Walk into University of Nebraska’s new Feedlot Innovation Center, and you’ll realize it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. While the buildings may be empty lots today, starting next week, cattle will start to arrive, setting the stage to revolutionize feedlot research for the entire industry.
“We thought this is the latest and greatest way for us to help the feedlot industry help the beef industry focus on performance, environmental issues and challenges that we can address, as well as animal welfare, cattle behavior and even precision technology,” says Galen Erickson, Nebraska cattle industry professor of animal science at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).
A New Approach to Feedlot Research
It’s all being done at the Klosterman Feedlot Innovation Center, a $7.2-million project that sprouted from an idea four years ago.
“We want to be a testbed for all of the latest innovations,” says Erickson. “Not only is it innovations that we would like to develop internally, but we also want to be a testbed for companies. So if there’s industry innovations that companies are developing, many of them need to be tested in the real world. And yet, when you test them in the real world, you want to be able to collect all the data and information on how well they work. That’s the role that we think we serve.”
Advancing Precision Technology in Beef Production
Erickson, who also serves as the feedlot Extension specialist for UNL, spoke to us from the Klopfenstein Feed Technology Center, one of four buildings that now call the Feedlot Innovation Center home.
“This is a 240-head individual feeding facility. It’s a facility we’re using for individual animal management research,” says Erickson “There’s a lot of interest in what can we do with precision technology to improve beef cattle production. We have a lot of research planned for this facility in the coming years.”
The Terry Klopfenstein Feed Technology Center has 36 commercial-sized pens, which will house 60 head of cattle across four different housing systems.
“The goal is to do individual management, individual precision technology, look at sensors we can use on cattle, as well as ways to enhance welfare, health or performance,” he adds.
Erickson says from small-scale research to larger pens, the research will be precise, but it will also uncover answers on a larger scale.
“Sometimes people say, ‘Well, that research was done on a smaller scale. That doesn’t apply to our operation.’ So, we’re really excited because we can do things now that are directly applicable. And frankly, some of the questions we’re asking need to be done on a larger scale and with larger groups of cattle,” Erickson says.
Nailing Down Answers About Nutrient Loss
One of the key answers Erickson says they’ll uncover here is ways to reduce nutrient loss from feedyard systems.
“We need to do a better job of conserving nutrients. The focus of that and on everybody’s mind is normally carbon and greenhouse gases,” he says. “Actually, much of our focus here will be that and also nitrogen management. Housing systems offers one of the greatest ways to change that.”
Erickson says a traditional open lot, which is the most common feedyard housing system today, isn’t particularly good at conserving nitrogen. He says placing cattle in deep pit barns is a good way to conserve nitrogen, while also revealing other essential answers.
“If you put cattle in these barns, you get to control the elements. So in the summertime there’s less heat stress, and in winter time we have less cold stress. But they’re also crowded in there pretty good. So, we’re looking at how do the cattle perform and behave in those systems, and how we can manage nutrients in those systems compared to traditional open lots,” says Erickson.
From cattle performance in the heat or the cold, to researching how to keep cattle out of the mud, Erickson says the research that will be done at the University of Nebraska will happen year-round.
“A lot of producers have been asking if we can put cattle on concrete, and traditional concrete is very expensive. But there’s a new approach for solid surface pens called roller-compacted concrete. From a research facility perspective, I believe we will be the first place in the world to be able to compare commercial performance in that type of setting,” he says.
Answering a Burning Question about Cattle Emissions
While the research will find answers for feedlots in the U.S., other studies ongoing here at the University of Nebraska are finding answers that could be valuable worldwide.
“There’s a lot of global concern about how much cattle are actually contributing to global warming. We’re trying to answer that question and get involved with actually quantifying those emissions, because there’s not a lot of research out there that actually tells us what the cattle are emitting. It’s a lot of predictions or estimates at this point,” says Rebecca McDermott, a PhD student in beef cattle nutrition at UNL.
Quantifying greenhouse gas emissions of cattle grazing pasture is the topic of her research, but her classroom is far from a traditional setting. Instead, her classroom is a 27-acre brome grass pasture where you’ll find cattle grazing with GPS collars.
“We have an eddy covariance system that actually measures methane and the CO2 that’s produced by the pasture and the cattle. Then, we can use the location of the cattle, and if they are in this footprint, we can actually determine what those cattle are emitting. So then, we can determine what their actual methane and CO2 emissions are,” she says.
The research is five years in the works, and McDermot says they’re already finding impactful insights, including what impact the weather is having on cattle emissions.
“When there’s drought, there’s less biomass or less forage on the field. So that pasture is actually taking up less carbon. Then, the cattle are carbon positive, meaning that they’re contributing carbon to the environment. Whereas, in years where there’s lots of rainfall, lots of forage, lots of biomass, then the pasture is actually taking up more carbon than what the cattle are emitting. So then that system would be actually carbon neutral,” she explains.
A Vision for the Future
From tracking cattle in the pasture, to now being able to track cattle’s feed consumption with individual ID tags in this feeding system, the UNL research could shape the cattle industry in the years ahead.
“When that tag is scanned by the reader, we can decide whether the animal has access to a specific bunk. We’ll also have different diets in these bunks that we can compare,” says Erickson. “So, once that animal’s ID is read, we can allow it to either have access to feed or not, and we can also control for how long.”
Between the Feedlot Technology Center, the two confinement barns in the middle and the processing facility on the end, this state-of-the art feedlot innovation center is truly one of a kind.
“Maybe most importantly, when we do experiments, we get to randomize cattle to different outcome groups. I always joke cattle to cattle can’t lie. So when we do our randomization correctly, however the cattle perform in these two different systems that’s what the two systems tell us, because the cattle can’t fool you,” says Erickson.
Bottom line, Erickson says the work researchers are doing at the new Feedlot Innovation Center will help cattle producers across the country, as the research has real-world application and impacts what producers can adopt tomorrow.
