Strategies to Reduce Methane Emissions on Dairy Farms [Video] ▶️

0:04
OK, Welcome everybody.

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Thank you for joining us today in this month, University of Wisconsin Madison Division of Extension, Badger Dairy Insight, a monthly webinar series offered on the third Tuesday of each month.

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Badger Dairy Insight provides the latest research, dairy based information to improve animal welfare, breeding and genetic selection, optimization and modernization, and nutritional decisions for producers, dairy workers and managers and agricultural professionals.

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My name is Alison Pfau and I’m the bilingual regional dairy educator from UW Madison Extension.

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And we hope to provide this opportunity for an informal discussion on today’s topic.

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And this is a webinar format.

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So please, if you have any questions or comments, just add it at the  Q&A button at the bottom of the screen.

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As this webinar is being recorded, you can find it in our dairy website in about one or two weeks, and we will also feature it in our monthly Dairy E newsletter.

1:09
To kick off our webinar today, we have Doctor Rebecca Larson, Daniel Vieira that is a PhD student, and also we have Doctor Hilario Mantovani.

1:20
All of them are going to introduce us to the strategy to reduce methane emissions on dairy farms.

1:27
So we’re going to start with Doctor Hilario Mantovani.

1:30
He is an associate professor in the Department of Animal and Dairy Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

1:38
He obtained his PhD in Microbiology from Cornell University, and his research program focused on the rumen microbiome, its modulation, and its connection with host phenotype, enteric emissions, and host health.

1:55
Daniel Vieira is a PhD student in the Department of Animal and Dairy Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison under the supervision of Doctor Luiz Ferraretto.

2:06
He earned his bachelor degree in Animal Science from the Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil and his Master in the at the University in Animal Science, Sorry from the University of Sao Paulo where he studied dairy cattle nutrition.

2:23
His current research focus on dairy cow nutrition, enteric methane emission and forage conservation.

2:29
In the last but nonetheless important is Doctor Rebecca Larson.

2:33
She is an Associate professor and Extension Bio waste specialist focusing in manure, agricultural bio products and food waste at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

2:46
Rebecca joined Extension as a assistant professor and Bio-Waste specialist in 2010.

2:53
She has been an associate professor since 2018 and prior to joining Extension, she works as a graduate research assistant at the Michigan State University.

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The main component of her work focused on livestock manure and food waste processing and handling systems.

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Her research and extension programs aim to create increase the profitability and sustainability of food production systems while simultaneously reducing their environment impact.

3:25
So thank you everybody for being here.

3:28
We’re going to start with Doctor Hilario Mantovani.

3:31
So Doctor Hilario, the floor is yours.

3:33
Thank you so much for being here.

3:37
Thank you so much, Alison for the kind introduction.

3:39
My pleasure to be here with you guys today to talk a little bit about the strategy to reducing enteric methane mitigation, reducing methane production, and I’m going to be focusing today a little bit on the rumen hydrogen economy.

3:53
So I believe our audiences already very familiar with the fact that the animal agriculture contributes to carbon emissions to enteric fermentation, manure management.

4:01
So enteric fermentation is the largest anthropogenic source of methane emissions in the United States and accounts for about 26.4% of total emissions or three-point 1% of the total gross emissions.

4:13
I think Doctor Larson’s going to talk a little bit about manure management at the end of this presentation as well.

4:19
So about 80% of agriculture methane arise from livestock systems with which almost 90% comes from enteric fermentation by ruminants such as cattle and sheep and about 10% from 10 to 50% from animal manure.

4:35
And as you can see here like these trends have been maintained relatively constant throughout the the last few years.

4:41
So today we’re going to be focusing about strategy reduce methane.

4:46
But let’s first talk about how and why cows do produce methane.

4:49
OK, Methane is first of all is a natural end product of anaerobic fermentation.

4:53
All anaerobic systems tend to produce methane and it’s produced by in the rumen, in this case by specialized population of microbes that we call the methanogenic archaea.

5:03
OK, so rumen methanogens, they have like low diversity and typically low abundance, often representing like less than 5% of the microbic community in the room.

