Round Bales

[dmhstacy]

I gave up on round bales I did not have a 'round bale feeder" but set gates up around so they could just reach their heads/necks in to eat it... hoping they would not 'trash' it. No such luck - they seem to think it is a great game to pull out as much as they can.

I end up with it spread everywhere (somehow) and once they tromp it.... its wasted.

Only way I could feed one would be to roll bits off it. I find it easier to use square bales

 

[Lauralee]

I feed round bales every winter.

We buy our hay from a prize-winning hay professional that knows his stuff.

He delivers each bale for $40 each and every year he puts back an alotment of hay for my herd.

I just do not have the manpower to deal with square bales, as our only storage facility is at the other end of the property on the other side of a muddy ravine.

IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP: Have the round bales tipped over onto the side!!!! Many small animals are lost each year due to the bales shifting as they are reduced. This will easily crush a small sleeping animal such as a yearling miniature horse or a late calf or goat. I have a dear friend who lost her favorite mini filly this way!!!!

After tipped onto the side, we remove the strings from the hay completely and I tear down the outer layer of the hay to expose the greener layers inside. Horses noses are quite adept at distinguishing the yuck layer of the hay from the good part inside.

I do make mine clean up the hay reasonably when it is getting low, before buying fresh bales. Not bone dry, but within reason if I see good hay is still there.

My mares are FAT FAT FAT and this is all they get in the winter, no feed needed for these orca whales!

Our local native grass is coastal bermuda.

 

[Cathy_H]

I did some research when we sold some horses to newbies that fed round bales to their big horses. Below is just one link I found. Guess it boils down to the round bales being prepared & stored properly. It was suggested on another site that horses fed from round bales be vaccinated for botulism.

http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/trot/iss0...0804health.html

 

[chandab]

I did some research when we sold some horses to newbies that fed round bales to their big horses.  Below is just one link I found.  Guess it boils down to the round bales being prepared & stored properly.  It was suggested on another site that horses fed from round bales be vaccinated for botulism.
http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/trot/iss0...0804health.html

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I read this article (it's very interesting); it's round baled haylage and silage that is at risk for causing botulism, not the drier round baled hay. Haylage and silage have a higher moisture content than hay.

 

[Danielle_E.]

I have read all the comments and I am truly perplexed by some. There is no difference between round bales (large) and square bales IF you ensure that the quality is what is should be for horses. Most suppliers know this and will not offer you a low grade hay. It is up to everyone to ensure that whatever you prefer feeding, large round bales or the smaller square bales, that you ARE getting quality. I have seen poor quality and mouldy just as much in square bales so for me the argument about round bales being "inferior" doesn't hold as an argument, just because they are large round bales. Having the choice between quality square bales or quality round bales I opt for the round bales for ease of storage and ease of feeding.

I read this article (it's very interesting); it's round baled haylage and silage that is at risk for causing botulism, not the drier round baled hay. Haylage and silage have a higher moisture content than hay.

The above is correct, this doesn't have anything to do with large round bales but the large round bales that are "bagged" in huge white plastic covers, makes them look like marshmallows

and of course the hay stored in silos....

 

[littlearab]

It does not matter the shape of your hay bales. They could be triangles if you wanted. Up here in ND the winters are so cold spoilage is not even a issue unless you feed in the summer. But I put our a big round every 2 weeks and they do not waste much. We put a big round up in a hay mow for use in the barn. I do not like that, would rather use small squares but when you put up 3000+ big rounds telling hubby to buy hay is not a good idea

I take a issue with the remark that most farmers do not know how to put up good dry hay...... if a farmer does not know how to put up hay who does??? I do not know a single farmer who wants to put up poor hay....thats just a dumb remark.

Cows will not eat spoiled or moldy hay either. I know a hay dealer who sells moldy old hay as HORSE hay becuase lots of horse owners do not do thier homework and even know what to look for in hay. And when a horse is hungry it will eat most anything.

It is up to you to check your hay when you buy it. Learn what good hay looks and smells like. Just becaue it green does not mean it's good. You can put hay up real green and it will look real nice but will mold fast. If a bale is brown or even black on the outside does not mean the inside is not good.When you take off the frist inch or two it can be very god hay.

