 group of producers in that we know that have put some of these to test and have done some different experimenting on their own operations to share some things that have worked for them, maybe some things that have not worked for them. So we ask them if they'd be willing to come in and share some information with you guys. So we're going to have them come up, introduce themselves, give a couple of minute background information on their farm operation, how they utilize the byproducts on their farm, and then we're going to turn the floor over to you guys to ask them questions. So our producer panel, Darren's Leggold, producer down in my county in Ransom County in McLeod, North Dakota, runs a purebred operation with a feedlot operation. I've been experimenting with different types of byproducts mixed in with some different feed stuff, so he's going to serve as one of the producer panel. Kevin Elliott from UpBike Clifford, his family also runs a purebred semitel operation, a feedlot operation. It was all to his operation here a couple of years ago. They do quite a bit of different work with some byproducts and won't hold against them. We're college classmates together. Justin Spickler, let's see, up by Glenfield runs a registered Angus operation with his brother, and they do again quite a bit of different use with some byproducts. Keith Gimmel, probably the one I don't know, or at least knows on this panel, so I guess I don't know your whole background, but you can do that when you come up and introduce yourself and talk about what your operation is. So if we get that producer panel up here, we'll get going with that. So I guess we're going to turn the mic over. We'll start here with Darren and again be if you guys want to introduce yourself, give a little bit of background about your operation, how you got going with the byproducts, how you use them, maybe a couple instances, how they're working for you, maybe something that isn't work for you, and then pass it down the line and then we'll open up for discussion. Like Brian said, my name is Darren Sackbold, down in the cloud area. We run a cow-calf operation registered limousine cattle and a feedlot. We use a lot, a lot of feedpulps, the last couple winters especially, with our water situation down there. We've been really short on feed and feedpulps has really saved our bucks. We also use a lot of the fillers. We put both of these products up and kept them for at least a year and I've really had good luck storing them both. I've never really had a bad experience with it, I guess. We've used wet distillers and dry. We do like the wet distillers better, just the feed better, makes a better action. And then I guess we'll pass it down. My name is Keith Gemmel. I'm from Port Monarch Dakota and I run a feedlot. We run a feedlot by background cattle and we take them up to finish weight and we've got different experiences with beet ball, beet tailings and we also store some wet distillers grain long-term. I'm Kevin Elliott, from Clifford, North Dakota. We've got Herbert Seven-Talls, had a bunch of sheep to run. My dad and my uncle run a feedlot in Galesburg and a bunch of commercial cows. We're about 30 miles from Castleton for the distillers and about 20 miles from Hillsboro for the beets. It's a good location for byproduct feeds. We utilize it the best we can. I'm Justin Spickler. I am in a partnership with my brother and we run a group of registered Angus cows and we've tried to incorporate byproducts as much as possible or screenings products or something. I think the last time I bought a $6 or $7 corn was when it first started to go up. I had a bad experience with somebody where the corn price changed and I got to pay full price for corn after I thought I bought it for a couple dollars less and we actually do finish some cattle and we develop a lot of our bulls and the only actual grain product to go through them is whole old. As far as experience with byproducts I always consult one of the extension people before we try to store it and that's been very beneficial. We did store some beet pulp where we piled it in the fall and covered it with plastic and it had very very little spoilage. I ran into two problems that are now obvious after listening today. One of them we couldn't get up on the pile like we thought we wanted to be able to. Our tractor would actually fall through. If the bucket was full we didn't have a dozer. The other problem was that we closed that pile of pulp up and after it was covered we closed it up because we wanted to save it for March when we were going through our thaw and the pile actually froze on us and so we didn't get to use it until April but it kept fine. It's just that we by not keeping the pile open it froze and it presented a little bit of a challenge that way. That's my most memorable experience. A big solid block of beet pulp. I guess at this time if you guys have questions we'll open up for questions. I think Carl's got a kickoff question for you guys and we'll start with that. We'll repeat the question. So what is your best what have you found the best method of feeding byproducts mixing to the