OLIVER COUNTY - When calves at Kent Albers' feedlot look up from the feed bunker, their ringed mouths look like a "Got Milk?" ad, only in this case, it'd be, "Got Distillers Grain?"

It's no exaggeration, the humorous way the distinct color of the grain makes a full golden circle around their mouths.

It's lip smacking good stuff, full of the flavor of baked corn and more than 20 percent protein, and cattle just about eat the feed bunker along with the feed in it.

Eat is what producers want their animals to do in winter when they need extra calories to maintain weight and more calories to gain it.

Especially this winter.

Cattle producers are challenged every way they look.

Hay was short in a dry summer and winter started hard and early. Producers need more of the hay they already don't have and it's pricey at a statewide average of $82 a ton.

The heavy snow is both a blessing and a curse.

Looking ahead, cattlemen envision fresh water as far as the eye can see and lush hay right after it.

Looking around now, they see hungry animals in need of energy, diminishing feed supplies and a daunting amount of snow burying bales in their hay yards and clogging pens and feeding pastures.

Some sold calves early just to get out from under the equation.

For some, distillers grain is the winter equalizer.

Albers runs a feedlot operation with his sons Chris and Josh, between Hannover and Center in Oliver County.

Robert Schmidt, runs a family feedlot operation down the road toward the old townsite of Price.

They move snow to get from the house to the tractor shed. They move snow to get to the feed yard and they move even more snow to get from there to the feedlot.

"I just make do and keep making piles," said Schmidt. He hooked up a snowblower to his tractor for the first time in nine winters.

Moving the snow and burning fuel is only a means to reaching the real job - getting feed to, in Schmidt's case, 1,500 animals.

That's a lot of hungry mouths to feed and this tough winter, they came in off pasture a month early.

Albers said he doesn't like to talk numbers, but he's got hundreds of black-hided calves now and hundreds more coming this month that he'll background feed until late summer and fall.

The feedlot is near the home headquarters, backed by sheltering trees.

Josh Albers puts in a day's work on a new/used front end loader, clearing out snow by the truck load to make way for incoming calves. When it runs all day, the loader can burn through 30 gallons of diesel.

Both Albers and Schmidt rely on distillers grain from local ethanol plants to improve and stretch their feed quality and quantity.

Schmidt figures he'll make the winter with his hay, but he won't have any carryover for next year.

Albers says his operation is in pretty good shape. The distillers grain he gets from the Blue Flint ethanol plant makes a good additive to poorer quality forage, blended to at least 20 percent of the mix, higher when the weather turns really severe.

"It's an energy booster and cattle love the taste," he said.

Turns out, distillers grain, the leftover mash from turning corn into fuel ethanol, is a good moneymaker for the plants, selling now at $74 a ton.

At that price - bid up higher now than when it was first available - it's approaching other protein additives, like corn, soybean meal and barley.

"It's priced right at the ballpark with everything else. It's not critical to our operation, but it is beneficial," Albers said. He said he still prefers it for protein because it's so tasty, the livestock about knock each aside to get to it.

Blue Flint Ethanol, near Underwood, produces 160,000 tons a year, says product manager Roger Hansen.

That's the dry distillers grain output. The sales number is higher because most local cattle producers like a modified distillers grain in which about half the moisture is retained.

Hansen said Blue Flint isn't turning away customers, though demand for the product is high.

Anyone who wants distillers grain needs to give the plant about two days' notice. A cattle nutritionist will advise on the proper ration, or blend, of the distillers grain with other feed, he said.

Hansen said Blue Flint prefers local truck sales, though it does ship some by rail to feedlots in other states.

"Our goal is to try to keep the distillers grain available in North Dakota for cattle producers here," Hansen said. "We want the benefit to be local instead of shipping it all over the place."

Last year, when corn prices were high, the ethanol industry was criticized for taking corn out of the food chain and inflating the price.

Hansen said the ethanol process only takes the starch out of corn and through distillers grain, puts the rest back into the food industry.

Albers and Schmidt are putting it back in as fast as their cattle will eat it, which is pretty fast considering livestock feed consumption goes up by 10 to 15 percent in the cold weather.

"We'll feed as much as they'll eat when it's cold," Schmidt said. "The distillers grain makes for a better feed and more of it."

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)