How's your straw?

[cowman]

Some grain starting to come off and it seems like the rows of straw are sort of scant! Will there be lots of straw around? How many of you used canola straw last year and what did you think of it?

[oldboy]

Good to see you back on line. We used a pile of canola straw last year and it save our a......We used some as bedding, ran it through the bale shredder, worked great. Also, ran it through the bale shredder and mixed it in with our silage for protein and an extender. We had a nutritionist help us set up our rations, otherwise, don't think we would have made it otherwise. You wouldn't believe the protein in this stuff. We had neighbors who laughed at us when we asked if we could buy and bale their canola straw, so they just gave it to us, I guess they thought we'd lost it. That was in August and first part of Sept last year and by the time all the harvest was done in this area and several other areas, all canola straw was being baled and some fetched a pretty good price. I guess being "straw poor" last year helped us in more ways than one. Don't be afraid to try it.

[Bruce14]

Hey cowman. Good to hear from you again.

We used canola last year as well. Crop ins. adjusted it at .4 bu/acre but we got 2.5t acre of straw/feed from it. It was green and all second growth.

We thought it took 3 canola bales to do the same job of bedding as 2 wheat straw.

This year we have an average amount of cereal straw so will only use the 500 "just in case" canola bales we made this spring.