# Drying out a muddy paddock.



## boots (Jan 16, 2012)

I would section it off, personally. You've already figured out how to prevent a big mess in the future.

There are more complicated, labor intensive, and costly solutions, but your idea will probably work well.


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## horselovinguy (Oct 1, 2013)

Do you have a farm tractor?
Feeding round bales makes me think you might for moving those monsters easier...

Bucket-loader by chance? 
Or a heavy landscape rake for the tractor?
Box-blade...
Back-blade, rake or drag and scoop the mess, what you scoop out and dispose of replace with a load of dirt and spread it thick where the roll was and made the mess...
Eliminates your issue very quickly...load of sand by me {10 yards} is $100 delivered in my paddock where I want it..

I've fed rounds...
I limited my horses {I currently don't have rescues} to several hours morning, then 2 hours mid-day and then I scooped up and placed the ripped off and mess made part of the round roll out for dinner in a different part of the paddock...about another 6 hours of non-stop munching.
Cleaned up any poop and disposed of soiled/pooped on hay on the manure pile..
It _*is*_ more work for me/you, but what you will save by not having such waste makes up for the effort put-forth.
I had 2 horses on that round roll...lasted me almost 6 weeks and I had near "0" waste...
Like I said though, my guys were not 24/7 for the exact reasons you stated...filth, waste and mess of what they would do to the ground forget the hay itself..
My rounds were about 1000 pounds tightly rolled.
$60 for a round versus about $300 for squares is quite a savings too. 
:runninghorse2:...
_jmo..._


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## Horsef (May 1, 2014)

Stupid question: do those round bale feeders not work? Some of them look like the would keep everything contained. (Sorry, I know nothing about farm husbandry)


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## horselovinguy (Oct 1, 2013)

_No question is stupid if you learn from a answer provided... 
_

So my experience with the round bale rings is they prevent the horse from laying down in the round roll itself, contain some of the hay as it is pulled apart.
The horses, or at least mine, yank and pull apart the roll from the center.
It can make a huge mess on the ground outwards of 4 - 6 feet from the actual roll if you allow and not clean it up.
That which is pulled off now is on the ground underfoot.
Horses being horses and some are lazy, they will just defecate in place, on top of the hay soiling it and rendering it not edible anymore...a huge waste.
Some horses also love the soft of deeply yanked out hay to laie down on and rest...now pushing th ehay into ground that is damp from just being dirt...now dirty the horses do not want to eat it when they have better pickings still fresh in the ring to continue to do the same things to...waste.
It is said when feeding rounds it is common for 1/3 of the total round bale to be wasted one way or another.
To get more than that as fed hay is a work put out by horse owner and barn workers if a boarding situation.
Around most round bales it is disgusting to me, the waste, the sucking mud, the stench...and then you need to move the bale when a new one of offered and the cycle continues...and you soon have what the OP is dealing with...
_What to do....:think:_
:runninghorse2:_..._
_jmo...
_


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## mred (Jan 7, 2015)

https://www.klenepipe.com/h-8-hay-saver-feeder/

They work better than any others I have seen.


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## SilverMaple (Jun 24, 2017)

We feed rounds, as does nearly everyone else in our area as nobody bales small squares anymore. We stand them on-end in the barn and peel them apart like a cinnamon roll and fork it into a large hay feeder, or a big round leaky stock tank repurposed for hay, depending on what field the horses are in. Each bale lasts about 3-5 weeks for three horses, depending on how cold it gets. Some hay still ends up trampled into ground, but not nearly as much-- we feed enough that the horses have several hours of eating 2-3 times a day, and those few hours when it's empty, they tend to clean up most of what's left on the ground before it gets too muddy or ruined. I've seen a lot of people go to slow-feed nets on round bales, even in feeders, or to something like a bale barn or bale buddy, which seem to work well from what I've seen. In the spring once the ground thaws and dries up, the feeders are moved and the mess where they were all winter is graded off to dry, with the layers of poop and hay pushed to the compost pile. The spring/summer/fall site is rarely used if there's grass, so it's not a big deal, then the feeders are pulled back up in the areas near the barn sheltered from the wind for winter feeding again once the ground freezes. Spring and fall are still muddy, but unless you can completely grade, and put down crushed rock and gravel, then draining mats that you keep clean, there's not much you can do and it's part of having animals outdoors.


A friend just built a beautiful new hoop building as an arena and one end is adjacent to the pasture so it is fenced off and can be used as a run-in and hay can be fed indoors all winter. It has a gravel floor for drainage with rubber draining mats on that and wood shavings over top, so it can be picked daily and new bedding added, and in spring can be scooped out completely with the loader and aired, then new bedding placed over the top. So far with a couple of smaller feeders in there (her weanlings use that pasture this time of year) it's working really well. Her broodmares come home in late fall, and she can then feed 10 - 15 horses off round bales indoors with good footing. I think she's more excited about that than she is finally having an arena with a roof and walls....


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