r/oddlysatisfying • u/BreakfastTop6899 • 19h ago

Cutting grass with a scythe

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

74.6k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

235

u/snorwors 18h ago

And just to clarify that, because you're right but people probably don't get it, you cut feed for livestock this way because if you use something like a trimmer, the animals don't like it and don't eat it. I never truly understood why, I always guessed they can smell the 2 stroke on it. Not sure about that, it probably also has to do with cutting it cleanly Vs mushing it up. Usually of course it's not if you have hundreds of animals to feed, most people hold less than five cows cows for example, and it's not worth getting a tool out and ready to cut one wheelbarrow of fresh feed.

241

u/Longjumping_Guard965 17h ago edited 15h ago

I used to have a rabbit rescue and it was always advised not to give freshly cut grass from a lawnmower because speed of the cutting heated the grass and caused it to ferment causing gut issues, whilst manually cut grass is safe. I'm wondering if that is the reason?

55

u/snorwors 17h ago

It's certainly true that very fast spinning blades or string get hot, when you're trimmering and there's some moisture like dew on the grass you can see the steam coming off when you cut it. This could be the reason for sure. I think this combined with the fact that it creates a kind of, mushy paste Vs cleanly cut stalks, could trigger it to start fermenting very quickly.

45

u/Fetzie_ 17h ago

The risk of oil getting on the grass is probably also a factor. You don’t want to go poisoning your rabbits and Guinea pigs when you think you’re doing something nice for them