Air Quality Challenges

Management is the key to keeping dust under control. By using some basic dust control techniques, open feedlots can prevent or minimize the problem.

Roughly half of all neighbor complaints of livestock odors originate from land application of manure. A weather forecast and a little knowledge of odor dilution can be a powerful tool for keeping your neighbors happy, or at least avoiding those irate phone calls. Picking the right weather conditions for land applying manure, may not improve your popularity in the community, but it can go along way with improving your community’s acceptance of livestock systems.

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may seem like extra work that can hurt business, but in reality best management practices for reducing GHG emissions can be economical. These practices may also have other benefits such as reducing unpleasant odors. There are two main areas where producers can reduce significant amounts of greenhouse gases. Best management practices to increase production efficiency and reduce methane produced from cattle digestion of feed can be used alongside manure management techniques.

This is a summary of the webinar “The Role of the Odor Footprint Tool in Livestock Nuisance Litigation” given on Jan. 21, 2021, as part of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of Agricultural Economics Extension Farm and Ranch Management team’s weekly webinar series.

Dietary nutrients, specifically nitrogen and phosphorus, are excreted in manure from feedlot cattle. Dietary strategies, including calculated protein supplementation and phase-feeding programs, can be implemented by cattle feeders to decrease nutrient excretion and improve nutritional efficiency of the animal.