How to feed small hay bales in large round hay feeder

Feeding cows in the middle of winter is not the most enjoyable chore on our Homestead. We started feeding our cattle with small square bales inside large tractor tires. The idea of this was to keep the hay in one location without being scattered and trampled and wasted.

One of our cows has a small horn that grew back after she was disbudded and we were afraid she might gouge one of our other cows while eating. Cows can be very competitive when it comes to food.

So...we bought a round hay bale feeder to keep the cows separate while eating, and also reduce the amount of time we were spending outside feeding small hay bales one at a time. We looked for this type of feeder in particular because it's known to reduce the amount of wasted hay.

Every time we went to feed the small bales, they would bunch to the middle after the cows ate. We would have to rake the hay back to the edge so the cattle could reach it. So our solution was to stack our two available large tractor tires in the middle of the round feeder to act as a spacer and keep the hay to the outer edges of the feeder.

Long story short. It works great! With our 4 cows, we feed around 80 lbs of hay per day. We can now fit 5 small hay bales at a time so we don’t have to feed every day. The hay lasts about 3-4 days before we need to feed again.

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