Storage and Utilization of Ethanol Co- Products by Small Cattle Operations

While perennial biomass crops have both environmental and energy benefits over corn ethanol, there are limited commercialscale facilities utilizing biomass feedstocks for liquid fuel production. The expansion of corn ethanol has provided Nebraska with several million tons of animal feeds from ethanol co-products annually. According to Francis John Hay, these ethanol co-product feeds have excellent feed value and high palatability to cattle. Feeding the coproduct wet has the greatest feed value and is most cost effective for the ethanol facilities, since they are high in moisture and can degrade quickly. Hay's project focused on storage techniques for wet ethanol co-products and how those co-products could be used in small cattle operations.

For his project, Hay prepared educators to teach ethanol co-products storage techniques. Conferences attracted nearly 300 educators from ten states. Written materials and videos extended the reach of this project through the internet with more than 30,000 individual downloads of educational materials. Hay noted that his project was undertaken at time when there was great interest in storage which increased the interest and impact of his educational outreach.

Want more information? See the related SARE grant(s) ENC07-096, Storage and Utilization of Ethanol Co- Products by Small Cattle Operations.