Balers round or Square

Having said that - I put up enough square bales to fill in during winter emergencies for my horses but do feed round bales most of the time. There is a lot of waste with round bales, but I can move them with equipment rather than my back. I remove the outer 'shell' on the round bale until I cannot see or smell mold and since I've bales them myself I know they were extra dry when they were baled. Of course the throw-away outer shell is waste that you have to dispose of, and after the 'mulch' gets about a foot think on the garden, the wife will usually say something about it. I think she's beginning to figure out where all those weeds she fights for 20 hours a day in her garden come from too, so that plan may be going away next year ;). And if you feed round bales you will need a feeder to put them in. It didn't take me long to discover that a penned up horse gets bored and it doesn't take them long to figure out that a round bale will roll - makes a wonderful toy - and as it unrolls they can pick out only the very best leaves, then stand on the stuff they've picked over when they unroll another few feet. Give them an hour or so and they'll show you how many 'feet' of hay was in the bale.

So that's what little I know about it. Hope it helps.

The hosses can get bloat, foundered, and poisoned by moldy hay, plus that, moldy and dusty hay can "windbreak" a hoss. They call it windbroke but what actually happens is that the mold and dust get in the hoss' lungs and can give the hoss the same thing that humans have and we call it enphysema when people have it. It's a miserable way to see and animal die or have to be put down.

You can control hay quality better with small squares and you won't have as much nutrient lost to rot and sun bleaching.

It is almost impossible to keep mold and dust out of round bale hay unless you shed it, plus the nutrient level will almost always be lower with round.

The main reason people went to round hay is the lesser amount of labor needed to harvest and feed out compared to square, plus you can round bale hay while it is more moist than square hay, there by you save some time, but on the other hand you will lose anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of the hay to spoilage and trampled from round bales unless you shed or plastic wrap them.

Cattle people want a lot of volume cheaply, so they use large round.

Dairy folks wanted small squares to mix in high-quality alfalfa with the feed, but as dairies get bigger, they are going to more & more round bales.

Now large square bales are becoming popular, easier to stack & haul on semis out west.

--->Paul