cattle and we'll go down the line or someone has something they really want to share. Just jump in here. Against our experience kind of like dusting with the beet pulp. We put in quite a bit of beet pulp last fall. We made a deal with Otto Wapiton and we took about 70-80 loads of pulp during their free harvest where they couldn't get rid of it. We kind of made a verbal agreement with them at the time that you take it now and you get a lot of spoilage say January or February that they would make it right with it. I had a four-wheel drive with a blade on so I could actually drive on the pile a little. We pushed it up in a pile and I could drive on it. I did mix a little bit of straw with it, ground straw just to kind of give it a little base I guess once in a while because like Greg referred to it started poking out on the edges and we put line bales around the outside and that really seemed to help soak up a lot of the moisture that over time that pulp kind of breaks down and water heats out of it. And then delivering it to the cattle, most of our cows are all fed in tires and we CRM mix just about everything that's fed. Well we use a TMR wagon for all of our feeding and we feed the beet pulp, we feed the distillers grain and as far as storing the beet pulp what we've tried there is to mix it with old chop straw or screenings and that seems to really help it'll firm it up enough so that you can get up there and you can pack it with a tractor. As far as the distillers grain I'm kind of a green hornet storing that but we did try something last fall where we got 50 loads in and we just made a U with bales, lined that with plastic and then we put it up about four feet high on the bales and covered the pile with plastic and it seemed to store real well. Matter of fact we're just finishing up feeding that pile now that we stored last August. I guess my only problem with it is when we're feeding with the TMR, you get some big chunks and you wreck a lot of machinery with those hard boulders that you put into the feed wagon so you got to be careful. Like you said when you mix it with some screenings or some pulp or some hay or something it helps it so when it's frozen it's not quite as hard it might break up a little bit instead of defending your augers and your feed wagon or knives or whatever it is that you're feeding with. That's really the only problem I've had with them. I guess I would say I don't have too much to add other than ours all goes through a mixture wagon or just stillers does and something that we've had to kind of train ourselves to be aware of is to be, to make sure the product is similar with each load. Pretty much all of ours comes fresh and if you get a load that's either real dry or real wet it can really mess up a set of cattle if you're pretty close on your bunk calls but ours is always fresh I guess. You find it a real work better than auger wagon? Well I've got an auger wagon so I'm kind of partial to that but I have used a real wagon and it seems like the auger wagon mixes better for me and I've also tried a vertical wagon and I think if you were on a high roughage ration I think a vertical wagon would work fine but on a high concentrate ration we didn't have very good luck with it so myself we use an auger wagon. I think we use both one couple auger wagons and one real and the real mixes a lot quicker. The auger might mix better I don't know but I think they both work fine. If we just have a real and if we didn't fill it's whole pull it would mix better. The question I have is could each one of you tell your way that you preferred to put up a wet distillers or a wet beet pulp into a pile and if you were to do it tomorrow how would you do it? With your experience. Right now I can pour a shitload of cement and get that underneath it so I can get to it first of all. Otherwise like with the wet distillers I'd real good luck just piling it by itself and leaving it and not covering it. We just push it up the best you can with maybe bales around the edges. If we had a big cement bunker that'd probably be better but it takes a little cash too and I guess I owe $5 in this way I do too. Well I think the storing the wet distillers is a real issue depending on its moisture. We got some at 35% moisture and it was a bear to work with you'd push it up and when you turn around it'd come right back out at you and we got some at 45% and we could push it up about 6 feet high but I think if I was to store wet distillers again what I would try and do is to make a four-sided bunker out of straw bales with plastic and get a hold of some kind of a conveyor that you could back up to and just convey it in and just let it keep filling because it's kind of pointless to sit there and push it up with a loader when it comes right back out at you by the time the next truck load comes. So I think that that would work but I think with the distillers you have to have a plastic cover on it. The experience that we've had is that we've had very little waste I would say 2 to 3 inches is the most with a good plastic cover on there. I like your idea with the distillers that's what we would do again. We