STRAW

Our barn stored straw is clean and shiny with good density to the bales. Straw isn't just used for bedding. High quality straw like ours can be used as a feed supplement. It can be mixed in with alfalfa hay, molasses or grain to add roughage and extend your feed bill dollar.

Straw is the crop residue consisting of the dry stems and leaves left after the harvest of cereals, legumes and other crops. Straws are available in large quantities, usually over half the harvestable vegetation of the crop. Straws are a coarse, highly fibrous roughage than cannot be eaten by humans, but they have always played an important role in agriculture and in rural societies, where they are used for numerous purposes.

Straws, stovers and chaff have many uses within the farm economy, and these must be taken into account when assessing availability and profitability in livestock feeding systems. Non-agricultural uses include fuel and biofuel, construction (thatching, clay or concrete binder, plastering, insulation), crafts (basketry, mattresses, furniture), clothing (shoes, hats), paper (rice straw), etc. In agriculture, straws used to be an integral part of large-scale farming as feed and litter for the production of manure, which was essential to soil fertility until the advent of inorganic fertilizers and mechanization. With the mechanization of agriculture in industrial countries, straws were for some time thought to be of so little value that they were often burnt in the field, a practice that ceased with the passing of environmental legislation and the development of treatments that improve straw digestibility. At the small-scale farming and subsistence levels, the importance of straws never stopped and even grew due to decreasing access to free grazing. In any case, straws are still a major agricultural product and provide biomass (when ploughed into the soil), livestock fodder and livestock bedding, which in turn goes back to the soil as fertilizer. Straws are usually harvested, but they can be grazed by livestock