Cattleman converts manure into powerful business idea

FORT MORGAN — How I love the smell of electricity in the morning.

Recently a story from Voice of America landed in my inbox, discussing a cattle feeder in Fort Morgan who had begun the process of generating electricity out of the manure produced by the cattle on his feedlot.

The idea interested me, so I gave Gary Teague a call and arranged a time to come visit his “cow-powered” lot. I was imagining a Willy Wonka-esque machine transferring foul-smelling manure into enough electricity to power a small town.

Instead, I found a man who is determined to find a solution to several of his problems: excess manure totaling 50,000 tons per year, high power bills, and finding a market for the 150,000 yards of compost he produces annually.

While the machine I was hoping to find wasn’t there, I did see the machines that will make the concrete pad for the five large holding tanks. Teague said the pad will be poured by the end of March and he anticipates making electricity by the end of August.

“We got into exploring the idea of methane production and we believe it can be done very effectively, it’s kind of like the icing on the cake,” Teague said. “We are handling the products now, and we might as well extract as much out of it as we can. It will reduce our compost output, meaning we can handle more product.”

Teague accepts ineatable byproducts from local farmers, dairy producers and factories to add to his available manure to produce compost. He then sells the compost to landscapers in Denver and to farmers in the area.

Electricity is produced from the manure and byproducts using “anaerobic digesters” – bacteria which break down the waste in an oxygen-free environment. This process creates methane, which is sucked out of the top of the tanks and used to run a generator and create electricity. Teague is using a system developed by Utah State University, which produces the final compost in five days instead of the traditional 20 required by most “plug flow” digesters.

Teague showed me his rows of manure and compost in various stages, explaining this was the odorous side of the operation. I asked him about the dangers of methane, and he explained manure piled in a field is more environmentally hazardous than containing it and using it to generate power.

The initial capital costs for the project are approximately $1 million, but Teague knows he is going to add tanks and is planning to spend $3 million to $5 million on the final system. By producing his own electricity, Teague hopes to cut his annual $50,000 energy bill and sell between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of electricity back to the utility company.

Teague will be the first cattle producer in the state to use the system; a pork feeder near Akron is currently producing electricity.

“We envision that by the end of August we are producing all the energy we need and then we will have excess that will be sold to pay for capital costs,” he said. “We will also reduce the amount of compost we produce which will make it easier for us to meet the environmental hurdles so we hope to pay it back in 10 years.”

Kim Lock is the agriculture reporter for the Northern Colorado Business Report. To suggest column ideas contact her at (970) 221-5400 ext. 222 or at klock@ncbr.com

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