Winter Hay Feeding Equipment Options

Depending on climate and weather, most cattle producers feed hay in winter. In a mild climate with a long growing season and no snow, some ranchers are able to do year-round grazing and some get by with only a few weeks of feeding hay. In northern regions with cold weather and a lot of snow, it may be several months of feeding hay. If you have very many cattle this can be a big chore, and a lot of expense. Equipment manufacturers have come up with ways to make hay feeding easier and more efficient, with less hay wasted. Since today most people use big bales, this includes ways to handle and feed big round or big square bales, with minimal loss or waste.

When feeding big bales, feed wastage can be caused by various factors such as the animals lying on or trampling the hay, unfinished bales inside ring feeders due to poor ground conditions, not allowing animals to reach the last of the hay, and cattle rejecting feed because of dirt, mud or other contaminants.

For a small group of cattle, savings can often be made by feeding the right amount of a bale and retaining the rest for the next feed. By feeding hay over a larger area rather than in a ring feeder, there is less competition between the animals and hay can be spread over selected areas of a field or pasture—a clean spot each day—and the cattle can fertilize it more evenly.

Many companies manufacture and/or sell hay-feeding equipment and here are some of them and what they offer:

Hustler

This company is based in Minnesota and makes a range of different types of hay-feeding equipment, primarily bale unrollers. Jayden Lock, Hustler’s Territory Manager for the western U.S. says their smallest is a one-bale unroller that can go on the three-point hitch of a tractor or the front-end loader of a tractor or skid steer. “The next option is a two-bale self-loading pull-type machine that goes behind a tractor or a bale-bed truck with hydraulics. From there we go up to our bigger wagons like our Bale Express and our Combi-wagon. Those can handle eight 4-foot round bales or six 5-foot round balea. If you are feeding square bales they can do up to eight in the Combi-wagon. Those are for larger operations that want to go out with a lot of hay in one trip,” he says.

“Our unrollers are all hydraulic powered, and the goal is to retain as much of the nutrition as possible as we feed out the hay, with less waste. It is fed out in a windrow that looks just like what you baled up to begin with. A good quality alfalfa or prairie grass hay will basically have 100% leaf retention,” he says. This process doesn’t just shatter and blow the leaves away in the wind, unless it was really dry while bailing.

“The leaves don’t get blown away because they fall into the windrow itself and the cattle can eat it all. The advantages are two-fold; you are retaining the nutrients in your hay and also spreading the cattle over a larger area, to eat it in a long windrow. This is more like how they would graze in the summer—not all grouped around a bale feeder ring.” This is like rotational grazing and spreading natural fertilizer from their manure over a different area of the field or pasture each day. You can feed in the places that need the most fertilizer and the cows can spread it better than you can.

There’s also more room for all the cattle to eat. “Obviously the boss cows will be following right behind the machine, wanting to eat first, but all the other cows will still have plenty of hay in the long windrow,” says Jayden.

There are advantages to this method compared to a bale processor that chops up a bale; the bale unroller takes about one-third of the fuel to run—comparing a two-bale unroller to a two-bale processor. “Since the unroller is all hydraulic, it takes minimal output from the tractor and you can run it on a small 50-horsepower tractor and not have to start a 150-plus horsepower tractor on a cold day,” he says.

“Along with fuel savings there is a lot less maintenance required. You don’t have anything spinning fast so there’s less wear and tear on the moving parts—and no PTO. This is one of the reasons for more savings; you can run your tractor about at an idle and put it in a road gear, barely sipping fuel—just sending a bit of hydraulic fluid back there. It takes very little to run it. This is why it’s possible to run it with a pickup. Some guys just put a bale unroller on their pickup and plug it into an auxiliary unit,” Jayden says.

“We wanted a way to combine the benefits of unrolling hay and feeding hay through a processor. When you simply unroll hay you get the benefit of long-stem forage like the cattle are eating in summer, but you put it into a big, wide mat the cattle trample on, and waste more. When you run a bale through a traditional flail-type processor, you get the benefit of feeding it in a long, narrow windrow, but have the downside of grinding it all up. That is ok if you are feeding coarse material—straw or very poor-quality hay—since chopping/grinding can make it easier to eat. If you are feeding medium to good-quality hay, however, it’s better to leave it longer-stemmed.”

Hustler also has one chain-style machine called the Unrolla that only does round bales; the self-loading 3-point linkage mounted Unrolla excels in handling even the tightest round baled silage, as well as dry hay, loose silage, corn, fodder beets, etc. The mounted Unrolla can be connected from either end, which makes it maneuverable in tight spaces. “No other mounted unroller allows this level of versatility in such a compact and lightweight machine.”

