To help you calculate the costs of storing wet distiller’s grains or other co-products on-site, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension specialists designed a spreadsheet --Co-Product STORE (Storage to Optimize Ration Expenses).
The spreadsheet allows you to analyze and evaluate specific storage scenarios to take advantage of seasonal price lows, said Josie Waterbury, UNL graduate research assistant, who designed the spreadsheet along with UNL livestock marketing specialist Darrell Mark and animal scientists Rick Rasby and Galen Erickson.
Producers then can store the co-product and feed it at a later date. Co-product storage also is particularly convenient for many cow-calf operations and smaller feedlots that are unable to use an entire truck-load of co-products at one time, says Rasby.
Previous research found ethanol co-products are excellent feedstuffs for feedlot cattle. In addition, research shows wet distillers grains will not spoil over an extended period of time if oxygen is eliminated. Adding minimal amounts of dry, bulky feedstuffs to wet distiller’s grains also solves that problem, Erickson says.
Co-product STORE can help producers determine if the total storage cost is cheaper than what would be paid for the co-product at a later time without storage, Mark said. Co-product STORE is available at the UNL Beef Web site—http://beef.unl.edu. For more information on storage techniques, a manual also is available on the UNL Beef Web site called “Storage of Wet Corn Co-Products.”
For questions or comments, contact Beef Today.
