Bluegrass straw varies widely in quality. If you run the hay baler right behind the combine, you can get some nice, palatable stuff. If the straw sits a while, it can get yucky.
To clarify:
A crop of Lawn (bluegrass) is grown out in a field. It goes to seed. It is cut with a swather, just like hay would be, only without ‘conditioning rolls’ to run through that bruises the stems and makes the hay cure fast. Conditioning rolls would knock the grass seed off the stems. After the straw in the windrow is dry, the combine (like you use to harvest wheat grains, or barley or rye or whatever) goes through, and takes the grass seed out of the straw, leaving the straw behind.
The money is made on the crop by selling to seed companies. People buy the seed, and plant lawns with it.
If you can get the straw baled right after the combine takes the seed out, it makes for pretty nice ‘hay’. If the straw sits in the field for a few days, as is common, it will go through dampening from dew at night and then dry out in the daytime, making it a less yummy. If your baler breaks down, and you don’t bale for two weeks…the cows might not eat it at all.
But you do have to bale it and get it off the field, or it will damage the stand of live bluegrass plants in your field.
