Right now we are feeding 4 horses and 4 ponies. I'm worried if we hit another drought year, we will have trouble keeping up with growing enough hay to feed them all. We're currently using the cheap-ish Tombstone rings you can get at feed/farm stores. What do you all use to help eliminate hay waste? I'm specifically interested in round bale feeders that aren't nets (husband doesn't want to mess with the aggravation of nets). I have seniors that need to be on free choice hay, and I'm not really interested in filling hanging slow feeder nets for 8 animals a day. I've done that before, and it's too time consuming. We're thinking about Hayhuts or possibly welding or building a DIY round bale holder if anyone has built something like that. TIA!

We have round bale feeders, and hooked a slow feeder net to it. We grabbed 3 pieces of conduit cut them to size to fit into the feeder. Then strung the net over the conduit. Attached that to the bottom of the feeder. And took out the tie-rope. 1 of our feeders is solid on the bottom (see pic) and we drilled a couple of holes in them and tied the conduit to the feeder so they can't pull it out. 

sure, it took us a bit of time to get things ready, but that was only once. After that can now put a bale out, take off the string and just flip the feeder over the bale. Takes me about 10 mins by myself, that includes grabbing the tractor and move the bale into the pasture.

It makes the bale last almost twice as long as before.

Have to admit though, when we had the weeklong blizzard in February I had to put out a bale extra without the net, the rain and sleeth had frozen the net so the horses couldn't get to the hay. So if you are in a wet/cold climate it might not work for you. But we only have that once in a blue moon here in Tx, so I'll just sacrifice a bale in that case.

Honestly, if you want to save the MOST hay, get some sort of net. I know you said hubby doesn't want to mess around with it, but if that's what it takes to save the most hay, that's what it takes!

I have a HayChix and I can do it by myself. It's much easier and quicker with two people, and usually hubby helps me because it's just eaiser, but for us it's only once every 3 weeks or so to swap out the bale. It's really not that hard.

With a hayhut, expect them to possibly rub a chunk of their mane out.

This is a really neat idea; thanks for sharing!! This would be simpler than trying to get a net around the whole thing. My husband is an electrician so we have tons of conduit. What brand of hay net is that? I don't necessarily need one with slow feeder size holes... just something to keep the hay from being flung out of the feeder. My old geldings are awful and messy.

I have 2 round bale nets from Texas haynet. They have 2 or 3 different hole sizes.

Hay chix also has different sizes but is a bit more pricey. To me both work just as well. I have a couple of nets from hay chix that fit a square bale, and I really don't see any difference in quality.