Use a slight hill to unload on. They roll right off. A feeder of some kind will reduce waste.
My horses rotate between a sandy paddock and their pastures, and I keep hay in that paddock (so letting it break down in the spot wasn’t an option - I was trying to keep the area dry). I threw down a bunch of rubber mats that the hay bale goes on top of, and when they finish it I scrape the wet and gross hay up and then drop it on the pasture.
I did this by hand and cart for a while and it’s possible but it’s a workout every few weeks! If your ranger can pull a cart of wet hay then it’d be totally doable.
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Do I understand you to say you attach the netting to the frame then pop the frame over the bale? Brilliant, I was trying to think of how to do this.
I’ve been feeding rounds without a tractor for over 10 years. I bought an AGI hay ring which is plastic so it can be easily moved by hand. Bale goes in there on top of a pallet to keep it off the ground, then a net over top of the bale. The ring prevents feet from getting caught in the net. With this setup there’s not enough waste to worry about
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The roundbale will not fertilize/improve the pasture. Roundbales will 100% kill the grass under it because it smothers all sunlight over at least a 5x5ft area. And the waste hay will extend that dead zone by several feet. Sure if you’re religiously out there picking up all the waste hay every single day, you can limit that. But regardless you’ll have damaged the turf around the bale anyway because their hooves will always be in that one location.
There’s no way around the fact that you have to sacrifice some turf in exchange for the convenience of feeding from rounds.
Definitely worth it to get a hay hut or bale buddy–this will greatly reduce the amount of waste. It would not require a tractor-- for 2 people, it’s totally easy to tip it on/off the bale. Also do-able by 1 strong person in a pinch. But even still, there will be waste. I surround my bale buddy with stall mats, which at least keeps the loose hay from getting trodden into the ground so I can do weekly or bi-weekly cleanups of the waste.
@QHEventer Unless you’re putting the roundbales on a drylot surface, a tractor won’t really be the magical cleanup solution anyway. Any tractor implement that rakes the waste hay and scoops it up is going to tear up the turf pretty good, too. Waste hay is really a PITA to try to scoop up.
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100% yes!
We’ve stopped doing this and switched to square bales to save my husband’s back, but we did round bales with no tractor for a few years. We would get a whole load and roll them by hand into our hay storage area. I usually deconstructed the bales and hung bags, but I agree with the suggestions to do a hay hut with optional net. And if they can drop it in place for you, that will probably work fine. But I thought I’d mention a fun trick we used when we needed to move them longer distances, just in case you need it. You can drive a rod (we used a digging bar) through the middle of the bale which will then act as an axle, and then attach straps on either side. Then you can tow it with a little lawn tractor because it will roll.
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I was doing that too. For wet/muddy ground or if there’s snow I have a big ass tarp (well 2 of them actually) and I just roll them along on the tarps. Really helpful when dealing with fresh snow!
Exactly. There’s a little bit of a learning curve to figure out how many places to tie the net. I tied it to the lower rail in two places per rail. That made it too tight so I pull off half the ties. So it looks a little gappy. I tied with just hay string so if someone get stuck, it’ll break. And yes, you just stand the feeder on it’s side and pop it over.
Update on my homemade feeder, I wouldn’t suggest making one. Mine is getting pretty beat up but I attribute it to being a bit too short and needs another rail or two. I really didn’t save a lot in making it, if any. If anyone is in the market, just buy the Century feeder made for horses. Aside from my feeder falling apart, it is a wonderful technique that I wish I had started several years ago.
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If you really want to make it easy, there’s a net that is designed to fit in the hay hut. I got it from a place in SC, works like a dream. It’s installed in the hut (easy enough to do) so you just flip the hut, put down the round bale (flat side) remove netting from the bale and flip the hut over the bale and voila, bale under netting. The guys who deliver round bales for me have mentioned they are far bigger fans of this method than the put in a round bale net and put under hay hut method. (And I do like to keep them happy!)
I have my round bales on the dry lot so I have to clean up 100% of the waste hay and like you, no FEL to do the work. After a couple years I got the hay hut and immediately wonder why the hell I didn’t do that years earlier. I can drag it a few yards with the ATV, but if I wanted to drag it longer distances I think I want to hook up some way to pull it from the windows or around the base and not the top hook. But it’s easy enough to manage without a tractor. Two people can easily flip it, and one person can but after shoulder sx I’m trying for smarter not stronger answers so I use the gator to tip it when I clean. Before hay net they would still pull stuff out of it didn’t meet their standards and I would find myself cleaning up 4+ muck buckets of trashed hay in the first week and another 4-6 at the end. With the net added, it’s 3-4 muck buckets when I do a full cleaning, and most of that is the fines under the pallet and a little wet hay from run off. And I can get away with cleaning every other bale now. LOVE this set up. Love it!
