On 12/8/2013 6:23 AM, Brian Swale wrote:
> Moose asked ...
>
>> I thought I understood this stuff, at least broadly: hay is the whole
>> plant, straw the stalks left after the grain is harvested. Alfalfa is
>> always hay?
>>
>> Hay is livestock feed, straw for lining stalls, protecting spectators,
>> building houses, and so on. A quick web look shows this to be largely true
>> in that straw has very limited use as feed.
>>
>> So why roll up straw? It sure looks like it would make it much less useful
>> for most of the things I'd think it is useful for. Hay, sure, and the idea
>> of holders for it in the field mentioned in this thread does sound good.
>>
>> I'm sure I must be missing something. Please, farm boys, enlighten me.
>>
>> Straw Loss Moose
> I stand ready to be corrected - but my understanding is that cattle-beasts
> aka cows and bulls
> and steers and heifers , due to their complicated (4-chamber?) stomachs at
> least one of
> which contains bacteria which can actually break down the nearly pure
> cellulose of those
> stalks into sugars and what-not, this actually is acceptable fodder for
> wintertime.
Only in part. The stuff I found easily specified what portion of diet may be
straw, which apparently must be chopped. As
it was specified in % of body weight, 11-13%, but the site assumed I knew what
that meant in terms of per feeding, day,
week, whatever, I don't know what % of total feed weight that amounts to.
In any case, it must be supplemented with real food and should not be fed to
pregnant cows.
> Their massive mouths and molars can cheerfully crush the stalks without
> getting hurt -
> compared with sheep which would not bother with such rough stuff. Also many
> of the
> beasties being fed this straw are not pregnant (cf over-wintering ewes which
> will be) so will
> not have other special nutritional requirements.
>
> Bison must have also lived during winter on whatever grass straw they could
> find on the
> frozen prairies, by the same process.
The grasses on our US prairies today are mostly not native. The native bunch
grasses probably had different
characteristics in the winter than what's there now, and than crops we grow and
make hay and straw from. Thus the need
for supplemental feeding in winter, I suppose.
> The baling process also gets the straw off the fields from which it would
> otherwise have to be
> burned in order to cut short the life-cycle of wheat-inhabiting rust-fungi
> ... !
Still Relatively Uninformed Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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