5:15
But they also represent or the methanogens represent the main route of hydrogen removal from the rumen.

5:20
As you can see, like in this is like there are many organisms that play a role digesting the feed stuff that the cow eats, including bacteria, protozoa and fungi.

5:28
And all these organisms are directly associated with Archaea because they provide the substrate that these microbes actually use to produce methane at the end of the day.

5:36
So methane is eructated mostly through its release through eructation mostly.

5:42
And the rumen is definitely the largest site of methane production.

5:46
But we need to also remember that the large intestine is another site that can be contributing to methane production in livestock animals, including cattle.

5:54
And this production can vary from anything from 5 to 15% depending on the nutritional conditions.

6:00
And here I represent some of the main genus and the species of methanogenic Archaea that typically involved in this process includes methanobrevibacter, which is the most abundant genus of methanogenic Archaea in the world.

6:13
So there are different pathways for methane production in this ecosystem.

6:17
The hydrogenotrophic pathway is the most important one, it is the one that these microbes use.

6:25
Hydrogen as electron donor and CO2 as an electron receptor is a type of an anaerobic respiration that leads to the production of methane.

6:32
But there are other substrates that can also be utilized by these microbes such as methyl amines and ethanol and also even acetate which is a a main end product of the fermentation.

6:43
The difference between the capacity of these microbes to utilize the substrates depends on the Gibbs free energy or the thermodynamic feasability of these reactions with the hydrogenotrophic one being the most favourable reaction.

6:57
So and also the microbes that use this pathway, they have like a lower threshold of for hydrogen compared to the acetogen.

7:05
For example, the Acetoclastic ones.

7:08
In this case they they have like a preferred type of metabolism and and usually the archaea, they do the Aceto classic metabolism.

7:17
They have also lower growth rate and cannot keep up with the passage rate in the rumen ecosystem.

7:22
That’s why one of the aspects of their abundance.

7:26
However, like when we look at the relative abundance of the archaea population and the relationship association with methane production, not always this association is very strong.

7:38
I mean you can have some moderate association between level for archaea population and methane production.

7:43
Most of these associations comes from in vitro research.

7:47
This is a result of a metaanalysis that we did a few like last year and was published recently where we’re looking at these aspects of Archaea population association with methane production.

7:58
So invitro research is usually is a closed system.

8:01
You can definitely see how methanogens are associated with methane, but production but in vivo systems typically association is not that great and the same thing we see like with animals that have different levels of methane production.

8:15
For example, this is a study that was conducted New Zealand where they had like sheep with different levels of of methane production low and high producers.

8:22
But the level of the overall population methanogenic Archaea was not different between these type of animals.

8:28
This basically indicates that there is there are differences in the population of Archaea in these animals and the activity of these microbes may be a major play a major factor like contributing to the rates of methane production and also individual factors from the host.

8:43
So this individual factor from each of the hosts can also be seen between breeds and also animals with have that have high and low methane emission traits.

8:55
So this is also a study that was conducted in the in China with collaborations of research groups in Australia and Chile where they selected the cows with the Jersey cows with high methane emission and Holstein cows with lower methane emissions.

9:11
And they randomly select from a cohort of large group of animals and they look at the profiles of methane emissions, dissolved hydrogen and also rumen metabolites.

9:21
Basically what they saw was difference in the emissions like in using different parameters, for example grams of methane produced by kilogram of fat correct milk or by gram per kilogram of dry matter intake and the levels of hydrogen in this the rumen of these animals post feeding was generally also different.

9:41
The animals with higher production of methane had higher hydrogen concentrations compared to the Holstein cows for example, that had lower levels of hydrogen in the rumen.

9:52
The metabolite profile was also distinct.

9:55
Although they did not see difference in the total VFA between these two breeds and the different types of animals that they were analyzing, there were significant differences in specific rumen metabolites, especially acetate and propionate, which change the acetate propionate ratio significantly.

