40 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN April/May 2024 “The Land Marketing Professionals for Over 105 Years” T IS PROUD TO HAVE Brock Auction Co. Inc. & Bruce R. Brock Real Estate L.L.C “The Land Marketing Professionals for Over 105 years” will be glad to sit down with you for a confidential, no obligation consultation. The professionals at Brock Auction Co. have sold 100’s of millions of dollars worth of Farm and Ranch Real Estate for clients just like you. If you are considering selling your property, we have a nationwide network of investors and buyers looking for property of all kinds. Contact Brock Auction Company or Auction Realty of America, and we will be glad to help you. World Champion Auctioneer Real Estate Broker 612-859-3794 - Cell 1321 HAWKEYE AVE SW -P.O. BOX 1128 -LE MARS, IA 51031 (712) 548-4634 WWW.BROCKAUCTION.COM LICENSED IN: IA, NE, SD & MO solutions is to build pen floor surfaces with roller-compacted concrete. That way, there’s no soil mixed in with the manure.” Stowell says feedlots might not have time to manage the manure in their facility. Scraping manure every day is not always feasible for feedlot managers and “A feedlot might build the digester, but they might not want to manage it,” Stowell says. “They could have another company or third party pay for the conversion of the gas and transportation of the product. The third party can manage the methane product and spend their money on it, so the feedlot has one less thing to worry about.” Other Innovations Feedlots can increase the value of their manure by creating other high-value products besides methane. “Sometimes it’s beneficial to convert the manure into another high-value product that could be sold for a higher price,” Li says. “It could be another source of revenue for the feedlot. It also still helps with claiming carbon credits for beef producers.” UNL is working on another innovation that could help producers with methane emission management. “I worked with a colleague from my department to develop a new process for manure storage: stockpiling manure on a conductive concrete slab that is powered by electricity,” Li says. “The heat emitted from the conductive concrete slab reduces the moisture content of the manure stockpiled on top of the slab, nearly eliminating methane emissions from manure.” Originally, conductive concrete was developed to use in bridge de-icing in cold weather. However, Li and his colleagues modified the concrete design for manure treatments in feedlots. They piled manure on a regular concrete slab and a conductive concrete slab and found that the pile on the conductive concrete emitted very little methane. “We noticed that the weather also affected how much methane was released in the manure pile that was on regular concrete,” Li says. “When the rain made the manure moist, we saw spikes of emissions from the control pile.” While methane digesters may not be the end-all-be-all solution for methane emission reduction in feedlots, it is worth considering for operations that have the right situation and factors. ~NC~ METHANE EMISSION MANAGEMENT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 38 employees who might have thousands of cattle to care for at any given time. “We’re just starting to work with the idea of robotic scrapers,” Stowell says. “Instead of having a person go in the pen and work around cattle, the idea would be to have a robot go in daily to harvest manure without disrupting the cattle.” Another option is hiring someone else to take care of the process.
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