# Wheat Hay



## Bullbaron (Sep 19, 2009)

People tell me that wheat hay is very good for cattle. I bought some 5x6 bales of wheat hay put up in late April in South Central OK to try it out. What's your opinion on wheat hay, good or bad.


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## fulingyu (Jan 18, 2010)

We grow about 20 to 30 acres of forage wheat hay a year, and fed about 4 squeeze blocks of it last winter. Our cattle certainly seem to do well with it. The only issue with it is that they don't clean it up as well as they do with alfalfa. I think they go after the parts they like and want to leave the rest. They will clean it up though if your not over feeding. We feed 3 tie-bales and the flakes don't hold together as well as alfalfa when feeding it.


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## Cannon (Aug 18, 2009)

the only problem I know about wheat hay is the beards, sometimes it will give cattle lumps in there jaws. If that happens they the feeders will grind it.


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## NDVA HAYMAN (Nov 24, 2009)

I don't know about wheat hay but I do bale quite a bit of barley and oat hay. If cut at the right stage (which is a narrow window) it is great feed. It needs to be cut in the dough stage and not handled too much to keep the grain intact. Mike


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## bullet81 (Jun 7, 2010)

We grow alot of wheat for silage. The past two years we have left about 80 acers to bale. It is a beardless variety. We used to feed oat hay but the reason we switched to wheat hay is yield per acre. Oat hay we would yield approx 4 to 4.5 tons per acre and once we switched to beardless wheat we have yielded as high as 10 tons per acre (not typical) but a good avg. yield is 7 ton per acre. We are going to stick with it because the cows eat it really well. LOADED WITH GRAIN TOO......


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## Blue Duck (Jun 4, 2009)

I have a neighbor that was growing beardless wheat for hay. He said he made a little more money then growing it for the grain and he could get it off the field early and plant a row crop. It sounded great but he only did it for two or three years and then went back to growing it for the grain. I am not sure why but I think the weather would be a problem that time of year.


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## snipe67 (Jun 17, 2010)

We feed our cattle a wheat hay and never had a problem, the only disadvantage of wheat is it gives meats a bitter taste. so 3 months of feed will take it out. It is good fees and cattle will go to it before anything else


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## panhandle9400 (Jan 17, 2010)

Here in this area there is alot of wheat hay put up , it is the best when it is late boot. or I think so cattle will clean it up if it has been baled right. This year we put up about 2500 4x4 ' s . if bearded type swath it late boot , beardless can go a ways more . most of the time it is reasonable priced to feed for good green clean wheat hay.


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