Round bale woes- feeding pasture horses (newbie to keeping-horses-at-home question)

[chai]

This is such an interesting thread. I have considered feeding round bales for years but I have held back because of concerns about waste and the danger of a bad bale.
To the o/p, I would be very careful about feeding anything free choice that is loaded with alfalfa, especially to ponies. You could be risking laminitis with that setup.

My horses are out all day/in at night and I would love the ease of letting them munch on a round bale rather than slogging through the snow to make piles of hay twice a day. I’m getting closer to trying a round bale after reading this thread.

[Petstorejunkie]

I’ll tell you what worked really well for me.
Put the RB in an area you can prevent access to. If you still have grass but dont want them to destroy it, this is a great happy medium. You could use temp fence posts and hot wire that’s easy to put up and take down every day. I was fortunate to have more than one run in type situation for my guys, so we put the RB in one, and shut the door to it during the day.
The horses had access at night, happily munching.
Also take a manure fork to the perimeter of the bale DAILY. take good hay that’s fallen and lob it back on top of the bale, discard soiled hay, and keep the area clean and dry around your RB.
You waste over half your RB letting it fall to the ground, get peed on and rot. If you maintain the area daily it will last a lot longer.

[stoicfish]

I don’t find they waste that much hay. Maybe I just have greedy pigs, but they clean most of it up. I have fed in the exact same place for two years running and there was nothing to clean up in the spring. Unless they are really hungry they will not eat moldy or “bad” hay, but if there is some I haul it out so they are not exposed to it. It is usually on the outside anyway.
Now cows are bad for wasting.
To the OP, I actually found that my mare lost weight when she had been exposed to free choice mineral for awhile. I think some times animals are trying to meet their nutritional demands with food, so they end up over eating. I find this especially true with free choice hay. Our area is selenium deficient.

[Saidapal]

Another option is to buy the round pen panels and make feeder stalls. Then you can feed extras to the ones who need it and less to the ones who don’t. One thing for sure, you’ll always have a use for the panels. They do not go to waste.

I gave up on round bales when all my horses started blowing up like balloons and it didn’t seem like I was saving any money at all, so I went back to square bales and haven’t been back.

[Cashela]

I just got a round bale last night for my three. Looks like my oldest mare and my yearling pigged out all night and my other mare didn’t get too much. My oldest mare is guarding her round bale. As if she needs to protect it. She acts like she is starving-she is not.

[starkissed]

why don’t you just run an electric line down the field(but share the shed) so the fatties get their own section and the skinny guys have access to the bale?
If you don’t the fatties will just keep gorging!!

[feetofclay1678]

feeder at Equine Affaire

I was at the Equine Affaire last week and saw this round bale feeder that had about 6 openings in it with a cover over the top to keep rain, snow, etc off. It seemed like a really nice design to me, but then again, i havent tried it either. seems that with the different openings, you would eliminate bickering over “piles”, and less waste because the bale is inside of a container. Anybody tried anything similar? good? bad?

[ika]

We have a regular off the ground round bale feeder in my horses’ field, but we also have one of these: http://www.duplessishorsefeeder.com/Feeder8.html

I think it’s great! It opens up on hinges to let you put the bale inside, and then keeps it covered and dry. It also minimizes wastage because anything that falls off the bale tends to stay contained inside the walls of the feeder. Our BO uses a tractor to put the bales in, but if you are just using a truck you could push the bale off nearby and roll it into the feeder with two people I’m sure.

I notice more wasted hay around the feeder that isn’t enclosed. Our BO also leaves the horses for a few hours after the bales run out so that they clean up most of the hay on the ground, and only soiled hay is left.

[betsyk]

Do you have access to large squares where you live? If you can have it delivered near your pasture, you can pull off big sections, feed them as needed, keep the rest under a tarp, and thereby avoid the gorging and wasting of a round bale without the storage issues of small squares.

[Cindy_s_Warmbloods]

If you don’t want to seperate them I would ration their hay and when you bring them in to grain give the ones needing it hay cubes/alfalfa pellets or complete feed. It will help to make up for the lack of free choice hay. If this isn’t possible I would seperate into two pens and round bale the thin ones and then I fork off of the bale (the parts that have been picked through and is a bit courser) and throw it to the easy keepers in their own pen. They can eat a bit more of this and still be o.k. weight wise.

[NorthHillFarm]

We too feed round bales and I’m a convert. My husband fed them for years (before we met) and when I moved my horses home we compromised. I let him feed round bales in the winter when it’s too cold for them to get wet and mold/get dusty, etc. (which is what he did anyways) but we now vaccinate everyone for Botulism (not a routine vaccination in NY). We’ve never had a problem, my husband bales all of our hay so we know where it comes from and how it is stored. Botulism is pretty uncommon in NY but I feel it is cheap insurance as you do have a slightly higher risk with round bales, especially if they are not stored properly.
He has found over the years that there is a lot of waste without using a round bale feeder (and we feed good quality, very palatable round bales). I think he bought our feeder at Tractor Supply and he just tips it on its side and rolls it over the bale- no tractor involved. I have to be honest- we feed only square bales in the fall when the horses are still out in the summer pastures and it’s still too wet for me to be comfortable feeding round bales. I don’t think there’s any more waste from feeding the round bales in the winter pastures then there is from the square bales in our summer pastures, but as I said we do use a feeder and I think that’s key. Some sort of a feeder is essential for reducing waste.
It takes our horses about 5-6 days to go through a bale (900# bales). We usually have 4 Warmblood broodies eating only during the day (they are in at night) and 2 QH’s that have access 24/7 as they live outside. I don’t feed a lot of grain though, I’d rather they eat hay all day. Obviously because they can eat all they want (I also feed as much hay as they can eat in the barn) I have a few fatties (and yes, you should be very careful especially with alfalfa and poines) but they all winter here very well for the cold weather we get. The fatties just get supplemented with little to no grain.
My husband sells more and more round bales, so I think people are starting to like the idea.

