By Jerry Shurson, University of Minnesota Extension

The ethanol industry is one of the fastest-growing segments of U.S. agriculture, and it produces distillers grains by-products used as feed for livestock and poultry.

The latest information on feeding distillers grains by-products to dairy and beef cattle, swine and poultry is available on a one-stop Web site. It’s the University of Minnesota distillers grains by-products site at www.ddgs.umn.edu [1]. The Web site has been receiving about 3,500 hits per day.

A wide variety of ethanol by-products are available to livestock and poultry producers, but they vary widely in nutrient content, quality and feeding value. In addition to research from University of Minnesota scientists, the Web site has research information and technical publications from several other universities.

Corn is the grain most widely used in ethanol production due to its high fermentable starch content, so the majority of information on the Web site involves corn distillers by-products as livestock and poultry feed. However, some ethanol plants use sorghum, or blend corn with sorghum, wheat or barley based on geographical location, cost and availability of the grains.

All of the numerous by-products are different in nutritional value, and have different economic value in various types of animal and poultry feed.

More than 12 million metric tons of distillers grains with solubles were produced in 2006; industry experts say the figure may increase another 10 to 14 million tons in the next few years.

The Web site has an international following and many of the publications have been translated into other languages, including Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish and Taiwanese.

(Jerry Shurson is an animal nutritionist with University of Minnesota Extension.)