You might remember me talking about E coli and distillers grain a few days ago. Now some conflicting information to that has come to light. It seems some scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have been experimenting with feeding distillers grain to cattle to lower E coli levels in them. They have failed in their attempts, but have also found no increase in E coli in any of their feeding practices which conflicts with the report I quoted in my earlier article.
Wow, so which is it? Does E coli increase in cattle fed distillers grain, or doesn't it? Seems like more research is indicated now to really determine this. Still it is quite an interesting issue to deal with here for ethanol.
I read a great number of press reports and find comfort in the fact that they are nearly always conflicting. Harold MacMillan
Saturday, December 8. 2007
Conflicitng Information
Wednesday, December 5. 2007
Win, Lose
Now this is really ..... interesting. Part of the whole ethanol boom is the distillers grain that is available after the ethanol is made. This distillers grain has turned into a real boom for the cattle feeding buisness. The cattle feeders might be losing some corn but they are making up for it with the distillers grain. Win, win right?
Wrong.
Early research seems to indicate that the distillers grain increases the amount of E. coli in these animals guts. The amount of E coli in animals fed distillers grain was about twice as much as those that were fed no distillers grain. Whether the E coli is from the distillers grain or the distillers grain just helps it grow better is unknown at this point. Now we are talking a food safety issue though. More E coli in the animals means a higher chance that E coli might be in the finished product. Properly handled meat shouldn't have any E coli in it from such a source but the pace meat is handled in the big meat packing plants sometimes gets contaminated whether they like it or not. So this makes ethanol a food safety issue.
I'm always talking about the food security issues that ethanol has brought up and now we are seeing food safety issues with it too. Ethanol is going to be with us for a long time. I'm not blind to that. But how important is ethanol to you? How should we as a society deal with the food security and food safety issues that ethanol seems to generate? Are the higher food prices and the increased E coli risk worth putting ethanol in your SUV? Are the higher food prices and the increased E coli risk worth subsidizing the ethanol industry with our tax dollars? All tough questions. I don't know that I have the answers to these questions.
Part of the answer might be conservation though. Do you really need that big SUV? Might you get by on a smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle. I went this route with my last vehicle. It isn't the best vehicle for me and my family but the gas mileage made it well worth it to me. More people need to think about conservation. That is part of the long term answer to the energy problems. Ethanol is raising a lot of valid concerns out there in my opinion. How the American people deal with these problems will be very interesting.
Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations. Albert Einstein
Wrong.
Early research seems to indicate that the distillers grain increases the amount of E. coli in these animals guts. The amount of E coli in animals fed distillers grain was about twice as much as those that were fed no distillers grain. Whether the E coli is from the distillers grain or the distillers grain just helps it grow better is unknown at this point. Now we are talking a food safety issue though. More E coli in the animals means a higher chance that E coli might be in the finished product. Properly handled meat shouldn't have any E coli in it from such a source but the pace meat is handled in the big meat packing plants sometimes gets contaminated whether they like it or not. So this makes ethanol a food safety issue.
I'm always talking about the food security issues that ethanol has brought up and now we are seeing food safety issues with it too. Ethanol is going to be with us for a long time. I'm not blind to that. But how important is ethanol to you? How should we as a society deal with the food security and food safety issues that ethanol seems to generate? Are the higher food prices and the increased E coli risk worth putting ethanol in your SUV? Are the higher food prices and the increased E coli risk worth subsidizing the ethanol industry with our tax dollars? All tough questions. I don't know that I have the answers to these questions.
Part of the answer might be conservation though. Do you really need that big SUV? Might you get by on a smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle. I went this route with my last vehicle. It isn't the best vehicle for me and my family but the gas mileage made it well worth it to me. More people need to think about conservation. That is part of the long term answer to the energy problems. Ethanol is raising a lot of valid concerns out there in my opinion. How the American people deal with these problems will be very interesting.
Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations. Albert Einstein
Posted by Sarpy Sam
in Agriculture, Cattle Buisness, Food Security
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Sunday, May 20. 2007
I'm Not Alone
I had a discussion a while ago about ethanol and Distillers Grain and the cattle feeding industry moving north. My basic contention was that the ethanol plants will either find a way to ship the distillers grain to feedlots where they are presently at or the ethanol plants will move to the feedlot areas so they have a market for the distillers grain instead of the feeding industry moving north. I'm not the only one thinking that way (emphasis added).
