When your animals have horns, having proper hay feeders is a concern... you don't want to have injuries, it needs to be easy to refill, and it needs to be stout. We also get lots of rain in the winter, so rolling out hay on the ground just isn't feasible.
We frequently get asked about our feeders. We've tried several things over the years, all home built because that's just what we do.
The original version of this feeder had a roof. The metal square tubing was repurposed, some flat metal strapping, and a roof to help keep the hay dry, but hard to feed big bales....
.... so the roof was removed and it works great. We can fit two round bales in it. The bottom bars help keep animals from getting into the feeder; occasionally they still do, but they can also get themselves back out.
Then we made a smaller version of that feeder, perfect for one big bale. Full size cows can reach the middle just fine, but smaller animals can't so we just fluff the hay out when it gets that low. These feeders are heavy... great that the cows can't move them very easy, but not so great when you want to move them. A small tractor bucket fits right inside for moving, or a chain with a larger tractor.
Another dry hay feeder that we used for several years, that recently was sent to the scrap pile when a 6 month old calf got their head stuck in the bars. 🤦♀️ I'm not even sure exactly how, but cutting out a cow is no fun. Just glad we found her when we did. This one was made out of rebar and round metal tubing.
We still use this feeder at the back of the barn when feeding out of the loft, and it works good. It hasn't been revamped since we added the wire paneling inside the rebar to help keep animals from pulling big chunks of hay out.
This wooden feeder is currently in the goat pen but works well for weanlings...just not enough volume for large animals. We've tried wooden versions of our current large round bale feeder, but they just don’t hold up to large cattle rubbing on them.
