Haynet for slow feeding? Ideas

GLEEK

GLEEK

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Hi I was thinking about trying to make a slow feeder for putting hay in. Then i thought it would be easier just to give them a big bale of hay and leave them to it. After the wind this week and its quite open in our field I then thought but the hay will probably blow away. Which is a waste of money!

So I thought I could do with a giant haynet to put in a round bale to stop so much waste and to slow down the speed of eating. I then managed to fall across this.....

http://www.bigbalebuddy.com/slowbalebuddy.html

Could I make this with fishing nets? How could I tie it? Or do you think just the same way as a haynet?
Neither of my horses have shoes on and are under 24hr supervision. They are outside my living room!!

Anyone have any ideas for making this?
Thanks
 
I would do it like a haynet and tie all the ends of the fishing nets together ...might not be the best shape but least it would fit properly.

To tie it I'd use bailing twine so you can do lots of knots so its secure and then cut off any loose ends to it dosent get tangled on anything :) Would make it easier to open up too when it goes empty...no messing about with opening knots!

What a good find though...I never even thought of doing something like that to a big bale before!
 
I looked into getting one of these over the winter, I use the standard bale buddy, and they had withdrawn it from the market at that time, might be worth finding out why and if it is a tangle risk...if it helps the standard bale buddy slows my two porkers down.
 
It was going to be my invention and I came accross the big bale buddy in a magazine. So I googled it and came up with the american site and found the haynet. The baler twine is a good idea and as you said at least you can just cut it and replace it each time. I suppose it wont even matter about it falling over or getting dragged accross the field either
 
OMG! What a great idea!! :D Mine get big bales of haylage in the winter but a lot gets wasted because they end up lying on it. I used to leave half the bale wrap on to try prevent wastage. I wonder if B&Q have anything useful? Fishing net sounds like a great idea and you could probably just tie it together with some rope at the top. The only problem with this that i can see is if your horse is shod. If there are any nails sticking out it could catch also maybe get caught at the back of the shoe and wedge underneath which could be scary if it happened! Since mine are all barefoot i will definitely be looking into this! :)
 
Apart from the obvious problem with horses getting tangled in it (and panicking and god knows what injuries that could cause) I don't see how it would work after the volume of hay inside started to go down. If you think of a haynet, tied up properly off the floor, the weight of the hay/lage inside it pushes the hay/lage up against the holes, ready to be pulled out by a hungry horse. But ask yourself, would you give your horse a haynet ON THE FLOOR? Because that's in effect what the buddy thing is. Bargepole for me I'm afraid.
 
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