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The newest feedyard in the Texas Panhandle could impact the cattle feeding industry more than its capacity of only a few hundred head may indicate. The Texas Agricultural Experiment Station and U.S. Department of Agriculture's Research Service recently expanded the feeding operation at the Bushland, Tex., experiment station. The feedyard is a joint cattle feeding research program with Nance Ranch feedyard belonging to West Texas A&M University (WT). With the expansion, Dr. Nolan Clark said they will be addressing the issues of dust, odor and the economical management and use of manure and waste water. "We want to take a holistic approach to manure, waste water management and diet," Clark said. Currently, Dr. David Parker at WT and Dr. Andy Cole are studying humate, a carbonated material. They found that it retained nitrogen on the soil surface in the laboratory. "What we've done is take that concept and brought it out here and put it in these pens," Greene said. The hypothesis there is that the pens that have humate will retain nitrogen so whenever the cattle are marketed and the pens cleaned, there will be a greater concentration of nitrogen in the soil improving the nitrogen/phosphorus ratio. "Whenever this material is composted or put out as manure onto a field surface, if it's applied on nitrogen content, then the proportion of nitrogen and phosphorus will be closer together," Greene said. Other research here includes feeding management based upon nutrition, and health, nutrition and the environment, according to Dr. Wayne Greene. "From a nutritionist's standpoint, we're buying nutrition and putting it in the feed box," Greene said, "but the excess is going out and creating a waste problem. Anything we can do to improve that nutrient's use, we can take that to market instead of leaving it in the pen." There are two studies in process now on improving phosphorus usage so less will be left in the pens. The Bushland research feedyard is also conducting trials on fly ash, residue from coal burned in electrical power generation. It's been used a lot to surface county roads because it creates a very hard surface. Feedyards are using it to put floors in their pens to give a long lasting floor. It may also help cattle performance in terms of mud levels in the pens and may make for a better environment for cattle in terms of their feeding performance. While there have been no studies to date on fly ash and disease frequency, the hard surface of the fly ash should allow feedyards to clean pens better, McCollum said. "Where there's a fly ash surface, you can scrape closer down on the surface of the pens," he said. "On a dirt floor pen, you've got some degree where you remove the soil from that pen. Whether it will cut down on microbial problems is a good question because you've still got dirt on the floor of the pen most of the time, whether it's on fly ash or a dirt surface." |
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