The trailer idea for the big bales is a great one, and totally possible with this pole barn! Do you pull the big flakes and net them? Or just throw them out on the ground/in a feeder?
The big bales flake just like regular square bales, except of course the flakes are taller and wider but about the same thickness. I just fold up a flake and put them in piles in the pasture. I only put out what they will eat at a time so no need to net them. OK - they do waste some hay but if they are getting too wasteful then their portions are smaller until they clean those up. It can be wet here in the winter time when I feed the more expensive hay so I don’t want the hay to sit outside very long before they eat it. Because wet hay is inedible it seems.
This has been the most labor saving way for me to feed hay and the big squares have a larger mass with less surface area so don’t get as musty as smaller bales. The outside might get a little musty but the inside of the bale stays pretty good. This might not be a consideration in your climate but warm wet weather around here doesn’t make for good hay storage. Cold wet weather is not as bad.
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So when I first moved to my property I tried doing rounds and big squares. As someone that doesn’t have consistent help besides a 12 y/o and a 14 y/o it’s more efficient for me to feed small bales. I can store, move, and feed easier. I have a small tractor now, but it’s still easier to feed small squares. I don’t find the savings worth the hassle. The only time I bother with a round bale is if traveling.
I’d fence in the whole property securely and use electric for cross fencing. Then once you figure out what works for you, add more permanent fencing for dry lot etc.
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Keep in mind that the theory that you just feed less hay if they are wasting only works if you have a horse that gets the plan.
If you have one that, for example, pees on the hay on the ground and then will not eat anything anywhere near what they peed on, but clearly needs to be eating, that system will not work.
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I agree with points already made about hay. Adequate storage for several months worth is a necessity, IMO. I’ve always wished I had even more. If there are a couple horses, the round bale may not be eaten down quickly enough to not get kinda nasty, and horses don’t clean it all up even when they do eat it down before that happens – there’s a mess to deal with in the end, IME.
I don’t use my short court dressage-size arena for turnout, even though it’s sand footing (nothing high-tech). Not worth it.
Having a gravel sacrifice paddock has served us well. Keeping the water trough in there, with pastures radiating off it makes things easier. I found that maintaining separate water troughs in each pasture was a lot of effort, yet they were rarely used by the horses (tend to go into the paddock to drink).
Also agree about spending the money for excellent perimeter fencing, then using electric cross fencing. I’ve been very pleased with Horse Guard’s durability – many of the original insulators, and all of the tape, are still working fine over two decades on.
Our place wasn’t a farm farm when we purchased it, in the sense that yours is, but the sellers did have a serious “truck farm,” fenced in high 2x4 knotted mesh to keep out the deer, roughly arena sized. Once rid of the plants, it made a great temporary place to keep the horses while we planned the barn, and is what we eventually turned into the gravel paddock once we built the barn.
I don’t have propane, so no advice there. We have two septic drain fields, next to each other, to be switched back and forth as appropriate. I’ve had no concern about my smallish horses grazing on them when rotated onto that field (and they’re run across by deer frequently), but I wouldn’t allow more intensive use of that area.
Hope the inspection goes well!
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OK, if you have a tractor that can handle a small round bale (around 600 lbs), you don’t HAVE to feed it all at once. You can unroll hay off the bale, put it in a wheelbarrow, and wheel it over to a manger, tub, or feeder. So you CAN separate it. Some people put it into hay bags or hay nets, right off the bale. My 32 horse Kubota tractor can lift our 600 lb small round bales, so I can carry them around with a strap on the FEL Or I could have a spike like our big tractor, but I like the bucket… multi use. But if I have horses in the barn/paddocks, I deliver hay unwound off the round bales to tub feeders in a wheelbarrow twice a day… because of the waste issue if you leave the round bales with them. A tractor bigger than mine would in some ways be BETTER than just a 32 horse, a 50 horse is built stronger to carry weight. I wish I had one, but I don’t.
There is an issue with determining hay quality when buying round bales. You can’t see what they are like inside until you get inside the bale when doling out our serving sizes. Since WE BALE OUR OWN, we know. But there was a learning curve. Round bales have to be very low in moisture content when baled, far lower than small square bales, because they CAN’T dry out at all once baled. They are too tight, moisture can not escape. So they will either rot, OR ferment inside, if they are baled higher than about 15% moisture. You can buy a moisture meter, stick it in the bale, and measure the moisture in it before you buy. Around 12% is good. Actually, if fermented, it is OK to feed. There is a difference between “fermented” and “rotten”. My horses like fermented hay as much as dry hay. Sometimes, we get a fermented one. Smells like wine/cheese. Looks grey and awful, but apparently tastes just fine, they say. No issues with it.
