What is the difference between straw and hay?

Question

Some people use straw for bedding, so why not hay? Won't the horse eat both?

Answer 1

its really the same thing

Answer 2

When grasses are left to continue growing,  stalks form over the blades.  Straw is made from stalks....good hay is cut before the stalks form.  Horses will eat both, but prefer the blades, and they are more nutritious.

When farmers plant for straw, they don't use the same grasses typically grown for hay.

ADD...grass hay is different from legume hay.  Alphalfa and clover are legumes, and some hays are a mixture of grasses and legumes, and some are just grasses like Timothy, rye grass, fescues, bermuda grass, and others.  The stalks left when wheat and oats are harvested can be sold as straw.

Answer 3

Straw is the stem from a grain - wheat, barley or oat - that has been harvested.  It is not nutritious and generally horses wil not eat it if they have hat available. Hay is a grass or legume (alfalfa, fescue, etc),  and much more nutritious. Of course some horses will eat straw and in the course of s few hourse eat all their bedding so those are generally bedded on  shavings or given free choice hay in their stall.