Feeding Round Bales for the First Time - Help!

[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😂).