One challenge in particular when utilizing wet products is how to store them. Beet pulp is the fibrous portion left after the sugar is extracted. It has a nutrient profile similar to corn silage. Cattle love it, explains Dahlen. Beet pulp is often sold as a wet product to ranchers close enough to haul it away. They can get one to two week’s supply and feed it right away.

Processing plants start operating at harvest time in mid-September. By October, a lot of pulp is available. Production continues through winter into April when any remaining piles are thawing and rotting. Then the plants shut down through summer. Dahlen says he has worked with producers who use this product all winter, but want to find a way to store it so they can feed it through the summer.

The University of Nebraska has done a lot of research on storing wet corn byproducts, and the concept is the same, he adds.

“If a person puts up corn silage and the corn plants are drier than desired due to early frost, you can mix in some wet byproducts with the drier corn plants to add moisture.” — Carl Dahlen

“If a person puts up corn silage and the corn plants are drier than desired due to early frost, you can mix in some wet byproducts with the drier corn plants to add moisture,” Dahlen says. “You can always just add water, but wet beet pulp, or other wet products, can add nutrients, as well as moisture. You may not have enough wet products, but it works very nicely in some cases.”

Additionally, there are beet tailings (the root and other parts of the plant that end up as waste) or whole beets that didn’t make the grade during processing.

Potato processing also provides byproducts from cull potatoes, peelings, etc. Places that make French fries use steam or forced water to blow the peel off the potatoes. There are many potato byproducts, and one is just the skins, along with the moisture used to blow them off, he says.

Some potatoes and other processed products don’t meet quality control standards and can be utilized as feed. You just need to figure out how to balance the ration regarding nutrient differences in various byproducts or food manufacturing wastes.

“Sometimes when farmers are cleaning out storage areas or warehouses there might be potatoes, beets or other foodstuffs available. Some of these can present a choking risk, and you might need to find a way to chop up the material. Our Carrington, North Dakota, research center was feeding beets and used a flail-type manure spreader to chop them,” he says. “They dumped the beets in and ran them through the spreader, and it chopped the beets into little pieces. One producer chopped beets by mounting a forage chopper behind a gravity box, blowing chopped beets out the back end. There are many ways to make something work.”

Dahlen notes that the University has hosted educational meetings about storing byproducts and addressed the idea of mixing wet byproducts with grass hay, chopped cornstalks or some other low-quality roughage. This strategy doesn’t induce fermentation, so it’s not like making silage; but moisture from the wet product seeps into the drier product, and the cattle eat more. Intake may increase because of the added moisture, as well as the added nutrients, he says.

Editor’s note: Heather Smith Thomas is a freelance writer and cattlewoman from Salmon, Idaho. [Lead photo by Carl Dahlen.]

Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA, Vol. 16, No. 11-B