Cattle+Ethanol=A Good Match

by Holly Jessen (Ethanol Producer Magazine) Cattlemen in the U.S. and Canada demonstrate feedlots and ethanol production are ideal companion enterprises
In every case, the cattle came first. In an effort to find inexpensive and efficient ways to feed cattle—and in some cases, to get rid of excess manure and the accompanying smell—feedlot owners built or are working to build co-located ethanol plants for a steady supply of wet distillers grains (WDGs).
Two companies have been doing it since 1982 and 1991—Reeve Agri Energy in Garden City, Kan., and Pound-Maker Agventures Ltd. in Lanigan, Saskatchewan. For the Reeve family business it was the opportunity to produce WDGs for use at its existing feedlot. Pound-Maker was established in 1970 by Saskatchewan farmers who were looking for a market for their crops. That quest later resulted in the construction of the co-located ethanol plant.
Two other projects in the works are aiming for closed-loop systems—feeding WDGs to the cattle, using manure from the cattle as a feedstock for anaerobic digesters and using the power from the digesters to keep the ethanol plant running.
...In the beginning, the WDGs was the main product of value and the ethanol was more like a byproduct. ... In fact, the product was so valuable as a protein source that he fed part of it to his cattle and sold the rest at 120 percent of the price of corn.READ MORE