So, I needed to go out of town. To make it easier on my farm sitter I went and bought a 1000lb round bale. There’s 8 horses eating it, but 1 has no teeth (so he gets his own hay) and another is a mini mule. So realistically it’s 6.25 horses.
They finished it in 2 days. 2 DAYS. They have grass too. That’s essentially 80lbs of hay per horse per day. How is that even possible. I am dismayed. I am in awe. I certainly won’t be buying any more round bales.
I’m glad I’m not the one picking manure from that pasture.
If an average horse on 20 pounds of forage produces 15 piles of manure per day (I admit that I count piles every day and I can tell which piles belong to which horse), then each horse on 80 pounds might theoretically produce 60 piles per day. That is a s!:+ load of manure in two days. 
The round bale isn’t really the problem, the problem is the amount of hay in front of them, and possibly being yummier hay
I’ve fed rounds for years, stored in the barn, peeled-n-wheeled out to the pasture twice a day and spread out in 10-12 piles, roughly 30lb/horse/day total. They either have a little left over by the next feeding, or I can see them finishing it before I head out, so it’s a pretty constant supply. The bale would last 7-8 days that way.
One year I tried to make things easy on my Dad, and put a whole round out in the field and rolled it around so at least they wouldn’t stand in one spot eating
It was gone in 4 days. Not different hay, not a different cutting, it was the same stuff. Fortunately there was another round in the barn but also fortunately, it was a local-ish (6 hours) ski trip, and it was weirdly warm and not good skiing so we cut things short and came home
How much was transformed into bedding?
Or used as a toilet 
HORSES!
I’d laugh but I had 2 horses and 1 pony on two medium sized round bales about 700 lbs, they destroyed both in 5 days. My husband had to put out square bales out on day 6 and 7, then I came home to save him.
Very little waste. I was traveling for work and thought 2 round bales would have been enough. Nope. It wasn’t.
Mine would not eat more than they already get. They would trash more, because there would be more hay to pick through for the choicest pieces. And the rest would be stomped into the dirt, peed on, slept on, and transformed into bedding. And they would be screaming that they were HUNGRY.
Early Thanksgiving Banquet!!
Surprisingly almost none! Once they were reduced to having to be on a diet of smaller bales they went back and picked through the ground hay and ate almost everything.
The worst part is absolutely none of them needs that much hay. Several of them probably could use a diet.
horses are as bad as humans for sitting on the sofa and mindlessly eating. I had straw left over from foaling a mare so I decided to use it up in my one gelding’s stall as he was a pig and went thru massive amounts of shavings. Came in the next morning and he had eaten every scrap of the straw - nothing but manure in the stall.
I used corncob bedding for a while (until one of my horses had an allergic reaction that presented as heaves 
).
Nobody ate it, but a friend quit using corncobs when his mini mare thought she was being bedded on snacks 
A show I took my mini to set up temp stalls on grass.
Before I could put shavings down my mini was “mowing”
His face said "OMG! my bed is made of FOOD!
Every morning I’d find a corner of the stall cleared of shavings & eaten
Round bale nets in hay huts 
I feel you! I left my horses (2) with a 440 lbs round bale in the smaller holes Hay net I could find to make things easier for the horse sitter. One of these bales usually lasts 10 days (wheeled three times a day, they also have a bit of grass and pelleted hay once a day), we were gone for 6 days, on day 5 the girl called because all the hay was gone 
I dropped two rounds last Friday - two turnouts with two horses each. Normally even on 24/7 turnout each bale would last about two weeks. The one I dropped into a feeder still has plenty left - might even get a third week out of it. The other bale completely lost its shape when I pulled the netting off (new supplier, not thrilled so far) and disintegrated as I was lifting it over the fence, so I couldn’t drop the bale feeder over it - it’s about 80% gone, I’ll be lucky if they keep eating on it through the weekend 
Somewhat related… (It takes many words to set the scene, forgive me! ) I moved my guys to the family farm for the next 4 months as I don’t usually ride much in the winter, we made hay from our pasture last summer, and I could save some $$ by taking care of them myself. 2 big stalls, one completely enclosed, the other open on the end but a fairly high wall. I had kept my retired horse out there with my sister’s horse a couple years back so I thought I’d put him in his old stall. I put his Saddlebred necked cousin in the open stall. I stack a week’s worth of hay on the pallet next to the stalls. This is the scene when I arrived to feed Monday morning:
Mr Long-necked Glutton apparently pushed hard enough trying to get to the hay that he pushed the stall wall down. No one was hurt. In fact they were both standing in their stalls looking like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth. The real kicker was that the glutton still had half a hay bag of hay left but that obviously didn’t taste as good as the EXACT SAME HAY on the pallet!
The good news was that we had the handyman scheduled Monday anyway so he fixed it. The glutton is now in horsey jail in the fully enclosed stall.
Horses indeed!!! LOL!
ETA: we’ve had various horses at the farm since 1986. Never has anything like this happened. Jeeeeesh!
Maybe they know we left and panic eat? They just assume they will never be fed again and so they need to stuff their faces?
Wow! Well, at least they didn’t break the barn while I was gone.
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