Nebraska's New Feedlot Innovation Center: Leading the Charge in Research Revolution

Walk into University of Nebraska’s new Feedlot Innovation Center, and you'll realize it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. While the buildings may be empty lots today, starting next week, cattle will start to arrive, setting the stage to revolutionize feedlot research for the entire industry.

“We thought this is the latest and greatest way for us to help the feedlot industry help the beef industry focus on performance, environmental issues and challenges that we can address, as well as animal welfare, cattle behavior and even precision technology,” says Galen Erickson, Nebraska cattle industry professor of animal science at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).

A New Approach to Feedlot Research

It’s all being done at the Klosterman Feedlot Innovation Center, a $7.2-million project that sprouted from an idea four years ago.

“We want to be a testbed for all of the latest innovations,” says Erickson. “Not only is it innovations that we would like to develop internally, but we also want to be a testbed for companies. So if there's industry innovations that companies are developing, many of them need to be tested in the real world. And yet, when you test them in the real world, you want to be able to collect all the data and information on how well they work. That's the role that we think we serve.”