Why Can't Stores Just Sell Quality Stuff?

Homesteading & Country Living Forum

Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
T

thankful_k

Awesome Friend
Neighbor
Joined
Jun 22, 2021
Messages
97
OK, so I am going to name names. This is about NRS in Decatur, TX.

So I needed to stock up on straw for my goats this winter. I go down to NRS last night and ask for a pallet of compressed straw bales. I get a pallet of 24 bales. The guys are really cool, they load me up, all is good. It was night time, so I really couldn't see very well, but it was the only time I could get down there. So anyway I get home and start bucking this stuff into the barn this morning and I see that it's this:

IMG_0277.jpg


That's not straw. That's trash, fallout, lawn clippings, crap they sweep up off the floor.

This is straw:

IMG_0279.jpg


Long hollow strands that interlace and lay on top of each other like pick-up sticks (who remembers those?!).

As I understand it ... straw traps air, lets moisture evaporate and therefore keeps the animal warm. It's easy to rake out and replace, and keeps the dust down.

Clippings compress and squeeze the air out, and retain moisture, therefore makes the animal cold, like a wet blanket. It also rots and allows pathogens to thrive. Clippings fly everywhere and get into everything. The moisture also makes the stuff heavy and impossible to rake. It's useless. Worse than useless in fact. Actually detrimental.

I'm a first-year newbie and I know this. Am I wrong? AITA here for wanting to take this stuff back and give the boss at NRS a piece of my mind (while struggling to be civil and polite)?

Why can't these people actually look at what falls off the truck and say "No ... this is crap. Take it back, we're not selling this to our customers"?
 
We use straw from the wheat plant after it's harvested. And you're right, it's not choppy sweepings like what you got. My cousin stores his straw bales in our roundtop. I'm fortunate that he tells me to help myself whenever I need it.
 
I worked many years in Quality Assurance/Material Supply. Due diligence, know what you are buying before they load the truck. If you have a specific need, make sure what you buy fits the specification. Could be most of their customers don't care what it looks like, my chickens don't give a cluck.
 
Wheat straw is a byproduct. The combine goes through first to harvest the grain. The complex working of the combine to separate the grain creates a waste product called chaff.

Modern combines usually have a chaff spreader so that it doesn't get concentrated in any significant piles. But a small amount of chaff is to be expected in a straw bale.

The baler comes after the combine gets the grain. Assuming that you paid retail for your straw bales I think you have a right to expect the best quality and have it relatively free of chaff?
 
Unfortunately, those big farm supply stores seem to wind up with this kind of stuff all the time. We needed some pine shavings for the 4H kiddos we sponsor. I have been overwhelmingly busy this year at my shop, so one of the other 4H dad's volunteered to go get the shavings. I gave him my credit card and just told him to bring me the receipt. He came back a few hours later and handed me the card and the receipt from Tractor Supply. I mentioned that we usually just got the shavings from the co-op here in town but we could give these shavings a try.

Lesson learned. Those "shavings" looked like they were the dust left at a bottom of a giant pencil sharpener. Several of the kiddos have Angora rabbits that they show, and I knew that if they used these it was going to be a mess. The good thing is we had only opened 2 bags and were able to get the good stuff from the co-op. The bad thing is that I missed the window to return them to tractor supply, so I am just going to till them into my garden beds in the spring.

I would suggest you hop onto craigslist or facebook market place for your area and search for wheat straw. I bet you will find someone who is selling good bales of it within easy driving distance.
 
Buffalo said:
Unfortunately, those big farm supply stores seem to wind up with this kind of stuff all the time. We needed some pine shavings for the 4H kiddos we sponsor. I have been overwhelmingly busy this year at my shop, so one of the other 4H dad's volunteered to go get the shavings. I gave him my credit card and just told him to bring me the receipt. He came back a few hours later and handed me the card and the receipt from Tractor Supply. I mentioned that we usually just got the shavings from the co-op here in town but we could give these shavings a try.

Lesson learned. Those "shavings" looked like they were the dust left at a bottom of a giant pencil sharpener. Several of the kiddos have Angora rabbits that they show, and I knew that if they used these it was going to be a mess. The good thing is we had only opened 2 bags and were able to get the good stuff from the co-op. The bad thing is that I missed the window to return them to tractor supply, so I am just going to till them into my garden beds in the spring.

I would suggest you hop onto craigslist or facebook market place for your area and search for wheat straw. I bet you will find someone who is selling good bales of it within easy driving distance.
Click to expand...
Ours sells "fine" and "Medium". could be the buyer didn't know and grabbed the wrong bales. When you don't know, you don't know.
 
Where I grew up, straw was oats. Nobody raises wheat in Iowa. We baled oat straw many times for hog bedding before we went to confinements with slat floors and pits.

TBH, I wouldn't even be sure what the first pic was if you hadn't described it. I've  never seen straw with greens in it...
 
Yeah, the stuff in your first picture looks like sweepings from a shed floor where both hay and straw were stored.
I'm not sure if there's a technical definition for "straw", but in my world it's always meant the long stalks left when wheat or oats are harvested, very dry and 'dead', because the plant was done growing and had fruited. No nutrition or fodder use left in them. The long stalks will have some chaff mixed in simply due to the combine style of harvest, but it's not enough to be noticeable. The straw was always baled up and stored to be used as bedding. I always liked straw baling time because the bales are so much lighter than hay bales and a lot easier to haul around and stack.
We would also use the large round baler to bale up corn stalks and bean plants after harvest, but that wasn't called straw. We would put them in the barnyard and the cattle would break apart the bales and sleep in them.
What I see in those pics is more like the tiny pretend bales of some unknown plant matter that Joann's sells for holiday decorations.
 
Years ago I sold a few hundred bales of straw bales to a local tree company. They paid a little extra for delivery. I could only haul a hundred at a time. It was easy money because the bales were light and tight and relatively easy to handle. But they were a bit slippery too?

On my last load haul, I must have gotten a little cocky complacent? Made a ninety degree turn from the main highway a little too fast. There went half my load! Strewn about blocking half a lane of busy traffic. I saw it happen in my mirror. Stopped and carefully backed up to the mess.

By the time I got my chaps and gloves, there were two good Samaritans stopped and ready to help me pick up my mess! I was flabbergasted! The three of us made quick work of fifty bales and I broke my wallet out. I had a couple twenties and offered them both a twenty. But the first guy refused and drove away dismissing my showering gratitude. So I gave the second guy both twenties and he must have needed it because he was grinning ear to ear?

I drove off more cautiously but full of gratitude for the sudden and total effort from those good Samaritans.
 
You know. if you had one of my precision herb hoes, so would your great grand children. I over engineer everything, I'm 1/4 German. LOL
 
Most of the time they sale it because we are willing to buy it.
If most people Stop buying it they will do better or go out of business.
 
Know how many dollar tree hoes I've put back together over the years because the spot welds broke? LOL
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top