[Firefilly]

For those of you that DO NOT use a feeder of some sort for your round bales, do you take the strings off immediately when you put the bale out? Or do you leave the strings on for a bit?

[Trevelyan96]

This thread is great. I would love to try some good quality round bales for winter, but don’t have storage for them, and with only 2 horses, the one time I tried it, most of it went to waste. Probably it doesn’t stay consistently cold enough here for them to last.

[stoicfish]

[QUOTE=Firefilly;4505263]
For those of you that DO NOT use a feeder of some sort for your round bales, do you take the strings off immediately when you put the bale out? Or do you leave the strings on for a bit?[/QUOTE]

Strings can be really dangerous if the horse eats if or it gets wrapped around their legs, it will cut them. I, personally hate strings in a field with animals.
However I see it all the time, and I am sure there are people that will say they have stings lying around and nothing bad has ever happened. 30 some years around a large farm using rd bales and having horses and I hate strings. Hate them, hate them, hate them. Feeders are not that expensive and they work great. Will probably save your money in one season. Did I mention I hate strings? :mad:

[system]

I don’t like round bales either but this year we bought a couple due to economics and our income. I have pasture and they nibble at the hay but still go out and graze. I had to peel off the outer layer, it was moldy. The feeder that we have keeps the hay off of the ground but the bale is still yucky in spots. They only eat from the good side (the “top”). They are happy to eat it and I also give them a couple flakes of the square bales at night when I lock them up.

Other thing is, with the bale up off of the ground, they get even more hay in their manes and bridle path, when it rains they look grungier than hell. The square bales, and round bales, were cut from pastures within a mile of each other so I am assuming they taste pretty similar and have the same amount of minerals etc.

[twofatponies]

Great thread. We do throw in a round bale or two in the coldest part of winter (the farmer brings one on his tractor and drops it over the fence), but mostly use square bales. The barn manager showed me her great technique, which is to make dozens of piles, each with just one or two flakes, and make them in a big circle. When the dominant horse moves to another pile, all the horses just move to the next pile in the circle, and there are twice as many piles as horses, so they just eat a bit, walk 20 feet, eat some more, walk 20 feet… and there is rarely any bickering.

[yellowbritches]

@starkissed;4502103

why don’t you just run an electric line down the field(but share the shed) so the fatties get their own section and the skinny guys have access to the bale?
If you don’t the fatties will just keep gorging!!

This is actually a really great, simple, and inexpensive solution. :yes: You can peel off an appropriate it amount for the fatties a couple of times a day so they get some grub, but they only get what they need and not all they want!

I, honestly, HATE RBs, but we use them in the winter because they DO make life easier when running a two man/13 horse operation. Ours are from the same farm that does our square bales and last a few weeks…but we only have 2 that live out 24/7 right now. I do not put a RB out in “fat camp”, but provide those two guys with flakes of hay from the square bales used in the stalls…they would both be ready to pop otherwise. In a perfect world, I’d throw square bales out in little piles every day (my two biggest complaints about them is that the horses don’t move around and the timid- and usually thinner- horses get chased away), but I have to be practical and that just isn’t practical.

[stoicfish]

I was just in at the vets yesterday. He is a long term friend, and was just telling me he went to a seminar about COPD with a specialist that had come to Alberta to study feeding habits. Apparently he said COPD was very common in Alberta due to the use of round bales. My vet said that the main problem is when they make “nose holes” or bury in to get the good stuff it creates a bad breathing environment. I thought that if the bales were in good shape this wouldn’t have much of an affect. Not true apparently, although I have never had a problem, it gave me reason for concern, and thought I would share.
I am now thinking of shaking the bale with a tractor and putting loose hay into the feeder so they cannot burrow so much. My vet uses a bale buster to spread the whole bale out so it simulates grazing, unrolling would be similar. I think the waste would be higher.

If unprotected round bales are fed, it is wise to peel off the outer layer so that only green, leafy hay remains. A horse’s eating habits can also cause potential COPD problems when round bales are fed. Some horses seem to literally burrow into a round bale, burying their noses in the hay in an effort to get at the tastiest morsels. In so doing, they inevitably inhale particles of dust and debris that can bring on–or at least exacerbate–COPD. Even the cleanest of hay can harbor some mold spores.

from The Horse article
http://www.thehorse.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=133

[Ferdinand_offspring]

Is there any harm in having a round bale of hay in a stall with a Stallion who has been fed leaves in the past? Why? I over mowed his paddock and its brown and spotty green. I feel so bad and with temperatures dropping to 37 at night tonight, I want him to eat enough but also wondered if he could overeat and get sick?

[IPEsq]

@Ferdinand offspring here

Is there any harm in having a round bale of hay in a stall with a Stallion who has been fed leaves in the past? Why? I over mowed his paddock and its brown and spotty green. I feel so bad and with temperatures dropping to 37 at night tonight, I want him to eat enough but also wondered if he could overeat and get sick?

In the stall? You can fit a round bale in a stall? Why not just throw the amount he needs, off of whatever type of bale you buy?

If you mean in the paddock, it depends. I had one horse who would GORGE himself every time new rounds were put out if you weren’t careful (big pasture, lots of bales), but I think he was just speshul.