News

Nebraska wraps up distillers research initiative

A three-year distillers grains research initiative conducted by the University of Nebraska—and funded by the Nebraska Corn Board—has officially wrapped up.

According to Kelly Brunkhorst of the Corn Board, the initiative resulted in a number of important breakthroughs when it comes to feeding distillers grains—a co-product of the ethanol process—to cattle.

“We now have a much better understanding of higher inclusion rates of distillers grains, sometimes up above 60 to 70 percent—and with that came some concerns,” Brunkhorst says, “and the university did a great job of addressing those concerns—specifically sulfur—and was able to understand that we could possibly increase the sulfur rate compared to some earlier research that was conducted.”

Even though this initiative has ended, the Nebraska Corn Board continues to fund distillers grains research.  Brunkhorst says one area being explored is how the feed value of distillers is impacted by the extraction of corn oil—a practice being adopted by more and more ethanol producers.

“That creates an unknown as to what that feeding value really is for distillers grains in the future,” he says. “So we continue to work with the university on that issue—and we’ll hopefully have some results over the next year or two on having a better understanding of how ‘de-oiled’ or ‘lesser-oiled’ distillers grains will work in feedlot and range diets.”

Brunkhorst says the ability of the Nebraska Corn Board to fund additional research is limited by what is available via the state’s corn checkoff–which he points out is the lowest of all leading corn states in the U.S. 

Nebraska’s current corn checkoff rate of one-quarter of a cent per bushel was set in 1988.

AUDIO: Kelly Brunkhorst (3:29 MP3)

Add Comment

Your email address will not be published.


 

Stay Up to Date

Subscribe for our newsletter today and receive relevant news straight to your inbox!