10:13
And also an interesting observation was a difference in microbial protein production in Holstein cows that had lower methane emission, there was higher compared to the Jersey cows that had the higher emission of methane.

10:27
So, so this research group proposed like some specific mechanisms for these differences in the animals, mostly related on how the animals actually utilize reductants produced during the metabolism of feedstuffs, indicating the Jersey cows, which is indicated here by the Red Arrows tend to conduct these reductants mostly to methane production compared for example, to the Holstein cows that have lower methane emissions that typically divert reductants to amino acids and butyrate and propionate.

11:01
And this is mostly guided by the difference in the microbic communities and the enzymes produced by these microbes in these different animals.

11:07
And they observe like significant differences in specific groups of microbes, especially those that are related to the conversion of succinate and lactate in the ruman to other end products that divert, for example, electrons from these pathways that eventually be to butyrate and propionate.

11:28
So this was a significant observation that there are differences in microbiome that are important for differences in methane production.

11:37
So there are many different strategies for reducing methane emissions in cattle in general.

11:42
So some of them or most of them currently are targeted to adult animals.

11:47
And these methods can be direct methods of inhibiting the methanogens through inhibition of Archaea.

11:54
For example, we’re using seaweed or 3-NOP or 3- Nitrooxypropanol.

12:00
You can also think about the anti methanogen vaccines which has been studied in different groups across the globe.

12:07
But it can also target the the methane production directly through changes in the chemical composition of the fiber, increasing for example, the concentrate level and the ration, which is something that’s gonna Daniel’s gonna follow and show some results of the experiment that was done recently.

12:22
On that sense.

12:24
It can also use lipids and plant extracts or use alternative metabolic pathways as hydrogen sinks, including, for example, supplementation with substrates such as or or alternative electrons such as sulfate and nitrate, or even the use of antimicrobials that directly affect some of these microbes that provide the hydrogen for methanogens.

12:45
Some of these methods can also be applied at birth.

12:47
You can do, for example, defaunation of protozoa, which has a direct association with methanogens.

12:53
You can also think about modulation of the rumen microbiome development, either with a synthetic consortia of microbes or even using some of these approach such as 3- NOP, for example, to modulate the the development of the microbiome and try to reduce long term production of methane.

13:10
So there’s different ways to to do this and you can also think about prior to birth breeding strategies like to select animals that have like a natural lower methane emission than other animals and also breeding to selection of a specific microbiome composition that would lead to a lower methane production as well.

13:31
Of course, there are also an important aspect of methane emissions in their system is manure management.

13:35
But I will leave this through Doctor Larson to to talk more about it.

13:39
But you can address different aspects of of this point as well.

13:43
So among the different strategies and approaches you can use, like I said, several ways to do this like increasing feeding level, decreasing grass maturity and, and different systems can be applied or approach can be applied to different systems like feedlots, mixed systems or grassland systems.

14:03
But in general, as you see, methane inhibitors tend to have the largest impact on reducing methane production.

14:11
And this is something that our research group is really interested in trying to select and identify compounds that can have this direct effect on Archaea and inhibit methane production.

14:24
This was a meta analysis that was conducted a few years ago showing exactly this like feed additives and their impact on anti methanogenic activity.

14:32
As you can see, seaweed, fatty acid, and 3-NOP usually have a bit one of the like some of the largest effects on reducing methane production and interesting feed additives have perhaps the the highest consistency between in vitro versus in vivo results and also are one of the the fastest like approaches to modulate methane production.

14:54
Like breeding approach for them take many generations for you to achieve.

15:00
You can do nutritional approaches including the use of feeder teams and there will be like a faster approach to to do it.

15:06
You need to think about the impact of course of these feed additives and any approach that you think about using to reduce methane on on other aspects that lead to the production of the animal.

15:16
For example, intake, digestibility, milk production and of course gain of the animal.

15:22
Methane inhibitors in general, if they target specifically the methanogens, they tend to have no effect on these parameters compared to other ones.

15:30
For example, if you use like oils, they tend to to have an impact on intake or affect digestibility.

