Hemp could possibly become a feed alternative for cattle sooner than later. Two studies from Kansas State University are showing how farmers can integrate hemp into their cattle feed.
One of the researchers on the project is Hans Coetzee, a professor at Kansas State who’s head of the anatomy and physiology department in the College of Veterinary Medicine. He broke it down to explain that they’re looking at hemp in the same way people looked at the corn industry and ethanol.
“The hemp is currently grown specifically for the value-added product of CBD oil, but once the oil has been extracted, the plant is left behind, similar with ethanol,” Coetzee goes on to say, “So, we’re interested in understanding whether that material that’s left or remains after the oil’s extracted, could be used in animals as feed.”
He said that cattle are the target because they can use the fiber-rich plants in their diet, similar to how they use the byproducts of ethanol. The team at Kansas State received a $200,000 grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to establish concentrations of cannabinoids in livestock after being exposed to industrial hemp.
“We will then be collecting samples of liver, and kidney, and muscle, and fat tissue that we’ll then analyze with the same equipment that they use to test athletes to make sure that they’re not taking performance-enhancing drugs. We use the same equipment to look at concentrations of CBD and other cannabinoids from the hemp plant in the animal tissue.”
Doing tests like this will help the researchers to confirm that there’s no true risk to the consumer when eating meat or drinking milk from an animal that’s been fed hemp. Trials such as this are being done with other livestock as well. One study was looking into feeding the seeds to pigs and poultry, while in Colorado they’ve been researching using hemp to feed sheep and goats.
