Nothing fancy, but sure saves me a lot of hay money. They eat with their heads still in the holes so all the excess stays in the circle. Pallet on the bottom...Topside

 

My goat hay feeder! little to no waste.

 

Thank you! These are great!

 

This U of Arkansas site has a lot of plans for different projects including a hay feeder:

http://www.aragriculture.org/plans/default.htm

 

This is one I found on internet that works great for me. I added runners to the bottom to skid it around behind my gator.

 

Here's mine I built for my goats...the mini pony uses it too

After a number of years of abuse from the bucks, its due for some repair and modification...might get to it one day.

Sorry about the small pic...it's the only one I got

 

http://cinchchix.com/

We use the chinchchix hay bags (hubby likes the xtra large ones) for our small cow herd and our horses. We put them inside a rubber hay ring. Our round bale waste is down from maybe 30% to 1-2%. No kidding! Plus we can move each bale to a different area so the poop gets distributed all over the pasture. For horses without shoes, we do not use a hayring. Keeps the bale from falling apart. Awesome invention!

 

We just use a 10ft feeding trouth and they don't seem to waste it ( we paid $20 for it new in stores there like $160 Ithink) that's the only bad thing

 

How many goats? I use a haynet 2 or 3 ft off the ground to slow the (10-15) goats consumption and waste. Since I end up with a pile of stems and "chaff" under the haynet, I have often used a bottle calf to consume the "waste". Usually it's good hay. The goats will chew a mouthful down to the last 3 or 4 inches and spit it out to grab the next mouthful of goodness.

Last week, I made a new haynet out of a 5x10 piece of netting from gourock.com aka http://gourock.com/mcart/index.cgi?ID=245885813&PID=IT1318&code=13. I folded it in half and was cheap enough to use old orange bailing twine to stitch/knot two sides closed. It will hold about 2 square bales if you're strong enough to lift it. I suspend it from my shelter so that the bottom is about 2 feet off the ground. My smallest goat may have to stand on her hind feet to grab a mouthful, but she hasn't gone hungry, yet.

Just watch your haynet closely to make sure the goats aren't eating holes in it. One of my ladies in particular was making a habit of eating a new hole every day in an old haynet made from a hammock. She would get tangled so often that she now wears the "stick of shame" duck-taped crossways on her horns. In comparison, the gourock netting is 2-3 times heavier than the hammock netting so there haven't been any holes, yet.

A feeder pig is another great idea to comsume the extra waste