15:36
Although this is not always true, but it’s something to keep in mind.

15:40
For example, if you think about seaweeds, depending on the level of inclusion, seaweeds can have an impact on intake and can, for example, affect levels of iodine in milk, which is also a concern for consumers.

15:53
So we need to to keep that into perspective.

15:57
So our group has been like I said have been has been working on evaluating different compounds to inhibit the methane production.

16:05
We have been focusing mostly on compounds that could be used as feed additives and type directing methanogens.

16:11
But this is a recent paper that we are going to the press and the approach that we are using is like select compounds that have been reported in literature to have some impact on methanogenesis or an impact on overall fermentation that could alter the hydrogen flow in the ecosystem, you know, and at the end reduce methane production.

16:33
So I’ve been selecting this through literature reviews and, and identified compounds or, or analogs of the some of these compounds that could have an impact.

16:40
In our recent recent research, we select like Nitro compounds primarily because they have a similar method of action compared to 3-NOP which is one antimethanogenic feed additive that already know that has a strong activity against methanogenisis and also several phytochemicals.

17:00
They have been reports have at least some effects.

17:02
So we initially have done typically screening assays with a higher dose of the compound to see the ones that are most effective.

17:09
And then we move through dose response effect of these compounds, select the ones with higher potency.

17:16
And then a combination phase where we do we select the the compounds that perform better in this stage and combine them to see if you can get synergistic and even improved even enhanced like more more effective effects on this.

17:28
And basically what is done here is evaluating the profile of the fermentation through the FA analysis, the gas composition and so on.

17:36
Some of these results indicated several compounds have an anti methanogenic activity.

17:41
They have a highlighted two here that we we end up selecting this study which is carbacral and 2-nitroethanol.

17:48
As you can see if several other compounds have anti methanogenic activity and can decrease strongly methane production.

17:55
So this like the the mean methane production is the difference in the production after 24 hours.

18:02
Some of them will have an impact on fermentation and affect gas production as well.

18:06
And some of the strongest anti methanogenic compound even lead to the accumulation of hydrogen in the ecosystem.

18:14
As we move to those response effects, we can see an impact on decreasing the production of methane.

18:21
So this the red line shows here the strong decrease in methane production, this is acetate concentration and this is an increase that is you can see in some concentrations in propionate production by 2-nitroethanol with depending on the concentration an increase in hydrogen production.

18:40
Same observed here for carbacol with a stronger effect on the acetate production and little accumulation of hydrogen and decrease caprinate production.

18:49
Similar effects to Nitro.

18:52
2-Nitroethanol is seen with other Nitro compounds as well.

18:56
We end up selecting these two to move forward with some of the analysis and when we did the combination we did not see in these combinations a synergistic effect as we hypothesized initially in this study.

19:07
But the 2- nitroethanol revealed to be a really interesting compound to be used as a stand alone anti methanogenic potential anti nitrogenic feed additive that could should be explored more even in combination with other compounds as well to see if we can get the synergistic interaction with other elements.

19:26
But they can definitely contribute to not affecting or even in depending on the concentration increase the propionic acid production without affecting digestibility and increasing or decreasing the acetate propionic ratio in this case.

19:44
So the main key thing here is like to redirect the the hydrogen.

19:48
So to wrap up this part is just like we need to think about the methane production is a process that depends on the degradation of feedstuffs that generates hydrogen.

19:59
So you can modulate this part of the process as Daniel is going to explain next producing hydrogen.

20:06
And inhibiting the methanogen is not like the hardest part.

20:10
This is like a relatively easy with the different types of additives you can obtain decreasing in methane production through this path.

20:18
But the challenge is to redirect this pool of hydrogen to other alternative end products that can actually be used by the animal and increase the the gains of the of the herd.

20:33
So I wanted to wrap up this with a few key takeaways and conclusions.

20:37
So there are multiple pathways to reduce endetic methanogenesis.

20:41
So like I said, inhibiting the methanogenesis is not the main issue.

20:45
The main issue is redirecting the hydrogen.

