Maria Allen
A species-appropriate feeding and also a meaningful activity for the horse: That’s what the roughage ball promises. And who invented it? The Swiss Bernadette Bachmann-Egli from Nottwil.
It looks like an oversized floorball ball, i.e. like a plastic ball with holes. In contrast to the indoor sport, floorball players are not chasing after the round object, but rather horses looking for hay and playful activities. This is exactly what the roughage ball by Bernadette Bachmann-Egli is intended for. And that’s exactly why she came up with the idea of getting food rolling.
“More than six years ago I thought about how I could make feeding my four mini Shetland ponies useful and varied,” says Bachmann-Egli. She set herself the goals of keeping the animals busy and moving them while they are eating, slowing down the eating speed, enabling an ergonomically natural eating posture such as when plucking grass, and avoiding long breaks in eating.
Also for Pigs & the Like
After various tests, the roughage ball was finally created. “The initially black hollow spheres all came from overproduction and should be disposed of,” recalls the farmer from Nottwil LU. “I thought that was a shame and bought the entire post.”
She is currently purchasing the plastic blanks, which are available in various colors, i.e. the unperforated hard plastic balls. She then usually drills eight holes in the 31.5 centimeter hollow balls, which can hold a kilogram of hay and which are not only suitable for all horse breeds, but also for donkeys, pigs, goats, sheep, llamas, alpacas, and even guinea pigs suit.
Bachmann-Egli will be happy to adjust the size and number of holes on customer request. But it is important to her that no animal can get tangled up in the ball and not just eat it out of the slightly larger filling hole. To prevent this, there is now an optional sliding lid for smaller animals. On the other hand, there was nothing to prevent large companies from snapping up the idea of the roughage ball and going into mass production with it. However, these companies want nothing to do with copying.
Powerless Against Big Companies
That’s what it says when asked about the large German food ball manufacturer “Dr. Hentschel »that nothing is known of a copy, that many years have been put into the development and that the other feed balls cannot be compared with theirs, since their products are not made of hard but flexible, yielding plastic. A British company has also gained a foothold in the local market with its hay balls since 2016.
Bachmann-Egli regrets that at the beginning she did not consider that her idea could be such a resounding success beyond the borders of Switzerland, but also points out that patenting was not possible anyway because the balls were too strong to remember the well-known floorball balls. For this, she had the name “Raufutterball” and the hole design protected.
The Nottwil native is aware that she has no chance against the extensive marketing measures of the financially strong companies. But the most important thing for her is that her invention serves a good cause. It allows numerous four-legged friends some variety in everyday stable life, healthy eating behavior, and additional exercise. All the effort and hardship were worth it for that alone.