The Unrolla feeding cradle is made from a tough thermoform fully-enclosed polyethylene floor with covered drive shafts which eliminate hay wrapping around them. Being fully enclosed, there’s no wastage of expensive high-quality feed, and added versatility as you can feed out loose materials. The mounted Unrolla takes 4’ long bales (Unrolla LX104) and a longer bed can take up to 5’ long bales (Unrolla LX105).

“All our other machines do big square bales as well as round bales. The way the big squares are fed—if the hay is a little loose they process the flakes and break them apart. If it’s a really tight bale it flakes them off, like if you’d put the bale on the back of a truck and flake it off with a pitchfork or hay hook, but a lot easier!” says Jayden.

“With a Combi-wagon you can have two types of square bales together. As it feeds them out, it blends the flakes together, feeding the two bales at once.” This is handy if you have two different qualities of hay or want to feed a straw bale and alfalfa bale together. It’s not a true mixer but the cattle will eat both, to balance their diet.”

Besler Industries (Nebraska)

Herb Besler is the owner, who started this company, and Cliff Kestler is the manager. “We manufacture what we call a bale bed, which is a flatbed with arms on it, designed to be mounted onto a pickup truck. With this bale bed you can pick up one bale or two; you can be carrying one and have the other one held by the arms. Then you can simply drive out to the field or wherever you want to feed the cattle. You can put the bale down on the ground and then cut the strings and drive ahead so you can unroll it along the ground,” Cliff says.

“We offer one model that is a three-point and could be mounted on a tractor, if a person is feeding hay with a tractor. Most people, however, want to have it on their pickup if they are driving out across a field to feed the hay or taking the hay some distance away. A lot of ranchers have cattle in various pastures and not everyone has their cattle within short driving distance from where they have the hay.” Some ranchers may have cattle several miles away or even on a different ranch for winter.

“Maybe you are driving 20 miles to feed, with a pickup, and you’ve already loaded it so the hay is on your truck, and when you go to another pasture you can come grab more hay and feed it. This is handy for people out West with big ranches. We sell bale beds all around the nation to people who have cattle, but Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana ranchers are probably our major customers.”

The bale beds are the most popular and Besler has models that will fit about any truck that has the box taken off so it’s a flatbed. “The bale bed comes with the unroller and we offer extendable arms. It has an arm that drops down to pick up the bale, and there are extendable arm options—with a cylinder inside of that arm that can extend it out 26 inches if you want to stack hay or put the bale into a feeder that’s fairly high. You can just do that with your truck,” Cliff says.

Patriot (Nebraska)

Landon Lempka is the son of one of the owners of this company. “My grandfather started it in 1984. Our bale feeder is probably our most popular product even though we produce other types of hay-feeding equipment. We’ve been making bale feeders for more than 30 years and they’ve changed a little over the years but they all have the same concept. We build everything a little sturdier than it needs to be; we don’t want to cut corners because we want the product to last,” Landon says.

“We also make bunk feeders as well as big bale feeders and fence-line feeders. We’ve sold bunk feeders for a long time but some of our customers want an option where they can put the feeder along a fence. This can affect the size of the trough, and some of them just have a metal fence or gate that the cattle reach through to eat. We started making those in the last six years,” he says.

“Our newest piece of equipment is a hay hauler and a lot of guys use this to move bales. It’s basically like an over-center self-dumping hay trailer. You can haul up to 8 bales on this and it has a cantilever system that helps dump off the bale. Some guys when they pick up bales out of the hayfield will use this to take the bales back to the farm or use it when they go to buy bales, to have an easy way to dump them when they get back. Some people take bales out to a pasture to dump for the cattle if they want to have the cattle eat the big bales without needing a ring feeder.” This would work nicely for people who do bale feeding.

“Other people prefer to use our bale unroller. It goes on the three-point hitch of a tractor and basically pinches the bale in the middle and you just cut the twine and unroll it out in the pasture. These are really handy,” Landon says.

“We do a lot of different things and most of our products are customer-driven. People come to us and tell us what they need and we try to fill that need. In regions that have a lot of snow cover they often just put the bales out for the cattle to eat, but if there isn’t a lot of snow they may just unroll the bale.”

Most of these pieces of equipment are made ahead and kept in stock. “Some of the odd sizes have to be made after they are ordered. With bale feeders we offer sizes anywhere from 16 feet to 40 feet but mostly we stock the 20 and 24 foot feeders; that’s the size most people buy. The longer or shorter ones are usually built to order. We have dealers all over the U.S. and they stock some of the common sizes for us. Most of our customers get pointed toward a dealer they can purchase from so they have someone in the area they can deal with if anything needs to be repaired. This also helps on the cost, since we’ll send a truckload to the dealer and that’s cheaper for the customer than paying the freight on one piece of equipment,” Landon says.

