round bale unrollers

Do any of you guys use a round bale unroller? I only have around 40 brood cows, I have 3 round bale feeders fixed permanently w/lime screenings packed all around them and it is like cement around them. My problem is wasted hay, I bet I lose a third. When I was down in Va., I saw they feed round bales unrolled in the pasture, I talked to some of the old boys and they said they had minimal waste. My wife thinks I would have trouble w/mud. I have about 8 or 10 good spots to rotate feeding. Let me know if you have tried this. Thank you Allen E. Seals

Unrolled hay is wasted too, cows tend to stand/lay on it especially if the ground is wet or snow covered. Why not just move your bale rings each time you put hay out(also spreads the manure naturally), and only put out what they will eat in a day or two. I have also found that they tend to waste less if a bale is placed flat and not stood up on end.

we have 50 cows and used the unroller every feeding untill the recent completion of a concreted feedlot/manure handling facility. unrolling hay saved about one third verses ring feeding. another advantage is less congestion for calving mothers which results in less chance of trampling newborns. i own a fab shop and have built 24 hydraulic unrollers in the last few years. this year i converted our unroller to quick hitch to the skid steer, now we roll the staw for bedding instead or square bales. we can unroll a few layers as needed to bed the barn and stalls.

I unroll several hundred bales a year. I get them started with the loader bucket and then push them with the front tire of the tractor. But yeah, it don't work worth a hoot if the ground is muddy. Hay will ball up ahead of your tire and if you do get the hay somewhat scattered the cows waste a lot of it. What you might try is rolling it out on nice days and when it's muddy use the feeders. But yeah, You only want to feed what they will eat that day.

We had a Rem round bale processor for a little over a year and tried laying out windrows of hay with it like you would unrolling hay but it didn't work out as well as we had hoped. It was a great idea but what we found is that the cows ate what they wanted and then laid in the rest so we went back to using bale rings. I think it would work great if a person was feeding in fenceline feed bunk or something where you could feed the hay in a place where they couldn't lay in it.

Bale processors work good. The trick to is to just roll out enough so the cows will eat it all that day. Some people roll out to much then the cows will lay on it and waste some. You may have to feed every day.

I have a small herd of cows and the best thing I ever did to eliminate wasted hay was get a 4X4 round baler .The cows have to put thier heads in the ring to eat and there isn't so much that the weather makes it so they won't eat it .

I feed 800 to 900 bales a year with this rig. I carry two bales to where I'am going to feed and unroll with the unroller on the back. About the only time you might get some waste is in the spring. But I feed out in the pastures so I usally can find a snow bank or a dry spot to unroll.


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Been unrolling hay for over 20 years now. Back then a neighbor bought a hay slinger and I took measurements and made one. Still use it every year. I've worn out one set of sprockets and go through a chain every 4-5 years. Other than normal maintenance (grease bearings and oil chain) and a bull breaking a weld joint it's been a good piece of equipment.

My unroller is 3 pt. mount and the hay spear sticks out the rear just like a normal hay spear does except it rotates. I use a hydraulic motor and can unroll the bale either direction. So I don't have to turn rolls around. Just spear in the center remove the twine and start unrolling.

In muddy conditions I spin the hay right up against the fence line. I've had to do that a few times in the last 20 years. Also a couple of years I had to move to another lot because of mud. But not often. Once I saw what needed to be done for wet spells I crossed fence my winter feeding area. It's about 9 acres total. I have it fenced in 5 lots and just have to open up a new area as it gets to wet. So in drier times I feed in one place and keep the cows off those other lots for those wet times. I have well water that's central to those 5 lots. Also seed those in annual rye grass each Sept. The rye grass roots help hold the soil together when it's wet. I again seed it in red river crabgrass in late May.

I'm in Va. also and can understand other areas of the country have far worse winters than we do. So our winter climate permits us to feed different than say the nothern states. Where I live it's rolling hills, so water runs off in one direction or the other.

I save at least 1/3 on feeding hay by unrolling. All of my neighbors have gone to it except those that can't feed daily. They use bale feeder wagons or hay rings. As each of my neighbors started unrolling they all said it saved at least 1/3. Several are selling hay now that couldn't before.

I'm the only one I know of now that uses the slinger. My bales are not over 1,000 pounds and the slinger works great up to about 1,500 pounds if it's a 4' wide bale. I can't handle the 5'or 6' bales. But I could build another spinner to handle them. Just have to be built heavier and longer spear.

I can unroll slow or fast with the hydraulics. Can change speed of the tractor to put more or less hay down. I can sling hay out to the left or right of the tractor or drop it straight down. I never thought when I made the thing I'd still be running it today. It's just as good as the first time I used it. I also added flow controls to slow it down some. Before I put those on I tried it once to see how far it would throw the hay. Had no way to measure it exact but I had hay up in the tree limbs. LOL About 12-15 ft. up.

If you can stay out of sloppy mud and use one you'll never go back to hay rings. Won't take long to pay for itself in lost hay and the cost of hay rings.

Should have added in the other post I made that the savings in hay isn't all due to waste.

In my area if we use hay rings cows will eat far more than what they need to stay in good condition. We don't need to feed the poundage per head as say folks in Iowa. So what I do is weigh a couple of bales and get an idea of weight per roll for that crop of hay and then feed poundage to what the cows need weather wise in this area. Colder= feed more.

I've seen folks post in northern areas about feeding 45-50 pounds of hay per head per day. We can get by on far less than that by unrolling. Feeding in hay rings gives little control. So we save more hay by feeding what's needed than what the cow will eat.

I use a bale spinner to feed large round bales. It's a spear with three additional prongs that sits on the three point and it has a a hydraulic motor than spins the spear assembly in either direction when hooked to my hydraulic remote. You can lay down a windrow to feed your cows. They cost about $1600 new in our part of the country.

I use an elec./htd.unroller on my 4x4 truck, it hauls two at a time. Handy for me as I feed at five farms& travel on the highway.

(quoted from post at 13:43:59 07/04/07) We had a Rem round bale processor for a little over a year and tried laying out windrows of hay with it like you would unrolling hay but it didn't work out as well as we had hoped. It was a great idea but what we found is that the cows ate what they wanted and then laid in the rest so we went back to using bale rings. I think it would work great if a person was feeding in fenceline feed bunk or something where you could feed the hay in a place where they couldn't lay in it.

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Cliff, do you know where I could find a REM 1400 bale processor. I would like to buy one as soon as possible. Ben

I have one, it depends on the year as to how well it works. Works best once the ground freezes, it is also necessary in my experience to feed twice a day with the unroller to minimize wasted hay, give them just enough to eat so they don't lay in excess hay. Where I really like the unroller is in calving season, makes it real easy to bed them down and the aren't all crowded around a ring eating. That said I still feed about 75% of my hay in a ring, I am going to get a couple more hay conserver feeders this fall. I like to feed hay every other day and I think my cattle hold their flesh better with free choice hay.

Does anyone have plans or pictures of a hay unroller?

I would like to build one. I have about 150 4x5 round bales that are from 2007-2012 that are now mulch. I would like to unroll them out into the corn stubble in the fall so I get a little more organic matter built up.


How do they work?