Grazing animals eat most naturally with their heads down, taking one bite at a time. If you watch your animals grazing on pasture, you'll see that they bite and tear off the grass.
The Grate Bale Box Feeder replicates this natural feeding by allowing the animals to take one bite of hay at a time without pulling out more hay than what goes in their mouth. "Traditional" hay feeders force animals to pull hay "down and out" which, as you know, causes a lot of waste and hay in fleeces. Feeding hay on bare ground, however, is neither healthy nor thrifty.
Stems quite often make up a large part of a bale of alfalfa and, although not as nutritious as the leafy part, they're still edible and provide the necessary bulk in a ruminant's diet. The Grate Bale Box Feeder system allows animals to eat ALL of a bale of hay - not just the "choice" parts.
This feeder is designed to get a total bale consumed:
- Evenly (not leaf first, then stems);
- keeping it clean and dry (off the ground); and
- keeping it out of valuable fleeces (top $$ for clean fleece).
