Round hay bale for the calves

I shouldn't complain but... tossing out a hay bale for the calves twice a day is getting old.  Especially as my stack of small bales is getting smaller.  I estimate I will be a little short of what I'll need to last until the cattle go out to the green grass in the pastures.  Pulling one of my existing large bales into this part of the corral could be tricky to do.

So I called Tim to see if he had some large bales left.  He did.

While I may need several bales (maybe five to be on the safe side?), I don't have a trailer right now to haul multiple bales.  Even if I did, there is still enough snow in the pasture that maneuvering a trailer would be difficult right now.  I drove over with my pickup and got one bale today for the calves. 

Even though the bale is supposed to weigh 1200 lbs, my half ton pickup handled it better than I expected.  I drove home slowly.

I guess I should have bought a second metal feeder.   To prevent the calves from crawling on the bale I used my old broken feeder.  I made sure the bale and feeder were next to the corral fence so I could place the broken side against the fence.

I had to roll the feeder into the corral.  As you can see, Buddy is visiting with the calves. I had to wait until he left.

First I rolled the feeder into the calves part of the corral.  By now the feeder ring completely broken as shown below.  Of course the calves were curious.

I cleared the manure at a location next to the fence and set down a wooden pallet.  Then I decided to take off the pickup's tailgate in case the bale was too heavy for it.   Making this task hard was the bale partly over the tailgate.  Mostly annoying was the calves trying to eat the hay as I worked.  They have no fear of me and were pushing me to get to the hay, else trying to see what I was doing with the socket wrench.

Once I had the tailgate off I pushed the bale out of the pickup.  It wasn't easy, but to my surprise I was able to do it with some effort.  I thought I would have to use Plan B, which was to chain the bale to the railroad tie fence post and then drive away pulling the bale out of the pickup bed.

The calves and cow with the sore leg all swarmed the bale.  I rolled the feeder over to the bale then shooed the cattle away from the hay so I could tip the feeder over the bale. The cow with the sore leg must be getting better as she was right in there to get the hay and I didn't notice much of a limp.   Might have been because of the adrenaline to get to and eat the hay.