Feeding Round Bales for the First Time - Help!

[Annie10]

I’m in FL and have fed rounds for years.
I use a gay ring and for a while also a net until the net finally died.
I put it in the ring and they eat every scrap.
I do move the roll every time I put out a new one, and drag where it was so that prevents them standing in muck eating.
We do have a spear on a middle sized tractor which makes for easier unloading but prior to that I would have it loaded on the round size and then just back up and wham on brakes so it would roll out.

As far as storage , I can’t store more than 2 at a time in addition to what is being eaten. I put them under the peaks of my GN trailers. If I know there is a batch of wet weather coming I just buy one at a time until it quits. Let the feed store keep it dry .

[NaturalSelection]

@Annie10 what hay ring are you using?

[beowulf]

I’m in the NE. It’s wet all four seasons here.

We’ve been feeding round bales for almost 20 years. We’ve tried all kinds of methods. What worked for us is put a wooden pallet down, roundbale on top of it, cover with a Haychix Hay Net, then Hay Hut.

It’s an expensive cost up front, but I would do it again fifty times. The Hay Hut keeps the round bale dry and eliminates herd squabbles. The HayChix Net reduces wastage significantly. Together, they produce almost zero hay waste. I’d say about a few flakes’ worth of hay once the round bale is gone - really very little in the scheme of things.

I was feeding for years without a hay net, and it ruined sections of our paddock because the horses would waste hay faster than I could pick it up, it would get trod underfoot requiring the skidsteer to remove, would create a mud patch with poor drainage, etc. We would also have to move the location of the Hay Hut every new round bale, because of how much hay was wasted and how muddy it got underfoot. I wish I’d bought the hay net sooner, but I balked at the cost (~$300). One year I got sick of it because the skidsteer broke. Really wish I’d bought it years before that. With the Hay Hut plus HayChix Hay Net, we really only need to move every couple of refills, or when the ground gets muddy enough.

Our five horses go through a 650lb round bale about every 5 to 7 days, depending on the weight and season.

The bonus to our set-up is that one person can do it solo. It’s much easier with two, of course. We pick up the round bale from our local hay supplier, roll it off of the truck, tilt the roundbale onto a pallet, cover with the hay net, cover with the Hay Hut. It’s a 5 minute job with two people, about a 10m job solo.

Oh – I learned you can make it easier for yourself solo by using your truck to push the round bale onto the pallet.

[Annie10]

@NaturalSelection

@Annie10 what hay ring are you using?

I had a big black rubber thing for awhile and it died, so now I have one of those big metal ones, but not the tombstone kind for cattle

[luvmyhackney]

I fed round bales to my horses for the first time when I was on work trip to make it easier for DH.

Make sure you net it to control the consumption. My two horses and one pony ate 2 TWO 900 lb round bales in 6 days. I literally had to order a new girth for their fat butts.

They didn’t waste hardly any but they pooped in a circle around it.

I pushed them with my tractor vs picking them up or hand rolling to move them.

I feed square bales normally and have the big shire hay nets that hold a 55-60 lb bale. I usually just throw out 4 bales and a couple smaller hay nets and that lasts a good 2-3 days. I have enough nets that I fill them on Sundays and just have to put them out in the field. Makes it seem easier.

[RedHorses]

In my experience, hay nets pay for themselves within a couple of months just in the amount of hay they save.

With two or three horses on a bale, it does need some kind of containment or it will collapse and spread out inside the net. Of course containment is a must if any of the horses are shod.

I built a fence in 5’ sections for my netted bale, and had a pallet under the bale. I have often wished I’d just done 6’ sections.

In the summer, netted bales can heat up and go moldy very quickly if they get soaked.

[SonnysMom]

DH and I have built a really easy containment system for round bales for where my retired horse lives. Four pieces of 4x4 on the corners, deck boards at the top and middle to form a square. Flip round bale off truck onto a pallet, place square over. Done. I think we went for middle of chest height. My horse is the pig and fatty of the group so he wears a muzzles much of the year .
Rounds in our area are about 600-700 pounds. They can be rolled and flipped by two people. Very little waste. In the dead of winter I think she goes through 1 bale every 2.5-3.5 weeks. She buys 2 at a time and keeps the 2nd one in the barn until the first one is gone. Rolls it down the hill to the feeder. I thinks she unloads the first one directly in the field. 3 horses only out during the day, in at night.

