The majority of farmers in the Southeastern US do not sample their hay and even fewer make decisions or market their hay based on quality. The Southeastern Hay Contest was started in 2004 by Extension Service personnel in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia in conjunction with the annual Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition in Moultrie, GA. The goals for this multi-state hay contest were to i) to provide an avenue to educate producers and hay buyers about forage quality, ii) increase producer awareness of management factors that affect hay quality, and iii) develop a quality-based hay market in the Southeastern U.S. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the changes in participation and relative forage quality (RFQ) of entries in the hay contest and to quantify any changes in hay sampling and forage quality in participating counties. Since all samples in the contest are analyzed at the University of Georgia’s Agricultural & Environmental Services Laboratories (AESL), the AESL database was queried to summarize participation and quality changes in the hay contest’s entries from 2004-2006. Five counties (4 in GA, 1 in FL), which represented 26% of the 2006 entries received in the contest, were randomly selected from the top 10 participating counties. The number and the average RFQ value of forage sample analyses performed at AESL from these counties were summarized. Samples analyzed for the hay contest increased substantially each year (42, 122, and 177, respectively). Mean RFQ scores increased 5 units each year, despite poor growing conditions in 2006. The average number of samples analyzed at AESL from the five representative counties (including hay contest and non-hay contest samples) increased from 23.2 county^-1 to 35.6 county^-1 (+ 53.4%) in 2004-2006, while mean RFQ scores in these five counties increased by 13 units.