The round bale hay experiment - Part 2
Posted by Bill on Nov 21 2006 at 09:55 pm | Tagged as: Pasture
A month ago I wrote about experimenting with a round bale of hay in the pasture during the cold season and here’s an update on how that’s going for us. Although our horses almost entirely ignored the round bale when the weather was warm, they’ve shown great interest in it once the weather cooled and the green grasses died off for the winter. In fact I’m starting to think we should have purchased a few more round bales. Not only was the price a good deal ($20 for 1,000 pounds of fresh cut hay!), I’m starting to thing the horses really need the supplemental forage until spring. Almost every day now I see at least one horse rear sticking out beside the tree where the round bale rests. The horses don’t seem to like to outer layer which is no doubt moist from all the rain we’ve been having but the chewy center must be delicious, as they’ve managed to carve the middle section of the round bale out (see picture). So I’d say the “experiment” is going quite well. Armed with this information, I’ll probably look for some more round bales, though the prices have almost certainly gone up since I bought this one. If I’m successful in acquiring a few more, I’m going to place them in the old barn to keep the moisture down this time.
I need to point out that the brush you see on the left of that picture isn’t normally there. A nearby tree split during a storm and has since been trimmed. We try to correct fallen trees and other hazards as quickly as possible for the safety of the horses.
Have enjoyed reading your blog since I found it last week. We, too, are first time horse owners and went from 1 to 5 and now to 4 horses in less than a year. I wouldn’t change any of it.
Thanks for these nice posts about your experience with round bales. We’re considering doing the same for our five horses.
Kimberly
Tonya, welcome and thanks for reading. Is there such thing as a horse-a-holic?
Kimberly, Thanks, it’s good to know someone other than us finds this blog exercise useful.
I’ll post a follow-up once we secure some more round bales. Prices I’ve seen or heard quoted range from my super $20 deal to $100 (ouch!). At $100 for 1,000 pounds, that’s about what I can still get square bales for, cut into flakes ($2 a bale at 30 pounds each, which is a great deal) so I don’t think I’d pay that much. We’ll see what happens.
Good luck to you. I’d love to know what you end up paying in your area if you don’t mind sharing.
Found your blog last night. Lots of great information! We are new horse (x4) owners. Glad to see others learning on-the-fly as we are. I have had good success with round bales so far. Much more economical. Some logistical issues with transport, but nothing too bad. If you continue with round bales, you might want to invest in a hay ring. It keeps the bale from being trampled & wasted and doesn’t seem to have any adverse effects on the feeding. I have found that it added about 7-10 days to the life of a bale.
Hey thanks for that advice. I’m not sure I know what a hay ring is but the google is our friend, so I’ll do a little searching. BTW, I’m about to post Part 3 of this round bale experiment, probably today.
Thanks for reading and good luck with your adventure!
David, that’s good advice about the hay ring. Our round bale has been pretty much decimated - it could have used some protection!
Watch out for round feeders, though. I don’t think they’re dangerous to horses, but it will rub their manes off. When we got Valentine, he was missing about a foot of mane, right down to the root. It took a few days to figure out what had happened to it. We thought he had some horrible form of rain rot or something, but then our farrier asked if his previous owner had used a round feeder. Duh. It’s mostly grown back now. I’ll post “before and after” pictures sometime.
Let me just clarify: hay rings and round feeders=two different things. There was some confusion around here, so there might have been among our readers, too.
[…] Thanks to David who commented in The round bale hay experiment - Part 2 about using a hay ring, specifically a horse hay ring. Apparently one of these devices reduces the amount of wasted hay by keeping the round bale contained. Horses simply reach their necks over and feed out of the middle. We’re doing some more research on price, etc. and will bring it up in a later post. David says it extends the life of the bale up to a week or more. Sounds good to me, provided the price is reasonable. […]
There are round bale rings for horses and for cattle. If you get the right one for horses it will not rub their mane off. The cattle one will. We have had horses for 10 plus years and have always feed round bales. It is great for the horses. They eat when they want and helps keep their body tempature up.
I use round bales, as far as waste, i dont put the whole thing out there, I take what they need daily and put it out there in the pasture, once its gone,I add more, therefore there is no waste at all..little more work but worth it, considering the prices of hay these days. They eat it all, nooo waste!!