The thing about one of the MWR type (I have a Bextra which is close) is they save a lot of hay, however, think if your bales will fit in them (mine don't) and how you are going to load it. Since I do not have a bale grapple to place the bale gently in the feeder, and use a bale spear, the only way I have found to load my 6ft+ dia (also not always perfectly round this time of year) bales in the Bextra is to lift these 1600 lb bales high and try to drop them into it. Sometimes I miss by a bit and have bent the feeder. It's my fault I know but if someone has a better way to do it please let me know.
On "hay losses" I have to admit I have changed my mind on "wasted hay" a bit. Since I do not have a concrete pad to feed on, I have two sacrifice areas where I keep the hay feeders for my two groups in relatively small areas.
As usual, I am probably swimming upstream here:
I WANT a bit of hay to be /dropped spread around the outside of the feeder to give them some footing and also to build a manure pack. The hay dropped is not the best hay usually or they would pick it up again. In any case it absorbs urine and manure. In late spring when they are moved to grass pastures out of the sacrifice areas I can use a manure fork to pile this hay manure mix into a compost pile. Turn it a couple times during the summer and it is just amazing stuff by the time November comes around. Very useful stuff.
I have a new pasture nearby the compost pile and a neighbor and I spread it with compost in November. This is great stuff. So the hay dropped around the feeder is not much and also is not really wasted. A key is to not fiil the feeders until they really eat everything edible that is there.
I use about 2.8% of the body weight per day in hay consumption. Based on that calculation, this is the amount of hay left in two cradle feeders (a double and single = 3 bales) as seen from the road as I pulled my truck up to the area today after being gone for two weeks. Some of the cows in this group are not visible in the woods.
This is a little close but really right where I want to be. For this to work you really need to know VERY CLOSELY the weight of your cattle and the weight and quality (this is 16% protein) of your hay bales.
Ref the pictures in my feeding post from WI today.
In the end I guess I like the Cradle type feeders shown best of all and secondly the regular round bale feeders that sit on the ground but have slanted bars. I don't really think I want a bottom in a feeder. After a big rain and hay etc clogs the drain holes I think you may have some hay soup in the base... or maybe they eat it all. But there is likely SOME hay in a bale which is not edible...
Good luck.
Jim