When I first saw the inside of a fermented bale, I freaked!!! ROTTEN!!! We had just started making round bales, and baled it too soon. One core looked just horrid, and I COULD NOT continue to unroll it out in the pasture, figuring I’d have sick horses if I did. (When feeding my herd of retirees, cripples and pets, and riding horses, in winter, I roll out the whole bale). So I strapped it back into the bucket of the tractor, and took it out of the field, and tossed it over the fence next to a clump birch tree, in a feral bit of unused land next to the barn. In the following years, it got covered up with grass/etc. I forgot about it. Figured it was “gone”. In my spare time, I have cleared and cleaned up many acres on this property… made burn piles, picked up dead branches and logs, etc. I decided to civilize this area next to the barn, started clearing, and put a fence around the grassy area that I wanted as pasture. Let horses in there to graze it down better, so I could SEE what I was doing. They made a bee line for that clump birch tree, and ate that core that had been there for several YEARS by that point. Ate it ALL. Before eating the green grass growing there. All I saw the next day was a cleared spot under that clump birch where I had once put that fermented core, when I realised what had been under there… OOPS!!! So, at that point, I did relax about mild fermentation in a round bale, should it happen. Since then, I’ve heard that you can buy sacks of fermented feed, a feed of choice in NZ for show horses. $30 a sack.
Before we had our own hay, the first year we were here, I bought big squares from a local hay farmer that first summer. We DO have a big tractor, a 90 horse JD (old), with a nose spike. These bales were about 1200 lbs. That tractor unloaded them if we had a large load. But if I brought just three at a time on the flat deck truck, I COULD push them off the flat deck with the little tractor, inside the barn. It was OK. The flakes go into a wheelbarrow no problem, or fold them into quarters. We also got some 750 lb squares, they were easier for the small tractor to push around.
So what might work for you OTHER than small squares, in order to save some money paying the big bucks for small squares, may require the purchase of a tractor, if you don’t already have one. But if you need a tractor for other things too, bonus. I do a lot with that little tractor, brush cutting fields, harrowing fields, I rake all the hay fields before baling, manure management, I move bales around as needed. I also make some small square bales on some little grass fields, which gives me an option in feeding and since the fields were there already… just a bonus. IMO, a tractor is a very handy piece of equipment. Multi use.
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Fermented bales in my area (the mid-Atlantic) are going to be riddled with botulism spores. So feeding fermented bales to horses can be deadly depending on your location.
The vaccine does not offer protection from all strains, so vaccination does not eliminate the risk of feeding locally sourced fermented products.
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I’ve vaguely heard of it, but don’t know anyone who does. I’m in the “midwet”, about 40 minutes south of Chicago.
I was able to purchase my flatbed trailer before trailers got so expensive. I paid $1700 plus I purchased new tires and fixed the plug. It has paid for itself many times. And since I don’t like to leave my “stuff” out in the rain it might as well have hay on it instead of sitting there empty under shelter. I suppose I could store round bales on it and roll off the hay but around here roundbales are not great quality hay for the most part. There are exceptions though. And big squares are easier to deal with - the 3x4’s that weigh 1100 to 1500 lbs and the 3x3’s that weigh around 700 to 800 lbs. If you already have a tow vehicle and a place to store a trailer inside out of the weather it isn’t a huge investment in the scheme of things.
And this also depends where you are located - it can be hard to get deliveries of just a few roundbales at a time. It isn’t worth a farmer’s time and trouble to deliver two roundbales. Unless they are close. And if they deliver they probably expect you to be able to unload. Not always though but something to think about.
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We fed 4 string 3x3x7 bales and they were about 700#s. We could just barely handle them with our JD2320 tractor, but that tractor wasn’t big enough to unload from a trailer or stack them.
A six string bale is what? 1200 pounds? That’s a BIG tractor. Or skid steer. Bigger than you probably need otherwise, for five acres.
Does anyone in your area deliver this size bale with a skid steer? That can be the way around having a large enough tractor to unload from the trailer and stack. Otherwise, it’s probably prudent to plan for smaller bales. Having storage for a years worth of hay is VERY worthwhile–not only does it take away the stress of sourcing multiple times a year, but buying when the hay is coming off the fields is nearly always the best price you’re going to get.
Also, as you plan your layout, consider where snow is going to go, and how it will drift. I’d not fence across that end of the drive that runs up to the field–it’s a straight shot for a plow. Scale is a little tough but I’d think about south and east of the barn for your sacrifice area (can you add an overhang to the barn? Super handy.) Fence that north east corner as a small grass field. Then the south field as your larger turnout. Cross fence that once or twice to allow rotation. A good portion of the north west corner could be extended for the dogs, just leave your propane tank out of the fence. If you fence the front for the dogs, you can use the south half of what you have highlighted here for them as your arena. It’s nice and central, near the barn, and near your sacrifice area.
