The cattle industry is looking at a variety of methods to mitigate methane emissions ranging from molecular manipulation to genetics.
It’s a wide-open field, says Conor McCabe, a doctoral student at the University of California-Davis who focuses on dairy cattle sustainability.
“Burping produces 95% of all methane emissions from cattle,” he says. “They consume a diet high in plant material and they need to produce methane to move along the digestive process.”
As the cattle industry works on lessening methane emissions, McCabe says one option may be feed additives. He says several companies are working on additives using a compound that will reduce
the enzymes that produce methane.
McCabe and his colleagues are working with a molecule called 3-NOP, commercially known as Bovaer, to help cut emissions.
Feed may also be altered to reduce methane.
“Changing what we feed cows in the United States can prevent some methane from forming in the first place, thus reducing emissions,” McCabe says. “One of the precursors for making methane is fiber digestion, and fiber is a key component of what cattle eat.
“Feeding cows grains and fats, for example, results in reduced methane formation. These food sources produce different digestion products during rumen fermentation. In fact, the products they make serve as a sink for some of the extra hydrogen molecules in a cow’s rumen. As a result, hydrogen is soaked up and can’t be used by the methane-forming microbes.”
For example, feedlot cattle consume more feed daily than grazing cows but produce substantially less methane because their diet is not primarily grass-based, McCabe says.
“Feeding grains to cattle is a proven strategy to reduce methane emissions,” he says.
Researchers are also looking into developing gene markers that would result in cattle producing less methane. This would be a long-term solution to emissions, says Juan Tricarico, senior vice president of environmental research for Dairy Management Inc.
“Through breeding, producers can pick out the characteristics they like, and those genetic markers are very accurate,” he says. “Eventually we will be able to rank cows based on methane emission.”
Tricarico says this type of research involves a lengthy and expensive process, and any expense would have to be economically justified by producers. He says dairy producers are curious and interested in this research.
“The benefit from this would be societal and will provide an element of recognition for the work they are doing,” Tricarico says.
With this in mind, the Greener Cattle Initiative was created. DMI calls it “a pioneering model of public-private collaboration to help the dairy industry achieve its sustainability goals through rigorous, science-based research that addresses environmental and economic challenges.”
“We are optimistic about what researchers are doing and what information is becoming available,” Tricarico says. “Producers will be able to look at that information and relate it to their operation.”
McCabe says genetic research is promising.
“Research demonstrates that genes related to methane emissions have low to average heritability,” he says. “Although we need to do more work in this area — for example, genetically testing tens of thousands of offspring from bulls to see how accurately we can predict heritability of low-methane-emission traits — it may be possible to reduce methane emissions by breeding cows with bulls that produce lower-methane-producing offspring.
“It is likely that before the end of the decade, bulls, along with being tested for their transmissibility of milk production and animal health traits, will also have a known level of methane-emissions transmission.”
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