're paying now, along with the 10% fuel surcharge that was added to Nick's latest Irish delivery because of the war in the Middle East.

That war has reached further into Nick's business than most people would imagine. He exports wood shavings to the Middle East, including to the Amir of Qatar's racing horses and to Godolphin in Dubai, a relationship built over many years. Ten containers were loaded and dispatched at the same time the conflict escalated. They are now stuck. War tariffs have been added; each container held in a port accrues daily charges that Nick describes, without exaggeration, as "telephone numbers." His shavings will survive the wait because they are not perishable. Horse feed, which expires, is a different problem entirely. He is exploring flying some out.

When Anna Louise asked him how he manages the stress of all this, he said, without theatre: "It's what we do. I don't suffer with too much stress." His son Harry now runs the website and manages orders. They have seven trucks on the road. They are expanding into Europe and into the showjumping world. Nick said he was "almost embarrassed" to charge the prices the market required, but the reality was straightforward: this is what it costs, and if people want the hay, that is the price.

What does this mean for the rest of us, on a rainy Tuesday in spring 2026? A few things worth sitting with.

Haylage is in shorter supply than hay, and Nick thinks that is partly because so many equestrians switched to haylage as a way of stretching hay stocks, exactly the advice many of us were given at the start of the shortage. That advice was reasonable in isolation; it simply did not account for what would happen to haylage demand if everyone followed it. The haylage season could begin in May, which is not far away.

On prices: Nick believes they will come down. His reasoning is partly market logic (a bumper crop and widespread baling incentivised by this year's crisis should increase supply) and partly weather optimism. For hay to be made, you need warm nights and consistent rain through April and May, then two or three weeks of hot, dry, windy weather at cutting time. You need both, in sequence, with nothing going wrong. The seasons have shifted; Nick has noticed that August is wetter than it used to be, and springs are drier. But he has found a potato farmer with 300 acres who can irrigate the crop, and that is the kind of adaptation that makes a difference at the margins.

The crisis is not over. But the shape of it is clearer now. It is not simply a story of a dry field in Suffolk. It is a story of lorries held at borders, of war tariffs on containers, of a haylage shortage partly created by the advice that was meant to solve the hay shortage. It is a story of a supply chain that most of us, as horse owners, never knew we were part of.

The hay in your horse's net tonight may have crossed three borders. Someone lost sleep making sure it got here.

The main listen

Anna Louise's introduction to this episode is one of the most honest things we have put out: she describes what it is actually like to be an equestrian right now, in spring 2026, trying to keep a horse fed. It sets up Nick's interview perfectly, because his perspective from the supplier's side lands very differently once you've heard what it looks like from ours.

This episode is part of our ongoing hay crisis series. You can find the full playlist here: Hay crisis series — YouTube

To find out more about Nick's business or to enquire about hay supply, visit npnunn.co.uk