This winter I’m going to try to put the hat hut over four mats (still using the pallet) and see if I can make cleaning even easier and not have to move the hut to manage wear and tear on the dry lot (although I don’t think this will be useful anyplace but a dry lot).
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Thank you all for the thoughtful responses - this has been immensely helpful!
For those of you with hayhuts, where did you order them? I contacted the closest dealer listed on the hayhut website and have yet to receive a response. I have found a couple of places who sell them online but I’m curious what the shipping charges and timeline ends up being?
I’m going back and forth on another option and would love opinions…in lieu of purchasing a hay hut, if I reconfigure a small section of fencing I could place the roundbale in a 14x36 shelter. Pros to this would be easier access to drop the round bale, and protection from the elements without dropping $1K on a hayhut. I’d still get a net and poly ring to cut back on waste.
Cons would be a lot more manure clean-up than if it were in my pasture. I’m envisioning my two fatties parked in shelter 24/7 eating.
It would be nice not to worry about them in the winter knowing they have hay and shelter in one place… or do I get the hayhut, put round bale in the pasture and only hang haynets in the shelter in inclement weather? WWYD?
I had a dealer right around the corner from me so that made it very convenient. Fit quite nicely in the back of the pickup truck and took it home and assembled no problem. I do have a hay rack in their stall / run in area, and every now and then I would put hay in there during inclement weather… Which they mostly ignored if they liked the stuff in the hay hut better.
Potential problems with the shelter: difficulty removing manure, sometimes around the bale can get very muddy from the constant movement + rain/snow, I try to make sure there is always sufficient room around the bale that one horse can’t get pushed into a corner by a more aggressive horse and kicked, conversely
that a more aggressive horse can’t protect the bale and prevent the other horse from eating.
We have fed rounds without a tractor, royal pain. We tried towing a bale to the field one year, left so much hay trail behind never did that again. Ended up just hand forking, which was a great workout…on two counts, forking the hay but then also having to be diligent about manure cleanup because I fed in the corral because I sure wasn’t forking that hay all the way to the field.
We put the bale in a net then into a tombstone feeder. This eliminates pawing at the bale or any potential laying on it once it gets low. We don’t have to worry about winter rain so never cover the bale.
i freechoice feed round bales to my guys. Under roof. They are in and out free range horses, so they can stay in and munch or go out and nose around and graze…at will. I have two fatties, the others maintain a decent healthy weight. If the two gelding would get along i would certainly put them together and feed them differently, but i fear there would be too much fighting. So they are with their respective herds, eating like piggies.
I’ve gotten occasional round bales in the winter. My neighbor will bring them over with his tractor, but I don’t have any type of feeder or net. What I did was put down a 10x10 tarp for him to place the round bale on. That kept most of the waste and hoofprints off the soil right around the bale.
My mom and I built this covered round bale feeder in a day! Pic was before it was totally finished; there are actually 3 2x8s on the bottom of each side making a little half-wall around the round bale. My husband and I backed the truck right up to the opening (one side swings open) and rolled the round bale right onto a pallet inside the feeder. So far, there hasn’t been a ton of waste but I may get a net for the next bale for even less mess. It’s definitely making my life easier 
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Could it be turned/mowed and-or harrowed come spring time to help with the breakdown, ground smoothness and spreading the seeds into the existing soil?
Any hay my 2 did not eat up I would always either just mow over, or rake up and spread over bare areas they walked over alot or in the fields and it has always helped so far. I would even rake it into a “row” to help with erosion and mud on sloped areas to redirect the water runoff.
I have used a layer of older hay and honestly yes some stall shavings and manure or compost to lessen slips in muddy areas and create some form or traction in snow and ice, or underneath the water trough in winter to help alleviate freezing. I build up the areas thru the winter and come March or April depending on the weather, I mow n mulch down and harrow the areas. A couple weeks later, BOOM all smooth and growing again for spring and summer.
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I use the clean up under the hay hut for the same purpose. I have an upper, lower and middle field. The middle field has a steep hill in it, it also has a road but of course the horses have to walk, trot and gallop straight down the steepest part all winter, leaving it a mess. I spend all winter tossing seed and old rb scraps over it. It still looks like crap in winter but comes back super fast in early spring. I also use the waste to help with run off (I’m at the bottom of a hill and our new rain intensity patterns are… Special)
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How tall did you make it?
I want to build something similar but with a raised bottom for my square bales.
It’s 8’ in the back, 7’6” in front. Here are the plans, it was super simple! We used 2x8s along the bottom because I had extras leftover from another project.
Super happy with how it turned out!