Metz Welding (Wisconsin)

Keven Kammes, owner of this company, says they offer feed pushers for dairy farms but also some round bale unrollers. “Ours is one of the heaviest if not the most heavy-duty unroller on the market. It has dual telescoping arms, one on each side. It can grab either a five or six-foot bale. There are no hydraulic motors on it; it’s just the pressure from putting your three-point hitch down to unroll it and it can handle wet bales or dry bales,” he says.

“It has two 18-inch cylinders, to give you a 36-inch opening to get around the bale. It has adjustable three-point for different heights/size tractors. It’s a very simple design, very robust and heavy, and works really well for unrolling round bales. Our website: metzproseries has detailed description and photos.”

John Deere

Jace Poulson is the Sales Manager for the Idaho Falls, Idaho branch of C&B Operations (38 locations in South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Iowa, Idaho and Wyoming) which is also a John Deere dealer. His job is to help his salesmen build and maintain relationships with customers and provide options for their needs. “We are a John Deere dealer and also an ag equipment dealer; we have other products and even sell competitive equipment if it’s been traded in. What we offer for livestock feeding are tractors and unloaders. We have large ones to help when feeding large quantities and also some that will fit on a tractor,” he says.

“We also offer some options through Haybuster and Highline,” he says. Highline, with headquarters in Saskatchewan, manufactures bale processors, feed mixers, bale stackers and movers.

There are many ways to feed livestock. “We carry a lot of products to help put up high quality forage, but in terms of feeding, it’s mainly our ‘short line’ specialized products that John Deere itself doesn’t offer, like a feed mixer or feed processor. We can help our customers find these, and we offer things as simple as bale spin-offs for round bales, that go on your three-point. It just grabs the bale and spins it off, all the way up to the Haybuster and the Highline bale processors. We can also get tub grinders for our customers,” says Jace.

“We offer a fulltime and after-hours parts department and service department to help maintain farm equipment. Mainly we work on John Deere equipment but also try to hire well-rounded techs who are helpful on Case products or Highline products or any other brand of equipment. Farmers and ranchers bring us all sorts of ‘colors’ to work on, but our main expertise is in John Deere products,” he says.

“We try to maintain relationships with other dealers in the area and a working relationship with Tractor Sales and Auto here in Idaho Falls, and with Titan Machinery and Agri-service. We don’t criticize other brands because all equipment has its good qualities. I know some of the folks at Tractor Sales and when I can’t fill a customer’s need, and I think they can, send a customer over there, and sometimes they’ll send some to me when they can’t fill their need. Good working relationships benefit everyone. We are all in business to keep the customer going because they are the ones who pay our bills,” he says.

Hillco Technologies

Preston Hill’s father (Lenny Hill) and grandfather (Arlie Hill) started this machinery company at Nez Perce, Idaho, when they were doing tillage in the 1980’s on their farm, and were soon making leveling systems for combines.

“Starting about 2017 we put a lot of emphasis on finding ways to bring more value to our customers in agriculture. We have farmers who work here at our company and some of them raise cattle. They told us that one of the challenges was the netwrap and twine on their bales.” It’s always wise to remove netwrap or twines because if cattle ingest this material it can cause fatal blockage in the rumen. It’s an additional chore, however, to get out of the tractor to remove the netwrap after dumping the bale in a feeder or on the ground for “bale grazing”, or to have an extra person to do this.

“We looked into resolving this challenge. A neighbor of one of the guys who works here had a couple cows that suddenly died and no one knew why, so they did a necropsy and found netwrap in the rumen. This reinforced our commitment to find a way to take it off the bales; there was no quick and efficient way to safely remove netwrap and keep the bale intact when putting it in a hay ring. If you try to take it off before you dump it in the ring, the bale usually falls apart.”

The initial concept of the WTR attachment was created quickly. “It has three basic functions—an arm rotate, a squeeze, and a cut-and-grab function–all controlled by an electrical remote. The machine is hydraulically powered, but we use an electric switch to switch between those three functions on the WTR,” Preston says.

There were some other attachments already available that did a similar job, but didn’t allow for the bale handling most people need. “Many people stack their bales, and in order to get a bale from the stack you need to be able to get your spears into it. We designed our product for overall versatility,” he says.

