STRAW HARVESTER FOR ANIMAL FEED

Straw and other fibrous by-products are inevitably produced during cereal production and have traditionally been used for many purposes including feeding animals . The potential of these by -products as a feed resource for ruminants is being increasingly appreciated (FAO , 1977). In the future, the amount of cereals fed to farm animals will have to be reduced and livestock will have to rely more on by-products such as straw. The method of animal production can be classified by the major portion of feed. One is animal forage and the other is grains. In Korea , livestock farmers normally depend more than 70% upon grains for the feed stuff. The livestock production system causes the unbalance of nutrition, and results in low productivity of animal farming. In many livestock farms in Korea the rice straw is using as a major forage and the amount of rice straw fed takes 46% of total amount of required forages. Especially the rice straw is mainly using during spring, fall and winte season. However, there are still lots of problems to solved such as harvesting cost, transportation between rice farm ad livestock farm, and quality loss during drying and storage . Therefore the mechanization of straw harvesting is urgently needed to use the renewable agricultural by-products and to overcome the shortage of animal forage. The objective of this research is to develope a straw harvester with new concept which can solve the problems of the quality loss and the labor cost during drying in a field, collecting , and storage. The developed straw harvester is self-propelled machine rebuilt by rice combine and equipped with the pick-up device, the macerater and the mat-forming device.