put it up both ways. We mixed it with straw went through all the work of grinding straw, layering it in a manure spreader to try to get it on mix which was it wasn't science playing it out but it was a lot quicker than running through a feed wagon and running a lot of hours on a feed wagon. So we ran it through the spreader and I could push it up in a pile and actually drive on it and pack it. And it kept great. We fed out of that pile for about a year and a half and at the end it was damn near as good as it was when we put it in there. We started to show a little spoilage and we did cover it with plastic. What is time consuming? When you get all them loads in you've got to have a place to put them loads and you've got a place to put your ground A and another place for your pile and 3 or 4 guys that's good health and if I would do it again the last time we did it we put it in made a bunker out of bales and we didn't line the edges with plastic but we did cover the top of it with plastic and there too had very little spoilage and it's just a lot less labor intensive. And as far as the beet faults I guess we're planning on doing this fall the same thing we did last year. We can get in on pre-arvest on beet faults and it's just enough ground hang with it to help drive on it. Put it in a pile and we did that we just covered with some ground hang. We never put plastic on that. We had some freezing that you can kind of peel that off and put it over a pile and once it starts on then we fed that up to a very little spoilage. We haven't had much trouble with beet faults for a real issue but if you come into frozen stuff you can push it to the side and when spring rolls around you can just feed it up but like you say as far as putting an end to it. They don't roll here at all. They come back out the top. Covered your piles with some ground hay or blew on some straw. Would that help with the freezing problem? We covered our beetle pile here this last fall and that's what we did is blew on a bunch of straw on top of it. We kind of got lucky in the next day I got about an inch and a half of rain. I don't know if you call it lucky or not we didn't need the rain but it just sealed that straw right up. I think it really helped on my spoilage problem or issue but it still froze. We still had all six to eight inches 25 below for a few days and we were feeding it out of the pile every day but it was still freezing on the edge. We've had the same experience with putting straw on the pile it definitely helps with the freezing and I don't think you can get as much spoilage. Can you guys talk a little bit about the arrangement that you have with the plant that you're getting your products from how often your delivery is or how you got that set up? Our beetle delivery is real erratic. We try to do like Darren and get some in in the fall so we've got a reserve and then we just get it as often as the truck driver can get it which is a neighbor which is really handy as far as distillers we get it. My brother works in at Blue Flint so he makes us buy it from him and we get it out there and it's always very available I guess so we don't have any trouble getting that but the pulp is if you're intending to feed it for a certain number of days you want to be a little ways ahead so you make sure you have enough. I guess with the beet pulp what we've done too is to stockpile it in the fall of the year so we don't have to quite put loads in the winter and we also especially if you're going to haul tailings you run into freezing if you have to haul it very far. As far as the distillers grain we typically contract in June or not June but July or August for the coming year if they'll allow it and what we get ours mainly on a wall haul off some of it comes out of Castleton but what we find is that if we don't have a contract when we need it we can't get it so we pretty much have to contract just to have availability. Kind of in our experience too with the pulp is kind of why we started playing a bunch of it in the fall is especially with the feedlot rations you come Friday afternoon and you're just about out of pulp and you're not going to get a load till Monday and that's a quick display to do a bunch of cattle. Kind of like to add it on hand and with our distillers we've been getting most everything out of Castleton since its price that it is. We've been getting like a load a week during the winter when we were using it up say if you can get a contract as if you know it was a nice way of doing it but not all of them will contract with you. And you've got to walk up the way to the back to the room. I've got like more questions here. First one we've mentioned corn syrup just comments that any of you guys have had experience with the distillers solubles and that'll give you another question while we're at it talked about Salon's research with the spoiled feeds I wonder if you guys take any precautions to manage your spoiled feeds to certain groups of cattle. We've got some cow calf and feedlot operators there so those are the two questions. On the solubles we've used them back when we could get them a little easier