I'm not saying there won't be some cattle feeding moving north but I don't see a big movement and I'm not the only one. It's nice to know once in a while that either,
a. I see the world as other people do or,
b. There are other people in the world just as stupid as this ignorant cowboy.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. Confucius
However, though Iowa has lots of pigs, distillers' grains work much better as feed for beef and dairy cows. And, according to researchers at Iowa State University, the state's refineries already churn out more than five times as much of the stuff as its small stock of dairy cattle can eat. Most of those refineries, therefore, have to use a great deal of energy drying the distillers' grains so that they can be shipped to Texas and other cattle states in the South.
Feeding the by-product directly to local animals would cut energy use at the refineries and transport costs for the feed. Iowans and other Midwesterners think this logic will drive a boom in the region's beef and dairy industries. Plenty of investors, however, view it as an excellent reason to start building ethanol refineries in Texas, which has plenty of hungry cattle.
I'm not saying there won't be some cattle feeding moving north but I don't see a big movement and I'm not the only one. It's nice to know once in a while that either,
a. I see the world as other people do or,
b. There are other people in the world just as stupid as this ignorant cowboy.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. Confucius
Tuesday, May 1. 2007
Concerns
I've been somewhat curious about Distillers Grain, leftover product from ethanol production, and the feeding of it to livestock. The claims I read are how wonderful it is to feed to cattle. I know nothing about it and probably will never feed it since I don't feed anything in a bunk, it's all open range around here, but knowing how its fed helps in understanding.
Keeping this in mind the story I read about how Distillers Grain can cause polio in cattle was very interesting. It appears the sulfur content of the Distillers Grain can be high enough to trigger acute polio which gives some symptoms similar to BSE.
I'm sure this is a very rare thing that can happen when feeding Distillers Grain but it is interesting to know. I knew there had to be catches to feeding Distillers Grain and here is one of them, sulfur content. What other problems are we going to find with this feed source? Maybe there are some and maybe not. We won't know until we feed enough to find out.
Maybe I am to old fashioned but I am always leery of new things until they have proven themselves out. Hell, I just got into big bale systems last year because it looked like they were working good and had been around long enough to prove their worth. I know Distillers Grains of many different types aren't a new thing, but the large scale feeding of it because of the ethanol boon is, so I am approaching the whole thing with caution looking for the problems it causes and the solutions it brings. I never imagined polio was one of the problems but you learn something new everyday.
Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. Sigmund Freud
Keeping this in mind the story I read about how Distillers Grain can cause polio in cattle was very interesting. It appears the sulfur content of the Distillers Grain can be high enough to trigger acute polio which gives some symptoms similar to BSE.
I'm sure this is a very rare thing that can happen when feeding Distillers Grain but it is interesting to know. I knew there had to be catches to feeding Distillers Grain and here is one of them, sulfur content. What other problems are we going to find with this feed source? Maybe there are some and maybe not. We won't know until we feed enough to find out.
Maybe I am to old fashioned but I am always leery of new things until they have proven themselves out. Hell, I just got into big bale systems last year because it looked like they were working good and had been around long enough to prove their worth. I know Distillers Grains of many different types aren't a new thing, but the large scale feeding of it because of the ethanol boon is, so I am approaching the whole thing with caution looking for the problems it causes and the solutions it brings. I never imagined polio was one of the problems but you learn something new everyday.
Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. Sigmund Freud
Monday, April 16. 2007
Responding
I had a comment left by my buddy at MSU, Paul, and I decided to answer it here instead of the comments.
Here's the comment to start with.
This corn thing is all hype to drive down calf prices? I don't think so. There is real pressure on the corn markets with the rise in the ethanol business. This cannot be denied. I personally think that the market is a little over speculated, to many people betting the market will go higher yet, and there are some indications that this is true. I heard a report on the radio that the year end corn stocks were significantly higher than expected and they were thinking that ethanol wasn't sucking up as much corn as people thought. I personally think that other users of corn, mostly the livestock industry, are finding ways to do with out as much corn since the prices are higher, the law of supply and demand doing its thing, and that is why there is more corn left than expected.