If you get poor hay do not blame the person you got it from blame yourself for not knowing what to look for and taking the time to look.

If you ask to buy just one bale....you pick out that bale....open it up... you can see for your self whats in there. Do this just once and believe me who ever you buy hay from will know you know what to look for and will only sell you the best hay they have...

Be a good buyer always pay the price asked ...

Just like you feed dealer and farrier....

You get what you pay for....

 

[Tabitha]

I take a issue with the remark that most farmers do not know how to put up good dry hay...... if a farmer does not know how to put up  hay who does??? I do not know a single farmer who wants to put up poor hay....thats just a dumb remark.
Cows will not eat spoiled or moldy hay either.

If you get poor hay do not blame the person you got it from blame yourself for not knowing what to look for and taking the time to look.

You get what you pay for....

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Well, perhaps there are many farmers who do know how to put up good hay, but in this area a good lot of them either don't know how to put it up in good shape....or they just can't be bothered to make the effort to bale it "just right". If you think that every farmer is an expert on baling perfect horse hay...you are sadly mistaken. So, don't be pointing fingers at "dumb remarks" please.

Here very few farmers even make the small square bales any more--of those that do, there's a good number who do not get the hay up in good condition. I can't tell you how many times I've called about hay, been told that it's just ideal horse hay, then gone to look & discovered that it is anything but horse hay. I went to get some a couple years ago, tried a few bales & told the guy no, this just isn't good enough--there were spoiled patches all through the bales & I couldn't use it. The farmer just couldn't figure that one out, because his neighbor had taken the same hay for his horses, and they cleaned it right up. Yeah, well, some people don't much care what they feed to their horses, and hungry horses WILL eat spoiled hay.

Honey I've lived on a farm more years than you've been alive, and cows WILL eat spoiled/moldy hay--sure, they'd rather have good hay, but the important point here is, the spoiled/moldy hay won't hurt cattle the way it will a horse. Around here, any hay crop that gets rained on ends up getting rolled up as cattle feed; if it's baled tough & doesn't keep (and that is very common!) it's sold as cattle feed. I've seen plenty of bales that are white with mold right through, and the farmers still feed them to their beef cattle. If it's too bad they're likely to put it through the chopper, mixing in some good/better hay/green feed/grain, and chopped & mixed that way the cattle clean it all up. And yes, that's beef cattle; dairy cattle of course need a much better quality feed.

It is much more difficult to judge quality of the round bales; it's simply enough when you look at the small squares to have a couple bales cut open so you can see what they're really like inside, or you can often manage to pull some hay out of the middle of the bale without opening it. With the round bales, what hay you can get to from the ends of the bale or the outer part of the roll may very well be good, but the deeper you get into the bale, with it being so hard packed & totally not exposed to the air it can be completely spoiled. Unless the seller has a bale out that he's feeding to his own animals, most times he isn't going to be too happy to have you demand to cut open a bale and roll it out so that you can inspect the center part of it. I try to avoid round bales unless I can get one from a neighbor who will say try this bale & if it's no good inside let me know, I'll come & get it.

As for getting what you pay for, hay is like everything else--that just isn't always true. I'm paying $3/bale for 80 lb bales this year--good horse hay; a big horse owner just down the road bought some less than wonderful hay for $5/bale & it's smaller bales than I'm getting. She was desperate for some hay & the first load the guy brought her was good. After she said yes, she'll take the hay, the next batch he brought her was the poor quality stuff; he put it in the barn, took her money & ran. She definitely didn't get what she paid for IMO. The hay seller had to know that the 2nd batch of hay was poor quality--if he didn't then he's incredibly stupid, but I know this guy & I know his reputation for being a crook.

I agree with Danielle, good hay is good hay, regardless of what kind of bale it comes in. But, in this area it's a fact that you're more likely to find good hay in small square bales than in big round ones or in the big squares.

