# Wheat straw to feed in addition to grass hay?



## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

Does anybody have some experience in feeding wheat straw (good quality) as a choice for the does while also offering good grass hay? Hay is going to be expensive and scarce with the drought in MI/IN (sorry texans, i know what we have is nothing compared to you guys, but still it definitely affects our hay options). I have some of the straw and have been offering it to my does. They like it well enough (the dry does actually wolf it down, the milkers nibble and eat a bit of both hay and straw. I need to make a pretty quick decision wether I am going to buy more of this straw (it would be too much for bedding, so I'd have to feed it, too), so input is very welcome. Will the does stay interested? Thanks!!!


----------



## Caprine Beings (Sep 19, 2008)

I would prefer to see you feeding oat hay or something else than straw. Although it is wheat straw there is no real nutrition left in straw. It would act however as a forage/roughage. I feed ours straw here and there, or I will find them eating the straw bedding when first put down. It definately won't hurt them. As far as will they stay interested? dunno.
Tam


----------



## MF-Alpines (Mar 29, 2010)

Marion, if you have a means of hauling any quantity, there are a few places south of Indianapolis that are still selling at reasonable prices. I know they've gotten rain down there.

We're in the same boat. We figure we're going to have to travel far to the north or to the south.

While I've never tried to actually feed my girls straw, they are interested when it's first put down, but that's about it. I'd worry about the negligible (sp?) nutritional value, as well.


----------



## Ober House (Jul 12, 2012)

I agree that there is no real nutrition left in the straw. We have a rain problem here, all the hay was cut and bailed and then it rained. Hay will be spendy again. I have one guy who's hay is still down so he will call me when he can bail. I hope today.


----------



## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Our straw has seed heads on it. When the new batch comes in for winter bedding I am going to get about twice what I normally do. Instead of throwing it out on the floor of the barn, I am going to put feeders in each stall for the straw. The girls can eat what they want and the waste will be spread out into the stalls. Vicki


----------



## MF-Alpines (Mar 29, 2010)

Ours here does not have the seed heads. That's why I love it for mulch in the garden!


----------



## doublebowgoats (Mar 6, 2008)

I have used wheat straw several winters as an addition to alfalfa pellets. It is really the only kind of hay that the goats will eat with gusto. It is just for roughage, though, as I feed the alf pellets for the protein and other nutrients.


----------



## Annie (Jun 10, 2012)

You know goats - they eat what you don't want them too  I can put good timothy & alfalfa hay in the rack and straw on the floor and the girls will instantly go for the straw everytime. Silly goats. 

One winter many yrs ago, I was really low on mixed hay, only had pure alfalfa bales. So I mixed it with straw and all my goats did well on it. I've also thru extra straw in their stalls in really cold weather for them to nibble on just to keep their "internal furnace"/rumen going. 

Same with corn husks, and dead fallen maple and oak leaves...goats do love some variety in the dead of winter. Sometimes I gather those up and stash in an airy place in the barn and save them for Jan/Feb, for a treat.


----------



## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

To keep the does interested, only put out a little at a time. My does get excited whenever something "new" is put out...even when their is hay in the rack, it is still exciting when I add more.


----------



## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

Thanks all, good tips/advice. I do what Vicki does: feed enough of the straw and once a day empty the feeder and use as bedding or for the dry does to pick through one more time. The milkers get one feed trough full of straw and one with good grass hay, and now (about a week into doing that) they still eat both, so I guess that's a good sign. I don't really count on the nutritional value of the straw, just making sure my ruminants will ruminate. I count on the nutrition in the grass hay and balance with grain in the parlor and free choice minerals.


----------



## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

To each his own, but I would rather feed good quality alfalfa, especially if you are also feeding straw.


----------



## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Nancy there is no such thing in my area. Buying grass hay, I will be paying $10 a bale right now, and this is for bales I can easily, at 55, load, unload and stack myself. I don't want spent hay all over my barn but do have to bed with straw, so why not let the girls dig through it up off the ground in a hay feeder, letting the spent stuff be pitch forked out into the stalls daily....rather than throwing it out onto the floor and them eating through it?

It isn't a to each his own kind of thing anymore, it's expense, we all have to come up with ways of doing this that we can continue to afford or we will all sell out. I would so like this to be the focus of this forum.....how do we do this to even be able to keep our goats? 

