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So … had a few minutes … (don’t all fix ‘er upper stories start like that?) and I began to think about the coming winter … the c.c.c.c.c..cold. And the sn….o…..w. AND that the three jennies don’t take up a lot of room in the ‘barns’. [I prefer to call them barns, some might call them sheds.] And about how they love to chew on a hay bale… Which all added up to another innovation at the Meadow. 😉 This morning we built a ‘hay feeder’ out of some pallets we’ve been storing. The idea is that the donkeys can chew on the bale without tearing it all down, stomping on it and messing it all up with manure. Oh, and that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to see if it works.
So far … so good. You see, normally when they would start to munch on the top of the bale it would unwind and then they’d ignore the bottom half of the roll and continue to eat on into the centre. Eventually the bottom half of the bale would be wasted. Here’s my plan. Perhaps this way they’ll eat across the top – and then – when only the ‘bottom is left’ they’ll eat that too. I think this experiment will take a number of days. Stay tuned.
The Meadow View 
Good luck with that! Makes sense to me ….
Do you find that they sit and eat it all day? Do you close the door and just allow them an eating period or let them at it?
Thx Caroline
I do not leave it open all day. When I do the chores I open it up. If the weather is bad and they haven’t been able to get out of their barns I will coax them down to that hay barn which they fit inside. The only hay I leave out all day is in hay bags.
Have you seen the haynets that go over round bales? Haychix and several others make them.
Hi there. Yes, we have LOTS of the smaller ones. I find though that when our hay is coarse and long strands from a round bale that the donkeys can have quite a time getting the hay out of the bags. So sometimes I use other methods. With the two bales we have now the front paddock one is open for munching. While the back paddock one is much more suited to bags and that is what we’re using there. Our hay really varies bale to bale.