At my work we use 5 raised round bale feeders that cover 7 fields. Two of the feeders are in a fenceline so two fields access the same feeder. Farm has a tractor with bale spear to put the bales in those feeders. All of these feeders sit on areas that have stone dust to minimizes mud.

[sammy14]

for my one horse the round fit into the corner of his shelter and the waste made a cozy bed, 2 people can roll it in.In Summer the round went outside on its side so that any rain rolled off and didn’t penetrate the top of the bale.Flies breed in the warm wet leftovers, especially outside, so be prepared to do something to prevent that.
Nets represented too much of a risk to my shod easily frustrated and rather silly horse (and i’ve heard can be hard on teeth too?)

[Old_Mac_Donald]

I don’t know how big your bales are, but this is what I do in Australia.

I get IBC pods off of farmers for about $100 each (used). The bladder comes out. There are a few ways you can use them, and they fit a 3’X4’ round perfectly.

You can take the bladder out and chuck the bale in. Gets messy quickly.

Or I use 4cm hayfeeder nets over the entire bale. In the paddock with unshod horses, the bale goes into the bladder without the steel pod. I cut the top off of the bladder and it mostly keeps all the hay inside of it.

In the paddock with the shod horse and the foal, the bale goes into the steel cube. The cube has been cut down to about 3/5 of the height (so the top two horizontal bands come off, and the uprights are ground down smooth). I then wrap the outer of the cube in shadecloth. The bale in the net goes in to the cube, and I tie it down at points so when it is low, the horses don’t pull the net out of the cube.

I will try to get some photos of the set up.

Each IBC pod provides one steel cage and one bladder.

I have the feeders set up under shelters (most of the time) and my husband drags the dead hay and poo out with his tractor every so often. In our wet season it gets very boggy and my plan is to eventually raise the level with roadbase.

I have done the “fill hay nets from the round twice a day” dance recently and it gets old FAST.

I

[Old_Mac_Donald]

Not my setup but similar. The poster has used the cut-down bladder as the inner instead of shadecloth, and it’s cut lower than mine. (obviously doesn’t have a round bale in it either)

[TheHunterKid90]

The breeding facility I work for has fed rounds for the better part of 30 years.
The key is herd numbers vs the size of the bale so it takes no longer than a week for them to eat unless the weather is good and you have a feeder that holds it off the ground. We have several pastures that use regular ring feeders and a couple that suspend the bale on a wooden floor with a metal ski frame that makes it easy to move around the drag to a new location.

You’ll also want to be careful of how you set the bale down. If you set it down like a donut, with the flat side of the bale on the ground and facing up, you’ll allow the entire bale to suck up moisture from the ground and any rain moisture will be sucked into the top.
I set mine down in the position that it can roll in theory but it’s able to draw up a lot less moisture that way.

Fields that I don’t have feeders that hold it off the ground I’ve even put it on the edge of the stone wall that runs through that field. Just using any resources
I have to keep it off the wet ground.

At my house, I have a feeder like the one I screen shot below. It’s nice that it’s light and easy to move around by hand. I have 3 mares at my house so obviously there’s some waste with bales if we get a string of bad weather but I play the $ comparison.
If I fed small squares I would feed 2 bales a day (maybe more if it was super cold). Small squares of the same quality hay from my supplier are $6/bale. So 2 bales a day is $12. The round bales I get are $45/bale so if the round bale lasts me more than 4 days, I’m coming out ahead. If the weather is good at home, the bale will last me 2 weeks.

If you go with a feeder that holds the bale off the ground, is it possible for your hay guy to drive up to your feeder and roll it into it? That would be the easiest way if you don’t have a tractor to easily move it around.

[clanter]

@TheHunterKid90

Small squares of the same quality hay from my supplier are $6/bale. So 2 bales a day is $12. The round bales I get are $45/bale

only I wish for those prices, small squares here are in the $16 range, large rounds are near $200, so we just default to importing three string teff at about $600 a ton which nearly Every piece is eaten

When we fed rounds, we had space to store them out of the pastures on concrete where we would just basically unroll them feeding the loose hay

[VodkaRedbullx2]

I have had bad luck with horses doing stupid things with feeders. It’s kinda of like coastal hay - you’re fine until you’re not.
I’ve had nasty dumb lacerations and scars from them. …just when you think they are fine they do something dumb.