For me it is begging onto lists for day old bread stores, this winter, and feeding hay, alfalfa pellets and straw and praying this rain continues so I have pasture and underbrush in the woods for the girls also.

I don't want to have to cut numbers again, I don't want to have to finally say, enough is enough I only need a finite amount of milk for my soap company, that is all I am willing to do. I know I am not the only one in this predicament, so I don't want this kind of thread squashed. Vicki


----------



## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

Thanks Vicki, and actually, good times or bad, it is always good to just look at all your options and continue to analyze what you are doing now, and what you could be doing differently/better. There are more ways than one to do things right. Could I push my does to a higher milk production by feeding top quality alfalfa hay only? Very likely. So more milk, bigger milkcheck.......but also higher cost. You can ask anyone in any kind of dairy business, and they'll tell you that in most cases it is more interesting to cut costs (less feed costs, increase in animal health/longevity) and settle for a little less milk per doe,cow,waterbuffalo,etc.

If you can say anything positive about droughts and bad economies, it's that at least it keeps us on our toes by forcing us to look for different ways to solve a problem we thought we already solved.... :/


----------



## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

I saw no mention of alfalfa pellets in any previous post, only grass hay and straw as feed. Where I live, "hay" is synonymous with alfalfa for the most part, and then there is grass hay, that's how abundant it is. When I say, "alfalfa hay" you can translate that to mean alfalfa pellets/good quality forage feed of whatever kind you want.


----------



## Caprine Beings (Sep 19, 2008)

I hate to say it but we are experiencing some serious hay shortages here too. The weather caused some pretty bad circumstances. Hay is scarce and people are hoarding what they have. Our hay guy is having trouble finding enopugh to fill his orders. He has been cut off at so many big squares. He did find some really nice alfalfa. But many people have decided to hoard their hay. Some fields just didn't do diddly this year. The February and March weather caused some fields to start way early, then the heavy heat came on in April pretty much drying out the fields.

Ours are forced to eat what is there. I will not put more in until they have ate it down to pretty much gone to strtch our hay as long as possible. The small fields we have went dry by May  It has been a problem keeping them green, which there is one small portions that are green. At least our hay guy is getting enough that we do not need to worry, some of his other clients have already been dropped. He has no choice.
I do not think this is a passing thing either. We have been getting hotter here in our Valley by a degree or more every year. Every where there have been weather changes. I am going to collect leaves this year like others have been doing. I am going to be looking for other ways to keep the does in the feed they are or cut back on what they do get (right now they are spoiled with dry cob, Albers super goat, BOSS, and Beet shreds. I will cut the Super goat first. 
Tam


----------



## dragonlair (Mar 24, 2009)

How much do you all pay for straw? Up here we pay about 10.00 a bale, and they are not big bales, maybe 40 pounds. Hay is way cheaper than straw and starw is not always readily available!


----------



## [email protected] (Sep 18, 2008)

A friend stopped by the other day and said he just baled straw and if we wanted any, to just go pick it up out of the field. $2.00/bale. At the feed store I pay $3.00/bale, but if there's any loose, broken bales, then they're free. I get the loose stuff. :biggrin


----------



## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

I'm pretty lucky: getting the small bales of straw delivered (the field is about 1 1/2 mile away) for $1/bale. Light bales, but good quality straw (no seed heads, though), and the goats are digging in. The dry does totally attack the straw and the milking does get to choose, and eat about 2/3 hay and 1/3 straw, so it definitely saves me on hay, without me having to worry too much about losing milk. The does eating habits in the parlor didn't change much, it seems. Liking it so far, so I got 220 more bales in today (I already had about 200). Worth stacking!


----------



## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

My straw is $2-$2.50 per bale here. It is usually much lighter than the hay, but same size small bales....so I'm not sure what the cost per weight would be. My alfalfa bales are 85-90 lbs.


----------



## swgoats (May 21, 2010)

For us hay is the same price as straw, so I haven't used it as fodder. When I spread new, I do think they eat some of it. Our pony loves the stuff. I couldn't keep straw down for him.

I've wondered about these bales of corn stalks I see up here. Maybe I asked about them last year?... My goats love to work over fibrous stuff. The bales weren't advertised particularly cheap, but might be something to mix in if supply is an issue.


