The straw story is complex. When buying feeds, we typically deal in cost of energy and protein, looking for value based on prevailing cost of staples like barley and soya bean. However, applying this when purchasing straw is not entirely appropriate.

Straw has a job, particularly in cattle production. It’s an excellent filler and a great source of effective fibre.

In a human sense, straw is like the most ethnic filling-type brown bread you could eat.

Therefore, its merit lies not with its nutrient concentrations, but its physical structure. At a medium to high inclusion rate, it’ll take excess condition off animals – filling them up quickly. Hence, most of the country’s fat dry cows will be staring into troughs of straw at the moment.

High-cereal

With proper adaption, intensively finished cattle can grow perfectly fine on an almost exclusively cereal diet …almost.

They need a source of physical fibre too in order to regulate their digestive systems. In fact, if given unlimited access to both barley and fodder, they will self-regulate – eating about 80% to 85% cereal and the balance as fodder.

Straw is perfect for this job. While its nutrient value is less than half that of good silage, in an intensive finishing situation, the animal’s stomach will have evolved in such a way that its ability to derive nutrients from any forage is limited. In this situation, good-quality silage needn’t be wasted. Let straw do the work.

Cow conundrum

Back to the dry cows. We have options with these ladies, and straw, of course, represents one. Feeding dry cows is probably the only situation where we look at straw on an energy and protein basis. An on-track cow (body condition score 3.0 to 3.25) will do fine on 65% DMD silage right up to calving. However, many of the country’s top farmers will have made better-quality silage than this.

If offering 74% DMD silage to on-track cows, straw should represent half of the diet. If silage is at 70% DMD, the diet should be 25% straw. However, given current feed prices, 65% DMD grass silage is valued at €22.50 per bale and straw at €12. The latter here is unrealistic for most Irish farmers at present. If 65% DMD bales can be sourced close to €22.50, which is bang on market price at present, then it might be worthwhile to stockpile our good silage and completely replace it with bought-in bales in cow diets, instead of looking toward straw as a dietary constituent. Obviously, there will be more of an initial outlay needed, but the saving will be made in the long-term.

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Stretching straw supplies this winter