The big values for this product are safety, efficiency and health of the animals. Safety is first and foremost; you don’t have to get in and out of the tractor every time you put a bale in a feeder. In a pen of bulls you generally don’t want to get of the tractor because if bulls start fighting they may run over you. Even a group of cows that are impatient to be fed may start shoving and pushing and knocking each other (and you!) around. Even the peace of mind is valuable, knowing you can get the bale fed easily and quickly and not have to worry about cattle eating the twines or netwrap.

Hillco Technologies (based in Nez Perce, Idaho) has now partnered with John Deere and their Wrap Twine Remover (WTR) is available through John Deere dealers, but the WTR adapter options make it compatible with many brands, models and types of equipment. The WTR will cut netwrap or twine on 4’x5’, 4’x6’, 5’x5′ and 5’x6’ round bales, and large square bales up to 8’ and has multiple spear locations for different bale sizes and types. The arms rotate out of the way for handling hay bales when not removing twine or wrap.

Haybuster

Based in North Dakota, this company makes several kinds of hay processors they call Balebusters. This kind of equipment has become very popular with farmers and ranchers because it can save hay and time. Balebusters allow you to process only as much hay as your herd will eat, with less chance for waste.

Processing the bale removes mold and dust from the hay, making it healthier and more palatable for the cattle. This equipment can also be of use for spreading bedding, which also saves material and time while creating ideal bedding for livestock. These processors produce a smooth, even blanket of bedding, whereas rolling out a bale tends to leave clumps and piles.

Bedmaster

Bedmaster Inc. has been producing straw spreaders and straw blowers since 1981. Located in Lewisville, Idaho, this company is owned by George Ellsworth, a farmer and inventor. He came up with this invention during the cold winter of 1981 when his cattle needed bedding. While spreading bedding in cow corrals with a pitchfork he thought about using hydraulics to spread entire bales of straw more efficiently, and a few months later developed and produced his “Bedmaster” Bedding Machine. He has also created machines for processing hay.

“After I started building straw spreaders we built a lot of them for ranchers and feedlots, especially in Colorado and Texas. We’ve sold them now to 38 states, Canada and Russia, and have been in business for 45 years. Our equipment is handy for bedding free stalls, loafing sheds, and pens,” he says. It can blow the bedding into any space, and can handle round bales or square bales but the square bales work best.

“Some of our customers use our machines for both hay and straw because they like to spread the hay out in the pasture for feeding cattle. We have one machine my brother uses for his cattle in Smithfield, Utah. It has a Honda motor and he puts it on his pickup and runs it with remote control (wireless) from his pickup. He just turns on the beaters and headboard that pushes the hay back and flakes it off,” George says.

“We built that one special for him because he wanted something to make his feeding easier. We built a trailer mount so he didn’t need a tractor. He just used his pickup to feed his cows. We also built some truck-mounted ones for some of the feedlots. Those are nice because you can just head down the road and take hay to cattle some distance away—much quicker than driving a tractor.”

Vermeer

Based in Iowa, Vermeer offers bale processors that can quickly grind up hay bales and put out windrows to provide equal feeding room for cattle. As the machine processes the bales, it blows off dust and mold and aerates the hay, so the cattle find it more palatable.

These bale processors can also be used for bunk feeding, or for creating hay material for total mixed rations (TMR). Or blowing bedding into barns or forage into storage bunkers, or distributing a consistent layer of straw to help reduce erosion in land reclamation projects. This equipment is versatile and useful for many cattle operations.

Homestead Implements

Homestead Implements offers a lineup of American-made hay equipment including hay-feeding equipment designed for cattle farmers. Liam Callahan, Marketing Manager for Jamestown Advanced Products Corp and Homestead Implements, says their Front-End and 3-Point Bale Spears are available for small tractors under 30 HP (Independence Series) and larger tractors up to 55 HP (Pinnacle Series), giving the strength and versatility needed to move hay efficiently. “We recently introduced a Rear Bale Spear and Pallet Fork Combo, built to simplify handling round bales, feed, and supplies around the farm.”

The Pinnacle Series Hay Bale Grabber is capable of safely moving bales up to 5 feet in diameter and weighing up to 1,500 pounds. “For feeding livestock, the Pinnacle Series Hay Bale Unroller is an essential tool — compatible with both CAT 1 and CAT 2 tractors and designed to handle bales between 4 and 5 feet in diameter and up to 1,200 pounds. Made in the USA and Veteran-Owned, Homestead Implements manufactures all of our products in-house — and we use them on our own property. We offer six color options, a 10% Military Discount, and free shipping to your barn door within the lower 48 states. Financing is also available,” he says.

Explore the full lineup of hay equipment at www.homesteadimplements.com/hay-equipment

January 2026

by Heather Thomas