----------



## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

The cornstalk bales I've seen here were ginormous. I would worry a little bit about mold, it seems to like corn. I did give my goats the cornstalks from the garden last year.


----------



## Dana (Dec 7, 2009)

Don't shoot me for asking this... but what if I give my goats more grain this winter and a lot less hay? Will the alfalfa pellets mixed in with their grain be enough roughage for their rumens?


----------



## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

Grain is expensive, too. Plus ruminants are built to use forages. Grain is just to tweek holes in the nutrition value in a compacted manner. Too much grain and not enough hay will make a ruminant very sick. I think ANY ruminant should have free choice forage, be it hay, browse, straw or a combo.


----------



## dragonlair (Mar 24, 2009)

Grain around here has already gone up 2.00/50 pounds in the past 2 weeks. The alfalfa pellets are holding their own. All our feed is shipped in, very little is grown locally.


----------



## dragonlair (Mar 24, 2009)

My mares used to eat the straw I would put down when they foaled, so I had to go back to shavings! My goats didn't really seem to want to eat the straw when I used it as bedding, I think one of my late does would nibble on it a little but that was it.

No one bales straw around here. What little bit that is baled is 300 miles north in "The County" and used up there for sled dog bedding in the winter. We get our hay from Canada or shipped from the midwest, hence the $10.00 for a 40 pound bale.

Most of the grass hay I get around here is cheaper than the straw, but the quality isn't very good either. Most years we can't get the first crop in until July, so the protein is low anyway. I long ago learned to make due with lower quality hay and make up for the protein deficit with alfalfa pellets and concentrate pellets.


----------



## Dana (Dec 7, 2009)

Trysta- My grain is the same price it's always been so that's why I'm thinking of more grain this year. Also do you think alfalfa pellets would be considered roughage?


----------



## swgoats (May 21, 2010)

My grain went up $2 a bag this weekend from the week before...


----------



## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Yes of course alfalfa pellets is roughage. You want to keep it up around 17%. Vicki


----------



## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

:yeahthat Alfalfa pellets is definitely roughage, although, since it's chopped so short it would be good to have some straw or browse beside it to keep the rumen more active. Since the alfalfa pellets are good quality/nutrition value you can use something very mediocre as a choice beside that, that the does can eat when needed. 

I am figuring out my straw/ hay feeding at the moment. With the milking does (50 head) I have settled on one small bale of straw in the morning and one small (but these are heavy!) bale of hay (beside their parlor grain ration) and then in the afternoon, if the feed trough seems to empty to make it through the night I add some flakes of hay. What I want to see in the morning is a decent amount of straw left (so I know they picked through it and found the best stuff), but also some hay left, so I know they DID get to choose what they wanted and I didn't force them to eat straw, because they were out of hay. Left over straw turns to bedding in the morning and left over hay goes to kids. 

My group of 7 dry does and 2 bucks gets a bale of straw in the morning and one in the afternoon (no hay at the moment). They just about clean that up, and they haven't lost condition, so I guess that does it for them. As for the kids: they get a mix so they can choose, with the youngest kids getting mainly hay, and the oldest ones (6-8 mo) mainly straw. I'm still learning and fine tuning, but I like what I see so far.


----------



## goatkid (Oct 26, 2007)

We have some nice hay growing in my area. What our concern is regarding the dought, that commercial factory farms out of state will offer the hay guys lots of money and our costs will go up. If it was just you goat folks, it wouldn't be a problem, but when large cow dairies want truckloads of hay, it is. I just paid $7.95 for a bale of alfalfa hay weighing about 75 pounds. I usually get my hay by the ton in big squares, but needed to pick up a bale to take to my friend's place because some of my goats will be spending the night prior to leaving for the state fair show. We take alfalfa pellets to the show.
As for feeding straw, I don't think it has enough nutritional value to sustain dairy goats. It is good here in the north to help keep the rumen full in cold weather. My goats always nibble on the straw I use for their winter bedding. They also get hay and pellets. My goat mentor told me not to feed extra grain. With single stomached animals like horses, it helps keep them warm. With ruminants, it actually takes extra energy to digest it.


----------



## swgoats (May 21, 2010)

Hay is better for horses too. The prolonged digestive activity is what really helps keep them warm.


----------

