AIRDRIE, Alta. – Don and Todd McKinnon have learned there is a wrong way and a right way to build a feedlot.
Located just west of Airdrie, the father-son operation has experienced a few career changes since it started in 1929.
Once a horse ranch owned by Don’s father, Three Cross Cattle Company evolved into a 5,000-head feedlot where cattle are finished for slaughter.
When people first started building feedlots, the corrals were slapped up without paying much attention to optimum drainage patterns, prevailing winds or cattle comfort. Nowadays these facilities are engineering marvels where soil is tested, waterways monitored and yards kept clean and dry with the latest technology.
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As the McKinnons perfected the feedlot science, they adopted a sideline business.
Being on the outskirts of Airdrie on a main road, gardeners and landscapers kept stopping by to pick up manure. In 1991 the family decided to compost to get some value out of this byproduct.
“I really don’t know anything about composting,” admitted Don McKinnon to a group of visitors on a manure management tour.
The feedlot and farm are full-time jobs and they knew they did not want extra work. The manure is scraped out of pens and gets mixed with straw or wood chips that are used for bedding.
A front end loader piles up the windrows without too much fuss. The manure is turned regularly to distribute the heat that builds up. The temperature is monitored to ensure the mix stays at 60 C for one week in order to kill weed seeds or pathogens present in the mix.
The McKinnons have learned that if the windrows get too hot, the mix turns a dull, grey color and is not as good a soil amendment.
The compost is dark brown with plenty of fibre and no smell. It sells for $15 a square yard, mostly to gardeners and landscapers. A small amount is sold for oilfield and pipeline reclamation projects.
“We find you can compost anything but rocks, eartags and bale string,” said McKinnon. They also toss in household waste and leftovers from the silage pit.
Some composted material goes back in the pens to build mounds for the cattle.
Volume decreases
Although only about 10 percent of the manure produced at their yard goes to compost, the McKinnons like the results. Volumes are reduced by about 50 percent, there are no flies and any weeds that pop up are easily hoed out.
The rest of the manure is spread on their 2,000 acres of land where they grow silage crops for the feedlot. The manure is spread after the silaging is done.
Soil analysis is conducted to make sure the fields are not overloaded. If the soil needs more nutrients, it can be added by commercial fertilizer. Spreading is rotated about every three years per strip.
The McKinnons grow all their own silage for the feedlot but they have to buy hay, straw, wood chips and about a half million bushels of grain from the neighbors each year.
Water comes from wells and a reservoir filled by a coulee near the farm. They collect about 12 million gallons of water per year from the reservoir and use 10-11 million gallons on the farm.
With no runoff this spring, the reservoir did not fill, so more wells may be needed to meet the feedlot’s water needs.
Unless more than 2.5 centimetres of rain fall, there is little runoff from the pens. Spring runoff only lasts about a week. Since it is so dry in this area, the feedlot’s drainage system is a grassed waterway that absorbs wastewater.