 

[littlehorse2]

Thanks everyone. My uncle is a cow farmer and sometimes they just bale the hay without letting it dry properly. I've have oxen and worked with cows since I was 3 and I founf they eat what ever hay you give them. I might try to find some one that bales round bales and see what theirs are like. I only have 3 minis right now so one might be enough all winter. I don't really have a place to store it. I was just curious what everyone liked for hay.

Christy

 

[Danielle_E.]

It does not matter the shape of your hay bales. They could be triangles if you wanted. Up here in ND the winters are so cold spoilage is not even a issue unless you feed in the summer. But I put our a big round every 2 weeks and they do not waste much. We put a big round up in a hay mow for use in the barn. I do not like that, would rather use small squares but when you put up 3000+ big rounds telling hubby to buy hay is not a good idea  I take a issue with the remark that most farmers do not know how to put up good dry hay...... if a farmer does not know how to put up hay who does??? I do not know a single farmer who wants to put up poor hay....thats just a dumb remark.

Cows will not eat spoiled or moldy hay either. I know a hay dealer who sells moldy old hay as HORSE hay becuase lots of horse owners do not do thier homework and even know what to look for in hay. And when a horse is hungry it will eat most anything.

It is up to you to check your hay when you buy it. Learn what good hay looks and smells like. Just becaue it green does not mean it's good. You can put hay up real green and it will look real nice but will mold fast. If a bale is brown or even black on the outside does not mean the inside is not good.When you take off the frist inch or two it can be very god hay.

If you get poor hay do not blame the person you got it from blame yourself for not knowing what to look for and taking the time to look.

If you ask to buy just one bale....you pick out that bale....open it up... you can see for your self whats in there. Do this just once and believe me who ever you buy hay from will know you know what to look for and will only sell you the best hay they have...

Be a good buyer always pay the price asked ...

Just like you feed dealer and farrier....

You get what you pay for....

I agree with you totally. Saying all round bales are not good to feed horses and more than likely mouldy is just a myth. You are so very right. And yes it's up to the buyer to be aware OF WHAT THEY ARE BUYING BEFORE THEY PAY AND GET IT HOME!

Some prefer the square bales and that great, I just happen to prefer the rounds because of my schedule and for ease of feeding outside. There is good hay and bad hay and it's NOT the size and shape that determines that!

It is much more difficult to judge quality of the round bales; it's simply enough when you look at the small squares to have a couple bales cut open so you can see what they're really like inside, or you can often manage to pull some hay out of the middle of the bale without opening it. With the round bales, what hay you can get to from the ends of the bale or the outer part of the roll may very well be good, but the deeper you get into the bale, with it being so hard packed & totally not exposed to the air it can be completely spoiled

If it's THAT hard packed then you know right off the bat that it's NOT great horse hay - that's your first warning right there. Where I boarded our horses, before we bought our place and brought them "home" I don't know how many bales at that boarding establishment that we basicall threw out because of mould and I mean mould and heat to the point I thought it would catch fire. So as I said big or small it doesn't matter - quality is what does and just because one of the smaller square bales is okay when you open it doesn't mean the next 800 bales or whatever you buy will be so I dont' buy the argument, sorry.

 

[Annetta]

Ya, virtually all of my neighbors are cattle farmers, and they all seem to figure that once the hay reads within a certain moisture range, it's "close enough" to bale. Still a bit tough, but there's rain in the forecast for tomorrow, well, it's for the cattle, so it's close enough, bale it today before it ends up even wetter tomorrow. A couple of them are always insisting that they have hay that would be so great for horses, but I've seen their hay, and uh-uh, not a chance!

I do see many horses eating off round bales that I'd never feed. I honestly don't know if the owners don't care, or if they just dump a bale in the feeder & then don't pay any attention to what the hay is really like. It's not that the bales were in the feeders too long & spoiled there as the horses were eating on them, they are generally well spoiled long before they get to the feeders.

I prefer to avoid the big bales; the small ones are more work to get in initially, but once I have them in my shed, they are so much easier for me to feed. Same with my straw bales. A couple years ago I had a bunch of big square straw bales. Seemed like a good idea when I had them hauled in, but once they got snowed in I sure was wishing I could exchange them for the small ones. Had a real mess that winter.