20:47
So Nitro compounds show potent antimethanogenic activity, redirecting hydrogen is key to effective mitigation and combining feed additives with alternative electron sinks can maximize methane reduction and electron disposal.

20:59
And finally, stacking mitigation approach with its strategy to redirect electron flow could confer productivity gains.

21:05
And this is the part that we are actually exploring now.

21:09
Thank you.

21:09
I just want to acknowledge the people involved in this work and we’ll be open to questions at the end of this.

21:14
Let me know as well.

21:17
Thank you so much, Doctor Hilario.

21:19
The questions are going to be at the end, so let’s just wait until the end, please.

21:25
Now we’re going to start with Doctor Daniel Vieira

21:30
So the floors is yours.

21:32
You can start sharing the screen.

21:35
Yeah.

21:36
OK.

21:37
Hi, everyone.

21:38
Can you see my screen?

21:41
Yes, Yeah, we can see it.

21:43
OK, good.

21:44
So thanks for the introduction, Alison.

21:47
After this very comprehensive presentation from Doctor Mantovani, I’ll be focusing one of my trials that we evaluate the effects of dietary starch concentration on lactation performance, feeding behavior and methane emissions in dairy cows.

22:04
So why starch?

22:05
As Doctor Mantovani mentioned, increasing the feeding level is one of the strategies you can use to reduce matter, right?

22:13
But not only that, starch is the primary energy source in dairy cows diets and it accounts for 20 to 30% of the dietary dry matter.

22:21
And it’s because starch can increase milk milk protein and now so it’s a such good source of energy that can decrease dry matter intake, keeping or increasing the milk production, which means increase the feed efficiency.

22:38
However, feeding starch is not it doesn’t come without a challenge.

22:43
Feeding excessive amounts of starch can decrease milk fat and fiber digestibility.

22:50
But the most important thing here for this presentation is that starch is a nutritional strategy to reduce synthetic methane emissions.

22:57
And this meta analysis from two years ago shows that increasing the dietary starch decrease linearly the methane yield.

23:08
And we also tested that in our lab here in Ferraretto’s lab, when we tested 2 diets when with 21% starch and another is 27% starch.

23:18
And we also noticed that more starch decreased methane, methane yield and methane intensity.

23:26
But how does dietary starch decrease methane production?

23:30
So methanogenesis acts as the primary sink of metabolic hydrogen and this is essential to allow the fermentation to continue.

23:42
So when the cows are eating, this feed goes to the rumen and then get in the rumen and the the microbiota attaches to this feed to start the fermentation process.

23:52
And this fermentation process produces many products such as VFA’s, ammonia, CO2 and hydrogen.

24:00
The problem is the accumulation of the hydrogen in the rumen inhibits the fermentation, which means a product of the fermentation inhibits the fermentation itself.

24:11
And to cope with that the methanogenic Archaea put together the CO2 with this hydrogen to produce methane and release this methane in the environment.

24:21
Through eructation and then decreasing this hydrogen the fermentation can continue and starch helps reducing methane and because it starts shifts the rumen of fermentation towards propionate.

24:37
Propionate is one of the three main fatty acids produced in the rumen and increasing propionate production we decrease hydrogen which is the substrate for methanogenesis.

24:47
So we decrease methane production in the rumen and this happens because to produce propionate we need to use the hydrogen, incorporate hydrogen in the molecules.

25:01
Meanwhile butyrate and acetate produce release hydrogen in the rumen environment.

25:08
Another alternative for why starch decreases the rumen enteric methane emissions is because it usually is decreased dry matter intake and if we have less feed in the ruman being fermented, we also had have less hydrogen and less hydrogen means less methanogenesis.

25:32
So we know that the cows produce methane and this methane productions is essential for them.

25:38
OK, but how do all the cows produce the same amount of methane?

25:44
Or it’s similar and the answer is no.

25:47
We have cows that produce more methane and cows that produce less methane, and this is a study published to see if it did.

25:54
The cows, the high emitters and the lower emitters are consistent across time, in five months and in two feeding strategies.

