Blkbuckaroo said:
Burnt-i was wondering if you're feeding rice straw?I would like to find a way to strectch my hay and have seen some reasonably priced rice straw,i only have a few head of cows,but last year i fed them through the winter in a 15 head slant bar feeder and like the way they cleaned everything up,except the bossy cows pushing everyone around,I'm feeding on the ground right now and it annoys me how they can trample it checking out thier buddies feed.
Nope, No rice grown in Ontario, Canada! Although this year was almost wet enough to try it!
I had a good source for oat straw until this year - he didn't grow any. Still have a few bales left but they will be used up by next week. I am feeding some barley straw that has a lot of alfalfa in it because with all the rain we had, the new seeding almost took the barley crop over. Well, it actually did in places.
So we choked the "barley" with its underseeded alfalfa through the combine then baled and wrapped the straw right the same day. It has a corn silage smell to it and the cows eat it O.K., but clearly prefer the dry, 2 year old oat straw. Clean it up really fast, in fact.
We even cut and wet-baled some of the new seeding this fall and fed it immediately. Anything to stretch the feed supply.