So I accept the wastage and let my horses have that extra wasted hay as their “hay bed”.

I used to have a tb mare that would take hay out of the roundbale feeder just to make herself a nice hay bed.

[ChestnutArabianMare]

Feed round bales with a proper horse feeder (my mare was turned out with a cattle feeder one year at a boarding barn and rubbed out several inches of her mane eating through it) and a slow feed net to greatly reduce waste. My mare and her pasture mate (roughly 15hh horses, so not giant) ate their way through a 500-lb round bale in about a week without a slow feeder net… they only wasted maybe 10 percent of the bale. Don’t use the nets with shod horses or a blanketed horse without a horse feeder.

The barn I board at now gets giant square bales that are 1100 lbs of beautiful grass hay. They are stored in the barn on pallets. One big flake weighs maybe 10-15 pounds. You get the discount of big bales but the ease of squares and smaller flakes… it’s a nice combination!

[4horses]

Do you have pictures?

[SonnysMom]

I will see if I can go to my friend’s this weekend and get some.

[kaya842]

@TheHunterKid90

house, I have a feeder like the one I screen shot below.

Please please PLEASE throw that thing the HELL out! That exact feeder killed my young horse just over a year ago. I know they are expensive but a hayhut is nothing compared to their life. My threadhttps://forum.chronofhorse.com/t/warning-tarter-hay-cradle-feeder/775375?page=2 on it.

[kaya842]

OP - I’ve feed rounds at our personal farm for 4 years and have friends and have boarded at places that fed rounds the other 15 or so years I’ve been in horses. The only negative incident is linked above - DO NOT BUY THAT FEEDER.

Rounds are so much more economical. I have had 2 horses on round bales year round for 4 years. It takes them 4-6 weeks to eat a bale. The hay hut with the hay hut brand net makes for no waste. I’ve done the hay chix net (not with the hay hut but the other feeder) and the horses put huge holes in it quickly. Personally, I think it would be a PITA to use the hay chix net then put the hay hut on vs just tipping the hay hut (with attached net) on. The most waste comes at the beginning and the end of the bale. The first few days I will take up hay they pulled out but left on the ground once or twice a day. At the end of the bale, there will be some that they deemed inedible so we will toss that too. Still incredible cost savings over squares. We use our compact (maybe subcompact?) Mahindra with a hay spike (usually no counterweight other than the rear attachment typically a box blade) to move the bales. We’ve had small bales (maybe 800lbs) and HUGE bales (near or over 1500lbs which is our tractors capacity). We store ours outside on pallets, under a billboard tarp and do lose most of the outer layer. I’d love to build a 2-3 sided shed for the bales but don’t have the funds for it yet. Ideally, I’d find a supplier where we get one bale at a time (but that has disadvantages here too - it could snow us in right when we need a bale). I wouldn’t/ won’t use traditional hay rings, really believe the only way to go is the hay hut/ bale barn style feeders. It takes us about 20 min to put a bale out (I personally cannot flip the hut alone), once every 4 weeks or so. I love that I can also use the hay hut with small squares (and maybe big squares but I’ve never tried with those) with the net even, if needed.

[ParadoxFarm]

@beowulf

We’ve been feeding round bales for almost 20 years. We’ve tried all kinds of methods. What worked for us is put a wooden pallet down, roundbale on top of it, cover with a Haychix Hay Net, then Hay Hut.

Yep, this!!

[Weezer]

For the past 12 years I’ve been feeding rounds without storage or a tractor. Over the last few years, I’ve perfected the system.

I pick up a bale every one or two weeks, roll it off the truck onto a pallet surrounded by a pvc hay ring. Then I clip a slow net ring onto the hay ring and we’re good to go. During the very wet seasons I do loose some partial bales to mould or rot and it’s a huge pain to dispose of those without a tractor. A few years ago I was able to set up a gated off area under a shelter. During the wet season I store the round there and peel off hay to dump in the hay ring every day. It takes a bit of work but it’s generally only for a few weeks in spring and fall and it saves the hay from spoiling.

I only have two horses and the pvc hay ring paired with the special ring net were game changers. So much less work and worth every penny. The pvc hay ring is very expensive but it’s easy to move by hand and almost impossible for a horse to get injured with (somewhere out there I hear a horse saying “challenge accepted😂).