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We feed round bales, around 1500 lbs. We stacked all ours (20 tons) in one stack outside, covered with a huge tarp, but we’ve left hay uncovered a lot too. We lost none to mold or weather since rounds in concept shed shed water. In my part of the world it’s a little unusual to put hay under cover really; we usually have plentiful hay so bottom/top bales are part of the deal and we just stack where convenient. We pull shoes in the winter so we had a big feeder (home made) with a hay net (hockey net actually, purchased from sporting goods store) over the top. We would put out one bale every 10 days or so for 4 horses. We had one that was getting run off his hay (four horses, four sides, it should have worked!) So we put a panel to break up the circling and it worked perfectly. We do have the equipment for handling the bales so that is a huge help, obviously. We could do the same system with any size/shape bale though. Our hay is stacked 3 bales high in a big triangle stack and the footproint was probably 1200 square feet? Lots of people here will also do a cover but no walls; keep the rain/snow off since it comes straight down here, no wind really. We get tons of snow/rain.
We have fed rounds on the ground, no feeder, wrapped in nets. Doesn’t work with shoes on horses but it worked perfectly for us since we pull shoes in the winter.
We also in the past bought property that had been planted in barley. One thing you might ask around about is a cover crop for the winter to help with the weed invasion in the spring and to help the soil along; sometimes crop land is depleted.
With your layout I would put a sacrific area in the pasture area along the fence line behind the house (so you can see them from the house) and arena probably in the pasture corner to the right with an alley between that you can shut up to drive out to the turn out from shop or open to go from sacrifice to arena. We have often had sort of a feed lot system with our pens; open this gate to get over there, shut this gate to drive through here, etc. Your layout here is similar to one we had years ago and that’s what we did; shelters faced the house b/c it worked with the wind and b/c I wanted to be able to check horses by looking out a window not hiking out to peek around a shelter wall. I’d probably save that front corner for light turnout, I don’t love horses on a road edge and a dusty turnout (like I would get here) loses some curb appeal. That’s me though, someone else might not mind those things. Front corner might be a good place to stack hay; bit of a privacy fence and room for moving equipment around. I’d also put snow over there but not where it can melt onto your hay. Keeping the existing driveway plowed and working off the edge for the hay should work fine, to me. I’d keep that driveway open and gated all the way into the pasture so if gates are open you can drive from the road to the back fence without stopping.
Propane person should be able to park in the driveway and run the line from there along the front of the house to the tank without accessing the dog yard.
Those are my thoughts and experiences anyway; always fun to sort out a blank slate! Hope inspection goes well!
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Well, let me caveat by saying I skimmed all the other messages after the OP, I didn’t read thoroughly, so sorry if I missed something.
Dimensions would be super helpful, but without them, here’s what I came up with.
ETA - red lines would be solid/permanent fence for me. Could separate further with temporary electric fencing.
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My suggestion is to plan how your drylot can be split so you have the option to run horses side by side in solo turnout w access to shelter and a grass paddock. You never know when a horse may become ill and require solo accommodations.
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Yup. It may take a while to understand your property, the sun, wind directions, snow patterns, how you like to keep your horses, how the horses like to be kept!
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I’m kind of glad it’s in beans, so the earliest I can start work in earnest is next spring. That will let me get to know the property a little better before I go spending big cash.
@mmeqcenter your layout is pretty close to what I initially thought of when looking at the aerial.
Thank you all for your insight and feedback, I’m learning a lot already!
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Do not mess with the large squares outside. If the get wet, and they will, they mold in a heartbeat.
I use large rounds for my older rescues. I have them delivered one at a time, and the guys put them where I want them. I created a “hay trap” out of some very cool heavy duty plastic pallets zip tied together. The horses can’t get hurt on them, and they also keep them up off of the rounds as they go down.
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If this is your plan, have a place for all this snow to go. I’d not bring the sacrifice area over to the dog fence, and plan on the plow running the snow straight back to the south west of the barn. But if you don’t want to do that–have a plan before that big storm.
Do you have a trailer you’re planning on parking west of the barn?
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I would leave all the current gravel unfenced, but it’s the general idea of what I was thinking. I don’t love that I won’t be able to see the horses in the dry lot completely, but I think it may be the best option to keep the dry lot close to water/electric/hay.
The trailer can be west, or inside the barn. It will fit, and I’m really good at backing things snug against walls etc to maximize space.
Are you going to use a dumpster for manure or compost? Don’t know how many horses you have but with just 3 it adds up quick.
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Some thoughts. First. Perimeter fence, the peace of mind is completely worth it. Second, cross fencing in step in electric lets you fiddle with the actual layout, and if you have good perimeter fencing, no worries.
You want manure, hay, and water to be centrally dealt with and easily handled at all times of the year.
Spend the next five months running out and looking at where the water goes in every storm. Don’t put your arena, sacrifice lot, or manure pile there!
Seriously consider taking a bit of that pole barn and creating, at very least, generous tie stalls/grooming stalls. In which all horses can be tied and held for the farrier, the vet, grooming because it keeps Raining and other things. My horses live out 24/7 because my lovely barn is full of other stuff. At this point, I would die for being able to regularly, easily tie all of them up inside and groom them. Out of the bugs, the weather, and the nonsense. My farrier would also love me. And the vet.
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