Cattle across the nation are fattening up on a diet that includes spent grains — the fibrous leftovers from the brewing process.

Every couple of days an 18-ton truck drives up to the Boulevard Brewing Co. plant on Southwest Boulevard and hooks up hoses to empty a silo of spent grain. The grain is hauled to Nunemaker-Ross Farms in Lawrence, where it is fed to a herd of about 900 head of cattle. Nunemaker-Ross Farms sells its finished cattle to Bichelmeyer Meats in Kansas City, Kan.

“If you sit down and have a beer and a steak, you have closed the loop on spent grain,” says Boulevard’s lead brewer, Craig Pijanowski.