they're not, when they're given in a way it was a lot easier to get it than when you get to pay for it but when we were grinding hay we'd spray it up with the hay as it was coming out and that was kind of our storage device. We didn't have any tanks or anything it wasn't the science to it. If you wanted to, for feedlot cattle if you want your ration really really consistent I probably wouldn't recommend that. I'd recommend adding it and having a couple of pamphlets in the books about storage tanks and I'd recommend that if you want to keep your ration consistent. On the cow herd I wasn't quite as worried about it they'd get a little extra some days, a little less some days in the spring they were fat and fast even. What were the other questions about the spoilage on the cow herd? Then we tried to take some moldy stuff away if we can a little bit and the feedlot usually don't worry about it too much. We've never fed any of the spoilage so as far as spoilage goes our inclusion rate in the cow calf side of it the cows would be after calving typically is when we would use it and in the feedlot ration I guess we hadn't had any problems with it and we were pretty current I guess on our fresh distiller so there wasn't a lot of spoilage. Well we've never fed the serbs so I don't really have any knowledge of that but as far as the spoilage on the other feed we don't seem to have an awful lot of spoilage but if we get a chance we scrape it off and try not to get it in the mixed way but we're strictly a feedlot so we really don't worry about it too much with the abortion issue. I guess on the spoilage for us again with the distillers we just don't seem to get a lot of spoilage in what we do. We try to run through the feedlot in especially during the winter and spring months and we're getting close to calving and keep that away from the cows all the soluble. There are two, we don't feed a lot of soluble it's about the only time we've used it. There are two, we're too cheap we only used it when it was free and we just used it to cover our silage file and also put it over a beef pole file one year after we had it on just to kind of try to seal the pile up but now that they're charging for it or if there's a grave or somebody alluded to that you know about 40-50% of that it's going to be a lot of feed value that's in there from just drying out that we kind of went away from doing it. Question was is there any benefit of putting it on top of the pile? It's kind of, it's hard to make that determination I guess. Yeah I think it helps some on the spoilage but now we just cover everything with plastic and it's a lot less spoiling so as far as I'm concerned plastic is a better investment than when the surf was free and it wasn't such an issue. Any faster supplementation at the speed of the long event? No one supplemented out on the faster with fly product? We feed just to supplement our cows keep them in good condition through the winter months a mixture of wet cake and potato waste. We discontinue doing that shortly before they calve and don't start doing it again until about 30 days after calving because they just produce so much milk that the calves can't handle it all. Milk that utilizes on the pasture or panel? What sort of information does the SNL plant or the beet plant give you as far as nutrient composition of the product? How often or what do they give you when you have a load go out? I guess our experience with that is when we tried to get an analysis from MnDAC with the beet it's been pretty much a generic one that they have gotten last week on Wednesday and wrote that one up and so what we did last fall when we put our pile in I took like a sample a day out of it and mixed it all up and sent it in for an analysis and that's what we based our ration sheet off them and put the distillers to I think they're a little more current with their analysis especially with the sulfur issues and stuff we've sent some samples in and it's always been real consistent so we've kind of just been going by their analysis. I guess the experience that we've had with the distillers grain is that in Wohala they test pretty much every load that comes out of there for moisture and for sulfur content and that's the two things that we look at and on the stuff that we've had stored what we've found over time is that the sulfur content goes up a little and the protein content goes up and the moisture content goes down to guarantee it at 65% moisture or less and the sample we took after has been stored for several months came back at 61. Yeah, we don't get much analysis from the plants but the feed company that we use, the nutritionist and the guy that helps us out at the feedlot, he takes samples probably once a month on all of our ingredients that come into the feedlot just to look over everything. We'd be kind of the same way we test as we get them and I guess at Blue Flint they do have stuff in place to kick off spec loads off to the side so they have a separate pile and all I've learned from David is that you don't joke about off spec loads. The highest percentage of ethanol byproducts in a dry matter basis