26:04
And what they found is that the cows are very consistent.

26:07
The high emitters tend to stay high and the low emitters tend to stay low.

26:11
And this is likely to be due to the difference in the microbial — between low and high emitters.

26:20
But what’s not clear yet is if the methane emission rankings maintain when individual cows are switched between high and low starch diets.

26:30
So a high emitter would still be a high emitter regardless of the starch concentration in the diet.

26:37
And this is the answer.

26:39
This is the question you want to answer.

26:42
And to answer this question, we designed a crossover study with 64 cows where half of the cows starting the high starch diet and half on the reduced starch diet.

26:54
And after five weeks, the we switched the treatments.

26:58
So the cows in the high starch diet went to the reduced starch diet and the reduced went to the high starch diet for more 5 weeks.

27:07
This research was conducted in the Dairy Research Center in Arlington where we had the pens with these blue bins with the gate feeders that allow us to measure the dry matter intake, how many meals the cows have per day, the the eating time, All the feeding behavior measurements.

27:28
And then the cows had 88 days in milk on average and 720 kilograms and the cows indicate features are randomly assigned to one of the two treatments.

27:42
So the treatments that we had is a high starch diet with 30% starch and a reduced starch diet with 20% starch.

27:51
And the gate feeders were divided in two groups of 16.

27:54
So we had 64 cows with 32 gates and 16 gates per treatment and then one cow had access to the 16 gates inside the pan.

28:03
OK.

28:07
We measured the milk production every day.

28:10
The cows were milked twice a day and then we calculate the component correct milk.

28:16
We sent samples to the lab to evaluate the milk components every week.

28:23
And also we calculate the feed efficiency based on the energy correct milk and the dry mat intake.

28:29
And to measure the meth, in order to measure the gas emissions, we use the green feed system, which is this machine here in the picture where it’s like a feeder that when the cows approaches, it drops alfafa pellets and the cows like alfafa pellets a lot.

28:47
So they go to the green feed to eat the alfalfa.

28:50
And in this time that the cow is eating, there is an air flow coming into the machine capturing and carrying out the gases that the cow is emitting at this time.

29:01
So, but how?

29:03
But the cows cannot just eating the, the the alfalfa pellets, right?

29:07
So we have a maximum of visits and drops allowed, which is 6 visits per day and five drops per visit.

29:14
And then the each drop is 34 grams of alfalfa pellet.

29:19
And the emissions some, sometimes what happens is that the cows don’t visit the green feed very often.

29:26
Sometimes it’s like one or two times in the whole experiment, which is not a representative data.

29:32
So for that we need that criteria to include the cows in this study and the cows needed to visit for at least 2 minutes per visit, 2 visits per day and three days per week.

29:47
This is the diet that we used in this experiment with corn silage and alfalfa silage being the only main source of forage.

29:55
We had high moisture corn, whole cotton seeds, but the only difference in the treatments was in the concentrate.

30:04
So the reduced starch diet didn’t have dry ground corn but had soy hulls instead.

30:10
And the high starch diet had dry ground corn without soy hulls.

30:16
And the composition of the diet is in this table and we can see that we reached almost 20% starch in the reduced starch diet.

30:25
And the high starch diet was a little bit lower than we expected being 28%.

30:33
So let’s see the results.

30:34
So after feeding the cows for five weeks, we each period.

30:39
We measured the data from the last week of each period.

30:44
And then for the dry matter intake, the high starch diet decreased the dry matter  intake by 1.5 kilograms per cow per day.

30:52
At the same time, it increases the milk production by 0.8kg per day.

30:59
But the energy corrected  milk did not differ between treatments and I’m going to show why.

31:05
And since we had a lower dry matter intake, keeping the same production, we increased the feed efficiency by almost 6%.

31:17
And we didn’t see a difference in the energy corrected milk because fat decreased for the high starch diet, which is expected.

31:25
However, the protein content, the protein, the yield and the lactose yield increased for the high starch diet.

31:32
And the MUN which is the milk urea nitrogen decreased with more starch meaning a better utilization of the protein of the diet.