Now what Paul means by "70% of processed corn is left over," I am not exactly sure. I do know that when they are done making ethanol they have distillers grain, mash as Paul puts it, left over. Distillers grain can be fed very efficiently to cattle but not so to hogs and poultry. Since we can feed corn to cattle hogs and poultry very easily, there has to be something significantly different about distillers grain since it is so hard to feed to hogs and poultry. Therefore distillers grain is not 70% corn, and I'm not sure it has 70% of the feed value of corn so I'm not sure what Paul means.
Distillers grain is a wet product that does not conduct itself to long distance transportation. There are a few plants that make Dry Distillers Grain which is, as the name indicates, distillers grain that is dried so it is a dry product. This dry product is easily transported and shipped using existing transportation assets unlike distillers grain. Since distillers grain is so easily feed able to cattle, that is where most of it is going. The problem here is most of the big cattle feeding areas are not in the same area as the corn producing areas where ethanol is being produced. The question becomes, what is going to happen to the distillers grain?
I've heard reports but have been unable to prove them that there has been some effort in Iowa, a big ethanol state, to open up new cattle feedlots since there is not much cattle feeding in Iowa anymore, mostly hogs are fed there now. The problem is that the Iowa Department of Environmental Quality will not approve of any new cattle feedlots to be built. This leads to a growing distillers grain problems in Iowa and other states. Will we see more cattle feeding going on in Northern states as Paul speculates? I personally don't think we will see any large movement of feeding back to northern states. They will either figure out how to ship distillers grain to where it can be used or they will start drying more of it and shipping it out. The advantages of feeding where they do now far out weigh the distillers grain issue. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if the mounting problem of distillers grain drives more ethanol plants to the feeding states and they will ship corn into them as cheaper than trying to deal with the distillers grain in the northern states. My opinion but who knows.
This whole corn price issue has yet to shake out. How it will ultimately affect not only the livestock industry, but most of the food production in the US has yet to be figured out. There are a lot of experts throwing out predictions but it's a lot of hot air. Hindsight is 20/20. We will know once the system has finally stabilized from tall the shocks going through the system now. Hell, who would have predicted with higher corn prices, calf prices would stay as good as they have? Nobody predicted that but now that we see the trends it makes sense to us. Beef demand is staying strong, feeders aren't feeding as much corn to get the critters to fat and are slaughtering the cattle at lighter weights but still maintaining there profitability. This has led to a demand for calves that I would have never expected with corn prices as high as they are. The market is making adjustments and figuring things out. That's all you can ask for. It's not hype out to screw the cow-calf man out of money, it's the market at work, like it or lump it.
So in short, I disagree with Paul that some mysterious entity is driving corn prices up to get calves cheaper. I also disagree with him that there will be a large movement of cattle feeding to northern states because of the "mash" from ethanol production. There might be a slight movement but nothing big, the market will find a way to efficiently handle the distillers grain issue if the government doesn't intrude and muck it up. I take a neutral view on the distillers grain being "70% of processed corn is left over" since I just don't know what the nutritional value of distillers grain is. I see where a lot of research is going into how to efficiently feed distillers grain but I am not conversant with it. The only statement he has that I agree with is " I am looking forward to good calf prices this year. " I don't expect it to be quite as good as last year but they will maintain themselves well and an efficient producer will be able to make a little money if Mother Nature will just cooperate a little. I hope you enjoyed my answers Paul. I've tried to cover all the bases but I may have left something out.
There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. Gertrude Stein
Here's the comment to start with.
This corn thing is all hype to drive down the prices we get for our calves this year. After processing the corn in the ethanol plants, approximately 70% of processed corn is left over and can be fed to cattle. This "mash" will begin to pile up and I would think that this should become cheap feed for feedlot operations. This should result in the movement of feedlots from Texas to Nebraska, Dakotas, Iowa, etc. Will this happen, this remains to be seen. This should be good for Montana calves.
When I was a kid during the '50's we fed "mash" from the beer breweries to the milk cows. This was cheap fed and lasted until the beer companies moved out. It seems to me that some folks are just out to make a buck at the expense of anybody. I am looking forward to good calf prices this year. We sell on Superior every year and usually get top dollar for our calves. It is all a matter of timing. I would like to hear your comments on this "mash" issue which nobody is talking about. Short of the feedlots being very close to the ethanol plants, someone is going to have to find a way to process this "mash" into pellets or something so that it can be shipped. Obviously the closer the better, hence watch for more feedlots in the North.
