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Concept
Straw
Summary
Straw is an agricultural byproduct consisting of the dry stalks of cereal plants after the grain and chaff have been removed. It makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has a number of different uses, including fuel, livestock bedding and fodder, thatching and basket making.
Straw is usually gathered and stored in a straw bale, which is a bale, or bundle, of straw tightly bound with twine, wire, or string. Straw bales may be square, rectangular, star shaped or round, and can be very large, depending on the type of baler used.
Current and historic uses of straw include:
Animal feed
Straw may be fed as part of the roughage component of the diet to cattle or horses that are on a near maintenance level of energy requirement. It has a low digestible energy and nutrient content (as opposed to hay, which is much more nutritious). The heat generated when microorganisms in a herbivore's gut digest straw can be useful in maintaining body temperature in cold climates. Due to the risk of impaction and its poor nutrient profile, it should always be restricted to part of the diet. It may be fed as it is, or chopped into short lengths, known as chaff.
Basketry
Bee skeps and linen baskets are made from coiled and bound together continuous lengths of straw. The technique is known as lip work.
Bedding: humans or livestock
The straw-filled mattress, also known as a palliasse, is still used in many parts of the world.
It is commonly used as bedding for ruminants and horses. It may be used as bedding and food for small animals, but this often leads to injuries to mouth, nose and eyes as straw is quite sharp.
Biofuels
The use of straw as a carbon-neutral energy source is increasing rapidly, especially for biobutanol. Straw or hay briquettes are a biofuel substitute to coal.
Biogas
Straw, processed first as briquettes, has been fed into a biogas plant in Aarhus University, Denmark, in a test to see if higher gas yields could be attained.
Official source
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