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Use care feeding round hay bales to small animals
 

By Joyce Weaver

I just received my June 10, 2021, issue of Farm World, which shows on the front page a beautiful peaceful photograph of Boer goats and a cow placidly enjoying a round bale of hay together. To the average person this looks like a very normal, nice scene from an Indiana rural farm. However, to the experienced shepherd this depicts a potential recipe for disaster – great danger – to the smaller animals, namely the goats, sharing this scene.

First of all, the metal tubular round bale feeder is designed for cattle – to keep these large animals out of the hay. As you can see, it does nothing to keep the smaller goats out. They are inside the feeder, enjoying being right under the dangerous mushroom shaped bale and of course defecating on the hay. As the animals continue to eat the lower part of the bale, it will eventually tip over on them, potentially smothering and killing them. I have lost both small lambs and adult ewes due to this happening. It is quite a sad thing to find your animals killed by a large, heavy round bale falling over on them. I have also lost sheep from getting wedged between the feeder and round bale and other greedy sheep jumping on them so they couldn’t get loose, and then suffocating.

The positioning of the bale is another hazard. This bale was placed in the feeder on the round side of the bale, which causes “mushrooming” as the bale is eaten from the bottom. If the bale had been placed on the flat end of the bale down, there would not be as great a danger of the bale “mushrooming.”

I have used round bale feeders especially designed for sheep and have still had problems with sheep getting caught, the feeder flipping over on them and lambs being smothered. These situations all occurred using the large round bales – 5x5, 4x5 and even 4x4 size. So now I use no round bale feeders at all – nothing to be a hazard to the sheep. I just place the bale on the ground, flat side on the ground, and be sure to completely remove any netwrap or baler twine. There was an episode on the Dr. Pol’s veterinarian TV program where a client had brought in a goat that was continually getting thinner and thinner and eventually died. He did a biopsy at death and found the goat was full of baler twine which blocked its gut and it could no longer process food and died.  So be sure to remove the baler twine and pick up any you see on the ground.

Since it is June as I write this and the pastures are abundant with grass, I feed no round bales at this time of year. However, during winter I do feed 3x3 round bales of hay to my flock. I bought a Japanese-made 3x3 round baler from a dealer in Texas and it is perfect for feeding small farm animals like sheep and goats without danger of injuring them. I place the bales flat on the ground, remove the strings and let them at it. They do a good job cleaning up the bales completely leaving very little waste.

I hope this information will help other sheep and goat owners avoid the tragedy of loosing animals when feeding round bales of hay.

For more questions about sheep and goats contact Joyce Weaver at lambjoyw@gmail.com.

 

6/14/2021