The other thing that slays me is people that pile their round bales two & 3 layers high--if there's little or no rain in the fall after they're piled they do okay, but in this part of the country if there's a lot of rain or if there are bales left in the spring so that the snow melts into them--the top bales all shed water into the lower bales, then all the lower ones are ruined. Round bales keep great in rows as long as there's space between the rows, but they sure don't do well in piles.

 

[shminifancier]

The better farmer the knows how to put hay up and He has milk cows.. Knows that the better the hay is the more milk the cow will out put.. And the Milk produced will not only have a nice butter fat content but will have a higher % of protein.. And farmers not only get paid for the butter fat content but also the protein level in that milk..So the big hay growers know this and will put up the very best hay that they can so they too can get a higher price per bale also..

 

[Annetta]

If it's THAT hard packed then you know right off the bat that it's NOT great horse hay - that's your first warning right there.  Where I boarded our horses, before we bought our place and brought them  "home" I don't know how many bales at that boarding establishment that we basicall threw out because of mould and I mean mould and heat to the point I thought it would catch fire.  So as I said big or small it doesn't matter - quality is what does and just because one of the smaller square bales is okay when you open it doesn't mean the next 800 bales or whatever you buy will be so I dont' buy the argument, sorry.

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Actually some of the big hard core bales are very hard packed and can still be good if they were baled at exactly the right moisture content. But ya, sometimes they can be bad inside closer to the core and yet be fairly decent on the outer parts. Very hard to judge, which is another reason that I just don't like to bother with the big rounds. Hee hee, I can just imagine what some of these guys would have to say if I told them I wanted one of their bales rolled right out so I could see if it really was good for horses.

They think I was a nut...

Meant to add--I hauled my hay in myself last year. I'd been getting great hay from this one fellow, then the one load I finished one picker load & started loading from the next (all one stack, but you can tell where each load off the bale wagon ends & the next one starts). I put a couple bales on the truck, took a closer look & thought the bales looked kind of grey, so I opened one & sure enough, it was musty. stuck my hand into a few more and all were the same, so I had to move over to another stack--just a matter of which day or what time of day the hay had been baled, the earlier stuff hadn't been quite ready to bale. So yes, I agree it is easier to judge the small bales.

 

[littlearab]

Tabithia.... I'm a grandmother and have been involved in farming, cattle and horses all my life... So do not be so sure you've been on the farm longer

My point is NO FARMER goes out to make POOR hay.

And as it has been stated by others at times a judgment call is made to put it up "alittle wet". Because if you do not you may not get it up at all or it will even pooper. Hay that has been rained on in the row is alot poored then some that is put up alittle wet. Lots of farmer "like us" use soft core balers, that allow alittle air into the center of the bale. In that case you can put up hay alittle damper. And we think they are much better then hard core for that reason. Also easier to feed.

And yes one can chop and mixed diffent hays for cattle.. mix it with corn, straw and other feed stuffs. Total mixed rations.

We have dairy and beef cattle and cattle will NOT eat spoiled hay thats why people mix it with the good stuff so they will eat it.

 

[Danielle_E.]

I find it rather funny that some people automatically equate large round bales with poor hay no matter what

when in fact a blanket statement like that is truly not fair to those who produce or those who feed it. As I said I have seen at the boarding stable I was at once upon a time where the square bales i wouldn't have fed even to a cow

It HAS TO DO WITH THE SUPPLIER and how they dry it, if it gets rain, etc. Square bales can be mouldy just the same

Littlearab I understand you totally. If you have a good supplier of "horse hay" then whether he bales it in squares or large bales makes NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL.

This tunnel vision that some have the minute they hear "round bales' is beyond me. Yes of course perhaps in your area the round bales are done especially for cows, THEN DON'T BUY IT and don't buy that hay from that dealer even in squares because it won't be any better!! But don't go around saying that round bales are inferior, what is inferior is THE HAY that this particular supplier can give you. Do your homework before buying your hay, go see what the product is and then decide from there. That is the way to do it. Also I have never had a colic episode with feeding this way, not with my minis nor my large horses. The only problem I had was when I was at the boarding stable with choke episodes with my saddlebred.