Hay rings: waste is the whole economic argument

Some links on this page are affiliate links. HornCore earns a commission on qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.

Research. We have not fed a winter of hay out of a ring yet. What follows is how the designs differ on waste, what the published trial numbers do and do not tell you, and the injury argument between tine tops and solid skirts. Once we have fed a winter, this page gets updated with the date.

A hay ring is not really a feeder. It is a device for not paying for the same hay twice.

Waste is the whole argument

Set a bale out on open ground with no ring and leave stock on it for days, and feeding trials put waste between a fifth and nearly half. That figure belongs to unrestricted free-choice feeding, not to unrolling — hay unrolled daily in a fresh strip, at roughly a day's need, runs far lower and lands close to a ring. A ring drops the set-out case into the teens or below.

The ranking between designs holds across trials even where the exact figures do not. Michigan State work (Buskirk and others, 2003) measured a conventional open ring at roughly six per cent and a cone insert at around three and a half; other extension trials, feeding differently, put an open-bottom ring nearer twenty and a sheeted one nearer thirteen. The spread between studies is wider than the spread between designs.

• Open-bottom ring — the baseline, and the worst of the three.
• Sheeted or skirted bottom — better, by enough to notice over a winter.
• Cone insert — lowest waste of the common designs in every trial we read.

Treat that as an order, not a spec. Bale quality, stocking density and mud all move the number.

Then run the arithmetic on your own place. Ten points of waste on twenty bales is two bales; on sixty it is six. Multiply by what a round bale costs delivered where you are. On most small places the better ring pays for itself inside one to three winters.

That cuts both ways. Feeding a dozen bales a year, the cheap ring may honestly be the right one, and anyone telling you otherwise is sizing your operation up for you.

What the three bottoms actually do

Open-bottom. Bars run down with a gap underneath. Hay pulled loose falls outside the ring and gets stood on and manured on. Lightest, cheapest, most common.

Sheeted or skirted. A solid band of steel around the bottom sixteen to twenty-four inches. Hay that comes loose lands inside the skirt and stays clean. One change, most of the improvement.

Cone. An inverted cone inside the ring keeps the bale pushed out against the bars as it is eaten, so animals feed with their heads inside and less gets dragged out. Lowest waste, heaviest, dearest.

Weight is a spec worth reading

Find the shipping weight before you order and be honest about what moves it. An open-bottom ring is a two-person drag across a field. A skirted ring with a cone runs several hundred pounds and wants a tractor.

That is not an argument against the heavy ones. It is an argument that a ring you cannot move by hand sits in one spot all winter.

Tines, slants, and what gets caught

Tombstone and tine tops give each animal its own opening and cut waste by stopping them swinging a mouthful sideways. They also make a shape an animal can put its head through and struggle to get back out of, particularly a horned one that turns its head in there. Slant-bar patterns are generally considered more forgiving for horned stock.

Open-bottom rings and calves are the other combination to think about. A calf that goes under the bars to lie in the hay is in a poor spot if the group crowds. A skirt closes that gap as a side effect.

If you are feeding horses, most rings on the market are cattle equipment. Leg-height gaps, weld edges and openings sized for a cow are not neutral around a horse. Horse-specific designs exist for a reason and cost more.

The ground underneath

A ring left in one place through a winter kills the sod, compacts what is left, and leaves a mud circle that stays until May. All the manure and trampled hay ends up in that one spot.

So move it. Every bale if you can, every second or third if you cannot. The hay and manure get spread across the field instead of concentrated, and the ground gets a chance. With one or two rings it costs nothing but effort.

The alternative is to commit: gravel and geotextile, that spot permanent. Real money and machine time. It earns out where a lot of bales get fed in one place all winter. On a few head it does not.

One order-of-operations note. Pick the spot thinking about February, not October. Wherever the ring goes, you have to get a bale to it on saturated ground.

What we are putting out

There is no ring here, and no bale count on paper to pick one with. That count is what is open, not the ranking: the trials put cone below skirt below open bottom, and the article does not reopen that. What our own number decides is whether the hay saved pays back the heavier ring, and on a dozen bales a year it may not. The weight end is settled as well. A skirted ring with a cone in it sits where it is put all winter unless there is a tractor to shift it, and moving it is the part that keeps the ground. When one is ordered, this section gets the design, the shipping weight, what it cost and the date. The tag at the top does not move for a purchase. Bales fed, what was left trampled in the circle, and whether we moved it as often as we said we would are a winter's answers, and the Research line comes down once that winter has been fed.

Before you buy

• Work out your bale count first. The waste arithmetic on your own numbers picks the design.
• Check the shipping weight against what you can actually move alone.
• Buying the cheap ring and paying the difference back in hay is the gate latch argument again, one bale at a time.

— Chris D., McEwen, Tennessee