First time I’ve ever bought a round bale…horses loved it but with all of the rain and snow we’ve had lately it’s done for and there’s still probably 1/3 left sitting in my field. What do you do with them at this point?
I have a tractor with a FEL and I have a brush hog…can you spread it out with the bucket and then mulch it with the brush hog? It’s currently in the pasture we’re about to close down until May so we can aerate and seed, so maybe it can be helpful in that regard?
I’ve seen leftover hay used as mulch on bare areas as erosion control. Depending on how much muck is mixed with hay, sometimes used as a bit of fill in low areas. If hay is quite clean, sometimes folks that have dog kennels like it for winter dog bedding.
If it’s dry, it will also burn if you just need it out of way.
I spread waste around the pasture to decompose or put it in a burn pile.
I had a couple round bales that went bad in snowy weather. We Bobcat-ed them to the big burn pile before we lit it.
Another suggestion that isn’t practical for most people: hogs! They’re amazing at this sort of thing & they work for free. The winter of the polar vortex, I put out way more hay than usual - just trying to keep a limitless supply in front of everyone for warmth. And I let the cattle especially waste a lot to have insulation against the frozen ground when they loafed. Come spring thaw, there were 1000s of lbs of dirty, sodden hay at the near end of our small pasture. If not for our hogs, I would’ve had to pay someone with a Bobcat or 76hp tractor to come move it. They liked to root up under it to stay cool. The they do it results in the hay getting chopped up & tilled into the ground. Much like tilling discs on a tractor.
They’re definitely not for everyone. But if they’re an option, they’ll save you so much money on pasture renovation! The worse your pastures, the more they root down; ripping out the weeds & aerating the soil. I’m a pig proselytizer! 
If you burn, everyone within a 1/2 mi radius will totally hate you because it’ll belch acrid smoke for days and days.
You can chop it up with a bushhog but you’d have to break it apart quite well first so it’s in “digestible chunks” . Best way is to to unroll it across the field, and then mow it.
When I have a stub round bale I need to make disappear, I just put it at the edge of the woods and let it rot.
Well, I don’t usually have left over round bales these days, but a couple of times in the past it has happened. I tried burning bad cores, adding them to burn piles, but it is TOUGH to get them to light… they tend to smoulder for a while, and go out- they are wrapped too tight to let enough oxygen in to burn well, apparently. It can be done, it just took some effort. But, I must say, I had one core that was just really nasty in mid winter, that became apparent when I was unrolling it to feed. Rotten. I roll the round bales out on the ground to feed, we have no mud, and little rainfall, just snow every now and again. So I scooped that central core back up with my tractor bucket, and tossed it over the fence, into deep bush that was in an unused area, choked with underbrush and deadfall. In later years, I cleared this area, and turned it into a small pasture (my specialty- pasture creation from previously trashed areas!). I had forgotten about the old bale core, it was like 6 years later. It was rolled up against a tree stump, semi sheltered and we don’t get a lot of rain, and the core was not noticeable any more, covered with grasses etc. And I turned horses out there to graze. They ate the bale core, 6 years later. No issues, no illness, they LIKED it. They CHOSE to eat it, instead of fresh grass. It was fermented I guess, not rotten. I was horrified, but they were right, it was OK. Our fairly dry environment makes this sort of thing possible here, more so than in wet environments for sure. Your environment may not be the same as mine. Apparently fermented hay is very popular as horse feed in some parts of the world, quite expensive to buy.
We don’t get bad round bale cores any more, since we got a moisture meter to use while baling them. And a bit of experience about how dry the grass has to be to remain good at the core of a round bale.
If your left over round bale core is good hay, not rotten but just damp on the outside, you can scoop it up with your tractor bucket and a cargo strap, and move it, and feed it. If it is too wet to do this and gooey inside with rot, I’d roll it out and let it decompose and turn into soil in your pasture. You can turn it into the soil later with a rotovator if you like, it will act as fertilizer in your field. I normally just harrow my winter pasture area, in spring when my horses move out of there, breaking up manure and any hay dust/leaves etc that are left over from feeding. Works great! Grows back with thick grass in summer. Previous to our ownership, this area was used for wintering cows, feeding hay on the ground just like this, lots of fertile soil here.
For just a few horses, it is a better plan to serve hay off a round bale from a wheelbarrow, peeling off enough at a time to satisfy your horses daily. Less waste doing it this way.
That would be silage.
Less waste of hay, yes. I find the labor difference between plopping bales in the pasture every other week and pulling of a daily ration to be significant as well. Which way is a “better plan” is dependent on circumstances.
True!!
Bagged feed, and yes, related to silage.
Ding Ding Ding! Winner!
I only have two horses right now and the big bales make my life so much easier. The big bales also have the added bonus of me knowing that when I am at work and the weather turns from nothing to a blizzard that my two have all the hay they need to keep them warm and toasty (because using the shelter is so over rated).
I feed my big bales in a feeder with a small hole hay net so there really is not any significant waste.
At my last horse property, I only had two horses at the end. Even without nets or covers, I didn’t usually have a ton of waste. The hay they pulled down and slept on I convinced myself was bedding and not waste. At least they had warm comfy beds. They were pasture kept so no bedded stalls for them to nap in.
And if I wanted to go out to dinner and then out for drinks after work, I wasn’t worried about the horses. Plenty of hay to keep them occupied.
If you have smaller strawberry farmers locally, they’ll often take “rotten” hay to mulch their plants with. Might be worth advertising “free for the taking” if you don’t find a use for it yourself.
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