hay vs. straw in run

[elizabethbinary]

Okay, I am so sorry, my city is showing....

Is hay alfalfa? I thought it was wheat? I think mine is wheat? >_> Should I get the alfalfa kind?

 

[Mac in Wisco]

Quote:
Hay is cut and dried whole plants, whether it's alfalfa or grass or other plants. Straw, which is what I think you are referring to when you mention wheat, is just the stalks of cereal grains such as wheat, barley, or oats after they have been threshed and the grain has been removed.

Hay is food for animals. Straw is bedding.

 

[elizabethbinary]

Quote:
Hay is cut and dried whole plants, whether it's alfalfa or grass or other plants. Straw, which is what I think you are referring to when you mention wheat, is just the stalks of cereal grains such as wheat, barley, or oats after they have been threshed and the grain has been removed.

Hay is food for animals. Straw is bedding.

LOL thank you, I keep getting hay and straw mixed up for some reason... I'm using straw as bedding and that's where I'm done with this conversation, thank you.

 

[chickfamilyonsleepyhollow]

Thanks for all the posts

never knew the difference between hay, straw and alfalfa ... I'll look for alfalfa when I go to the feed store today

 

[patandchickens]

Alfalfa is a legume, it has lots of little oval leaves and purty purple-or-lavender-or-white flowers. (Although a lot of alfalfa hay you will buy has been baled late enough and/or roughly enough that much of the leaves will hav fallen off as a fine green dust and you're left with mostly stems)

Grass hays like timothy, bermudagrass, fescue, etc are grasses, with long bladelike grass type leaves and although they do flower it is inconspicuous and non-pretty.

The grains from which straw is made (wheat, rye, oat, etc) are also grasses but by the time they are matured off and the stems baled as straw really all you're mainly seeing is stems, and they will be pale in color (straw-colored, in fact

)

It is possible to make hay out of wheat, rye, oat etc but in the real world I have never ever seen it done.

Regarding crop impaction and hay: there have been enough BYCers report it happening, often with lotsa pics, that I am convinced it IS an actual risk of using hay (especially with birds that are un-used to anything other than shavings and food being in their environment, or are very bored). However there are a vast number of BYCers using hay, often for years and years and years, without having any problems with impacted crops, so I would conclude that the risk is generally pretty low for most peoples' flocks.

OTOH it just kind of bugs me to see people using something that is useful FOOD for their chickens to just poo on

, even if hay is cheap in your area at the moment. <shrug>


Pat

 

[CopperCT]

Quote:
Wow...never thought of it that way....thanks Pat. I originally got the hay as it had seeds for the chickens to scratch up and eat but have regretted it since when I realized I couldn't compost it easily without getting alot of weeds seeds. Now it's poopy hay taken away from other livestock that could eat it.

As I said in earlier posts, I'm going for the straw next winter....less fuss all around. I will still probably use it the same way by putting it down in early winter so I can fluff it up with a rake so the chickens will use the run without me having to shovel. That's the goal especially this winter after nursing sore muscles shoveling 24+ inches of crusty stubborn week old snow from the porch roof tonight before we get another 5-8 inches of snow tomorrow plus inches of ice after that....can't wait for spring!!!! I have an old victorian house with porches all the way around which are getting worrisome with the snow load on them now never mind after another big (for us) hit of snow and ice.

 

[chickfamilyonsleepyhollow]

I picked up a bale of straw this afternoon and will put it down after our next round of snow storms ... I'm starting to wonder if my girls will ever see bare ground again

 

[mskluck]

Quote:

Wow...never thought of it that way....thanks Pat. I originally got the hay as it had seeds for the chickens to scratch up and eat but have regretted it since when I realized I couldn't compost it easily without getting alot of weeds seeds. Now it's poopy hay taken away from other livestock that could eat it.

As I said in earlier posts, I'm going for the straw next winter....less fuss all around. I will still probably use it the same way by putting it down in early winter so I can fluff it up with a rake so the chickens will use the run without me having to shovel. That's the goal especially this winter after nursing sore muscles shoveling 24+ inches of crusty stubborn week old snow from the porch roof tonight before we get another 5-8 inches of snow tomorrow plus inches of ice after that....can't wait for spring!!!! I have an old victorian house with porches all the way around which are getting worrisome with the snow load on them now never mind after another big (for us) hit of snow and ice.

Dr/
I've read that mites like to hide in the straw shafts. Is that true?

 

[mskluck]

Do mites hide in the straw shafts just waiting to feed off the girls at night?

 

[Howard E]

If you are infested with mites, they will be on more than just the straw. They will be everywhere.

I realize this is an old thread, but if one person found it, perhaps others will too.

For the use the OP asked about......ground cover in a run, I have used, and recommend grass hay for this purpose. Old, coarse, nearly worthless grass hay.

Straw is generally the crop residue harvested from fields following the production of cereal grains......wheat, oats, barley, rye, etc. Aside from oat straw, none of these offer any nutritional benefit to livestock and are mostly used as livestock bedding and garden mulch....to retain moisture and smoother weeds. The stems on straw tend to be weak and by the time they are harvested and baled, will have collapsed. As such, they tend to absorb moisture, which will also mean they will mat down quickly and stay wet when placed outdoors. Great for garden mulch, but when inoculated with a heavy load of chicken droppings, think rotten, stinky, smelly mess.

Alfalfa, clover, lespedeza hays are all legume hays, harvested mostly for the high nutritional benefit in their leaf content. Stems......not so much. If harvested properly, they will all have a high leaf content, but will also be dry and crumbly, so it is easy to loose the leaf in handling. But birds will eat the heck out of them. In short order, all that is left are the stems. Those would not be too bad as bedding, but if the leaves all fall off before they are eaten you are back to wet matted material on the ground.

So that brings us to grass hay. Ideally, old, worthless coarse hay. If harvested late has a high lignin content, making it nearly indigestible to livestock, so makes it worthless as hay to eat. It is also coarse......and has a large percentage of hard, dry stems. These take forever to break down. So a bed of this type hay lays on the ground and any rain or snow that falls on it filters through, leaving a fluffy bed of coarse, dry stems on top. Any droppings that fall on them also filter out to the ground below, where the N (nitrogen) in the droppings starts to combine with the C (carbon) in the litter, combined with air and water starts the composting process. A slow rot vs. a hot composting. It may takes months to break down. As it does, if it gets wet and smelly (with or without flies), you simply pile more on top. Keep going until you think it's time to pull it out as compost / mulch, then start over. Get that right and you won't smell a thing.......birds will be running around on plant material that is high and dry nearly all of the time.

In practice, it tends to look like this:


During......

After.....

Ready to plant!