For those who have limited experience with hay I am going to relay my experiences with small square bales and large round bales. Each have their advantages, and I will go through how I see those advantages and draw backs.
I have fed square bales for five years. We started with just 20 acres and a Ford 8N. I didn’t have the money to buy a bigger tractor, so starting with square bales made sense. Per pound of hay you can also make more money selling square bales, but it does require more work. It is also much cheaper to get older square baling equipment and the HP requirements are lower versus round bales. So for a smaller herd square bales make perfect sense.
Our little herd grew to 50 head. I was literally feeding a truckload of hay a day last winter. So last winter we went round, and I will share my experience and the advantages I have found with each. I will start with a quick Pros and cons list:
Square Bale Pros
Requires Less Horsepower
Easy To Move With No Equipment
Sells For More Money Per Pound of Hay
Less Expensive To Get Started
Easy To Feed In Small Amounts
Best Fit For Small Operations
Square Bale Cons
Requires A Lot Of Labor
Need’s To Be Sheltered From Weather
Takes More Time To Feed
Not Weather Resistant Out Of The Baler
Round Bale Pros
Can Be Stored Outside With Minimal Losses
Better Suited To Larger Herds
Requires Very Little Physical Labor
Can Put Up A Lot Of Hay Quickly
Round Bale Cons
Requires More Horsepower
Requires Equipment To Move Bales
Sells For Less Per Pound
As you can see there are advantages to both ways of putting up hay. If you have a small homestead herd square bales probably make the most sense. If however you have a large herd, than round bales probably are your best bet. On our farm we will continue to put our best hay up in square bales as they make more money when sold. For the majority of my own feeding needs I will be using round bales. I will always keep some square bales for their ease of feeding up at the corral when I have an animal separated for whatever reason.
I thought there would be a lot more waste when switching to round bales, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. My round bales are 4×5 bales that weigh around 650lbs. My baler uses twine without a net wrap option. I store all my round bales outside currently. They weathered well and the 4×5 size is perfect for feeding with my smaller tractors like the Ford 2000. Unfortunately they are a little too much for the Ford 8N.
The worst drawback that I have ran into is that the round baler requires at-least 50hp to make a decent bale. By contrast I
can easily run the square baler with a measly 20hp, probably less. We first tried running the round baler with the Ford 4000, but it couldn’t handle it well. We ended up purchasing a Ford 8000 that is overkill, but it was the cheapest tractor we could find at the time to get the job done.
Feeding a medium size herd of 50 Dexters with square bales was relatively labor intensive and time consuming. Switching to round bales and firing up a tractor and moving a round bale was much easier and quicker. They consume about 1.5 round bales a day, which is about 21 square bales by weight. However last winter we ran into the problem of needing a tractor to move the round bales in very cold weather, and my diesel tractors wouldn’t start. The 4000 which is gas was down, and the 8N couldn’t lift the bales. Luckily I had some square bales to feed during the week of cold weather. Which shows that it is always nice to have some square bales on hand.
Getting started with square bales was less expensive than round. However most Americans don’t have the fortitude to put up square bales, as it does take some sweat to get the job done. Running a small herd however I see no reason to use round bales, with ten head or less I wouldn’t even consider round bales. I would use square bales myself with a herd under 20, anything over that number and you are probably better off going with round bales.