you use and have you seen any polio? I guess in our finishing ration it'd be right at 30%. We're using a modified product and we like it really well. We do use it real lightly in our bull ration, occasionally in our developing heifer ration and then to as the cows are getting a little sort of peak lactation we'll use a couple pounds in the spring but the highest inclusion we have is in our finishing diet at about 30% and I guess what was the other half of it is there more to it than that. We actually had a case of polio this year that was misdiagnosed by management and we lost the animal but it's been I guess I haven't seen one of those for about 8 or 9 years or maybe longer so I did the math as Galen was talking about it and our rate of incidence would be real similar to the one they saw obviously much more study. Usually we work with a nutritionist in the extension service and ask them whatever they recommend and then price has a lot to do with it too and feed an awful lot of things and the extension says you can't get away with it if the price is keeping it. Well the highest inclusion rate that we've gone on wet distillers grain right now we're at about 40% and it's a little bit higher than the so-called experts recommend but the nutritionist we've got says you won't have any problem with that level so that's where we are. I guess what we do is look at the price of wet distillers grain versus corn and our wet distillers is by far the cheapest feed of the two. Now we're kind of the same way and I guess as far as on a finishing ration we haven't finished many cattle in the last couple of years but we have fed up to 35% or 38% on a dry matter and got along well with that as far as the polio thing we did have on Gaff about two years ago that that's what he was diagnosed at anyway and we've fed a lot of us through a lot of cattle and won over all the years and it's not really an issue. Other questions for you guys we've talked a lot about corn distillers, beet products, have you guys experimented with any other type of co-products that Quinn briefly talked about today? Potatoes, cold potatoes and I've tried that many different ways running them through a snowblower kind of beat them up that way, feeding them whole and from my experience I just don't think that they're worth it so I don't do that anymore. Oh yeah, feed soybean meal once in a while it's cheap, but soybean hulls everything usually comes down to price, we'll feed a lot of different things we got a edible bean plant in town we'll get some splits once in a while but we used to get a lot more but it's ADM and they got to run their regulations and can't just take them anymore, they have to have what the heck is it called for pollution control they have to know everything, where it went and who's got it I guess we've used the gluten pellets and wheat mids, pea splits, corn screenings sunflower screenings and we're kind of the same way economics comes into play and as long as you know a little bit about each of those commodities so you don't feed them at too high a level they all seem to work pretty good, you also need to know it's important to remember that like for instance our sunflower screens are a little erratic in availability and can be very erratic in quality so we don't want to, if we're getting those we don't want to bank on them in a huge amount for energy in any ration we just kind of consider it as a bonus so if you keep coming out in mind it sure seems to help but we're open to anything and everything or we try to be I don't, I guess I like to see people make money at six and seven dollar corn but I don't like to buy it at that and so we try to use anything else that we can kind of along with the screenings thing there too we've been using quite a bit of screenings the last couple years we've known this even from one elevator to another the difference in quality or protein and feed value and screening varies a lot from well we were buying, we were kind of on the edge of the Reggiter Valley and you buy some screenings wet or you buy some screenings out of Reggiter Valley and there's a big difference in quality of feed that way and I guess I did feed one load of potatoes probably five six years ago and I had the same experience I couldn't deal with them you know you got all these lumps and then once they froze in the wintertime then you really had a problem with them we tried to drive on them and everything else to flatten them out and they wound up pushing them off to the side to wait until spring and that was almost worse because they sunk the bad ones they thought of that is just a mess to get rid of them but I know they have a lot of good feed value and there's some potato warehouses pretty close by to us and the only reason I got them is because they were spoiling anyway and they had to get them out of the house it wasn't a very good fair analysis for potatoes I guess another question well let's thank our panel for coming in and sharing with us some of their experiences with using some of these different products and how they utilize them in their operation that this time I'll train it to tell me to hold up