Excerpt
About two-thirds of the beef cattle feeding in the United States occurs in Nebraska, Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and Colorado. Over 80 percent of the fed cattle are produced in feedlots of over 1,000 head capacity. Manure produced by fed cattle, if all were conserved and utilized, would provide 100 kg nitrogen (N) ha−1 (89 lb N a−1) for 8.4 percent of the corn and wheat acreage in the nation. Nutrients excreted in beef feedlots would cost over $461 million if purchased as fertilizer. However, under present practices, about 50 percent of this N is lost (primarily by runoff, ammonia volatilization, and denitrification) before removal from the feedlot. In addition, 50 percent of the remaining N may be lost in hauling, spreading, and incorporating manure into the soil.
Phosphorus (P) losses are less, because P is lost primarily through runoff. Because beef feeding is concentrated where a high percentage of the land is cultivated, there is usually ample land area within economically acceptable distance on …
Footnotes
Bahman Eghball is a research assistant professor. Department of Agronomy. University of Nebraska-Lincoln. J. F. Power is a soil scientist, USDA-ARS, Lincoln. NE, 68583. Joint contribution of LISDA-ARS and University of Nebraska Agricultural Research Division, Lincoln. Nebraska, as paper no. 10301.
- Copyright 1994 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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