00:00 Behind me here is our three syrup tanks. It's not fancy, it's messy, it's sticky. It doesn't really smell, but uh, 00:07 it sure is messy and sticky. That's why I always try to wear my, uh, overall pants and I wear a jacket because 00:12 otherwise you're gonna help with syrup on you all day. And it's just like grease, but it's great. Cattle feed syrup is a liquid byproduct out 00:18 of the ethanol plant, it's about 8% protein is what they advertise it. That varies probably depending on how much water's in it, 00:26 you know, maybe would the right word there be viscosity. This morning we got down to kind of an end of a load 00:31 and it gets thick so it's hard to pump. So Vern and Pat and I had to drag the pump from the end. Uh, we kind of have a manifold of hoses here over to, 00:39 in front of the last tank where it's thick. It just doesn't wanna flow through that much three inch line. 00:43 But if we hook up the pump directly to the tank, then we can pump it out. Then it goes out into the feed wagon. 00:48 We mix it with the cornstalks, so we grind cornstalks or wheat straw as the dry, as kind of a carrier, if you will. 00:55 And then we put the syrup on it. The ration is one pound of straw or or ground stalks. One pound of dry ground feed to two pounds of syrup. 01:05 The reason it needs to be that if you don't soak those stalks up enough, the cows won't eat it. 01:09 They'll sort it, it's not appetizing to 'em. The the syrup to them is, is like beer to Matt and Chad. They just can't walk away from it. 01:15 And so the syrup is a great feed for us. The problem is that there's not really a steady supply, so you need to be in contact with several ethanol plants. 01:23 And I don't understand all of this fully, it, it's, it's over my head a little bit, but from what I understand, when a batch 01:28 of corn doesn't ferment properly to make ethanol, they have to drop it out, is the term that's used. 01:34 And I've, I've never been there before to see it. But then it's syrup because it's liquid and it doesn't go on to make ethanol, so they drop that out. 01:40 So a plant really doesn't want to produce syrup is my understanding, but everything doesn't always go with plan. 01:45 And then depending on the supply of ser and things like that, sometimes we get it very inexpensively. 01:50 Sometimes you, we can get it for free if you just go get it from the trucking, depending on when it happens, because the, 01:55 the ethanol plant doesn't have a lot of storage. There's other times that we'll pay 12 or 15 or even $20 a ton for it. 02:01 It just depends upon the supply and demand, which changes daily. But we, uh, we try to keep a couple, three loads 02:07 around all the time, keep a backlog because we feed it to cows because it is so inexpensive. You know, when you're talking, say $10 a ton, feed in 02:14 with those ground stalks, I value those ground stalks at about a hundred dollars a ton. 02:18 If you have 3000 pounds of feed and it's one ton of syrup and a half a ton of straw, it's about $60 for 02:24 that 3000 pounds of feed very inexpensively. You could supplement, you know, 90 to a hundred cows with that. 02:30 And so it is a great product for us. It's an inexpensive product for us. It just, you're dealing with the inconsistency of it, 02:35 so you need to have enough storage around that. You can go through the dry spells. This morning's quite humorous. 02:40 You know, when, when it's not liquid enough and we have to find a different way to pump it, it takes a really good pump. 02:45 I used to use these two inch plastic pumps and then we break 'em. So now we've gone to a stainless steel three edge trash pump 02:51 and it, uh, it pumps the thicker material very well. Surfs a great feed. It's inexpensive. And we're always trying to figure out how 02:57 to be a low cost producer in the livestock industry.