This corn thing is all hype to drive down calf prices? I don't think so. There is real pressure on the corn markets with the rise in the ethanol business. This cannot be denied. I personally think that the market is a little over speculated, to many people betting the market will go higher yet, and there are some indications that this is true. I heard a report on the radio that the year end corn stocks were significantly higher than expected and they were thinking that ethanol wasn't sucking up as much corn as people thought. I personally think that other users of corn, mostly the livestock industry, are finding ways to do with out as much corn since the prices are higher, the law of supply and demand doing its thing, and that is why there is more corn left than expected.
Now what Paul means by "70% of processed corn is left over," I am not exactly sure. I do know that when they are done making ethanol they have distillers grain, mash as Paul puts it, left over. Distillers grain can be fed very efficiently to cattle but not so to hogs and poultry. Since we can feed corn to cattle hogs and poultry very easily, there has to be something significantly different about distillers grain since it is so hard to feed to hogs and poultry. Therefore distillers grain is not 70% corn, and I'm not sure it has 70% of the feed value of corn so I'm not sure what Paul means.
Distillers grain is a wet product that does not conduct itself to long distance transportation. There are a few plants that make Dry Distillers Grain which is, as the name indicates, distillers grain that is dried so it is a dry product. This dry product is easily transported and shipped using existing transportation assets unlike distillers grain. Since distillers grain is so easily feed able to cattle, that is where most of it is going. The problem here is most of the big cattle feeding areas are not in the same area as the corn producing areas where ethanol is being produced. The question becomes, what is going to happen to the distillers grain?
I've heard reports but have been unable to prove them that there has been some effort in Iowa, a big ethanol state, to open up new cattle feedlots since there is not much cattle feeding in Iowa anymore, mostly hogs are fed there now. The problem is that the Iowa Department of Environmental Quality will not approve of any new cattle feedlots to be built. This leads to a growing distillers grain problems in Iowa and other states. Will we see more cattle feeding going on in Northern states as Paul speculates? I personally don't think we will see any large movement of feeding back to northern states. They will either figure out how to ship distillers grain to where it can be used or they will start drying more of it and shipping it out. The advantages of feeding where they do now far out weigh the distillers grain issue. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if the mounting problem of distillers grain drives more ethanol plants to the feeding states and they will ship corn into them as cheaper than trying to deal with the distillers grain in the northern states. My opinion but who knows.
This whole corn price issue has yet to shake out. How it will ultimately affect not only the livestock industry, but most of the food production in the US has yet to be figured out. There are a lot of experts throwing out predictions but it's a lot of hot air. Hindsight is 20/20. We will know once the system has finally stabilized from tall the shocks going through the system now. Hell, who would have predicted with higher corn prices, calf prices would stay as good as they have? Nobody predicted that but now that we see the trends it makes sense to us. Beef demand is staying strong, feeders aren't feeding as much corn to get the critters to fat and are slaughtering the cattle at lighter weights but still maintaining there profitability. This has led to a demand for calves that I would have never expected with corn prices as high as they are. The market is making adjustments and figuring things out. That's all you can ask for. It's not hype out to screw the cow-calf man out of money, it's the market at work, like it or lump it.
So in short, I disagree with Paul that some mysterious entity is driving corn prices up to get calves cheaper. I also disagree with him that there will be a large movement of cattle feeding to northern states because of the "mash" from ethanol production. There might be a slight movement but nothing big, the market will find a way to efficiently handle the distillers grain issue if the government doesn't intrude and muck it up. I take a neutral view on the distillers grain being "70% of processed corn is left over" since I just don't know what the nutritional value of distillers grain is. I see where a lot of research is going into how to efficiently feed distillers grain but I am not conversant with it. The only statement he has that I agree with is " I am looking forward to good calf prices this year. " I don't expect it to be quite as good as last year but they will maintain themselves well and an efficient producer will be able to make a little money if Mother Nature will just cooperate a little. I hope you enjoyed my answers Paul. I've tried to cover all the bases but I may have left something out.
There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. Gertrude Stein
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