Could someone tell me the difference between hay & straw?

Question

Different plants or different procedures in harvesting?

Answer 1

Hay is dried grass, usually alfalfa. Straw is the stem of a grain plant. When grain, such as wheat or barley, is combined, straw is a by-product. Hay is harvested by cutting it down, raking it into rows, letting it dry, then baled. It is sometimes run through a machine that breaks the stems so it will dry faster, called "conditioning". Hay has leaves on it. Straw isn't used for animal feed because it has so few nutriants, whereas hay is. Straw is yellow, hay is dark green. Straw is used as bedding. Animals will eat straw, but they can't live on it.

They come from different kinds of plants.

Answer 2

Hay is basically a combinatin of pasture grass, flowers, clover, alfalfa which grown to a certain height, cut, dried and then bailed into squares or round bales for later use as food by cattle and horses. It has more minerals in it than straw.

Straw is not really for consumption by the horse or cattle. it is primarily used for bedding and has very little, if any nutritional value. If comes from mostly wheat that has been harvested, the stalk is what is left which is then cut and baled for bedding purposes. The differences besides the that is that one is mostly a green color, the other is yellow. If you saw a bale of each, you would recognize the difference.

Answer 3

I believe that hay is the first cutting of the plant and straw is the second cutting. Hay is also the one with the nutrition for animals.

Answer 4

Straw is from wheat (thus, straw is yellow). Hay is from alfalfa (thus, hay is green). Different plants. Plants are cut and dried, then baled. Slightly different process for the cutting part but the baling is the same.

Answer 5

Hay is a generic umbrella term for any grass-like vegetation cut, partially dried and either baled into compact units of various sizes. This can be a green grass such as fescue, bluestem, native grass, clovers, lespedeza, etc. Straw is typically the end product of harvesting a grain product such as wheat, barley, oats, etc. that is baled into compact units of various sizes. Each one has it's own food value percent, and depending on the forage animal's needs at certain times of the year depends on what the farmer/rancher feeds to them.

Answer 6

Hay is used to feed livestock such as horses while straw is used for animals to sleep on.

Answer 7

.Hay is dried grass (and pasture flowers) cut and used for animal feed. Commonly used plants for hay include rye grass (Italian rye grass (Lolium multiflorum) and perennial rye grass (L. ... "Instead of allowing the hay to lie, as usual in most places, for some days in the ... it is cut, never cut hay but when the grass is quite ...

Straw is the dry stalk of a cereal plant, after the nutrient grain or seed has been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of a cereal crop such as wheat, oats, rye or barley


if your researching this for covering grass seed, the best to use is straw, otherwise you will have a weed problem in your yard.

Answer 8

hay is green grasses cut and let dry and used as a food source in the winter or if green grasses are unavailable.
straw is the dry stems of a grain crop, usually wheat, oats or other grain types and is used more as a bedding for animals.

Answer 9

drink out of a straw
yell hay

Answer 10

They are the same, except one is drier than the other.