31:45
And we also measured the feeding behavior, but we didn’t find a lot of differences.

31:51
However, the cows in the reduced starch diet ate more.

31:54
So they spend more time eating per day.

31:57
They had larger meals and longer meals also.

32:03
But let’s talk about the methane in the emissions.

32:06
So we had measured the the methane, CO2, hydrogen oxygen.

32:13
However, hydrogen, oxygen did not differ between treatments and but methane, we decreased methane by 14% and we also decreased methane yield methane intensity for the ones that are not familiar with yield and intensity is how much a cow produce methane to produce to when the intake is 1 kilogram.

32:35
And for the intensities, how much methane the cow produce to produce 1 kilogram of energy.

32:40
Corrected

32:40
Milk.

32:41
OK.

32:41
So we reduce all of them with more starch and we also reduce CO2 and CO2 intensity feeding more starch.

32:50
And for the crossover design, we usually don’t show this type of graphs because we just evaluated the last week.

32:56
However, I think it’s important to see the behavior of the method during the whole trial.

33:01
So the dashed line is the causing the reduced starch diet in the first period and in the high start study and second period.

33:10
But what I want to show here is that it takes some time to start seeing difference in the methane production for both periods.

33:18
So there is this lack of time is probably maybe an adaptation of the microbiota.

33:23
It’s hard to understand, but we need to be careful to interpret those studies that use some and short periods to evaluate these measurements.

33:36
But to answer that question that are the cows consistent methane emitters even though they switched starch And the answer is yes, they are consistent.

33:47
We run a Spearman rank correlation.

33:50
So we rank out the cows in the first period, we rank out the cows in second period for the high emitter to the lowest emmiter and the high emitters tend to stay high regardless of the diet and the low emitter tend to stay low.

34:05
And we also evaluated that for the methane yield and methane intensity and the correlation is pretty strong.

34:11
So it means the cows are consistent.

34:14
The only for methane yield in the reduced starch to high starch sequence, the correlation is a little bit lower, but it’s still consistent.

34:27
So as the take home message here is the high starch diets improved lactation performance by increased feed efficiency it is it’s able to let the cows perform in the same way eating less, OK and just reduce a little bit the eating time and the meal size.

34:47
The high starch side decreased the methane emissions, methane yield methane intensity of lactating cows, and the methane rank is rankings were strongly correlated between periods, suggesting that individual cow characteristics play a major role in the methane production.

35:03
While dietary strategy can further reduce methane emissions.

35:06
This means we can use nutritional strategies to reduce methane emissions and it works.

35:13
However, we can work with genetic selections maybe to try to decrease even more since the cut the the individual characteristics is very, very important for metal production.

35:28
So with that, thank you very much and thank USDA for sponsoring this study.

35:34
And then Dr.

35:36
Larson is going to present now.

35:39
Yes, thank you so much, Daniel for your presentation.

35:42
So now Doctor Rebecca, the floor is yours.

35:46
Great.

35:46
Thank you so much and thank you everybody for joining us.

35:50
Hopefully you’re having a beautiful day as we are with a little bit better air quality today.

35:55
So I’m going to, we’ve heard a lot about the animal and I’m going to talk to you a little bit about methane reduction strategies for livestock manure.

36:02
So we’ve been working on methane reduction strategies for quite some time.

36:06
I’ve been here about 16 years.

36:07
So I’m going to share you some summary of some of the information that we we’ve been going through.

36:13
So I just want to mention one thing when I think about manure systems, right?

36:16
There’s all these pieces and the whole idea in manure systems is that we take the manure, we get as much of the nutrients etcetera into the crops as that as we can, right?

36:26
So I like to think of it as the cycle where we’re trying to take as many of the components of manure, keep them in the field, have them result in the crop, but come into the crops to then feedback to the animals.

36:37
We want to reduce any losses from there of all the parts of manure, right?

36:42
So we use processing, we use manure storage and all of the processing and manure storage.

36:48
The majority of the time, the intent of those activities is to try to reduce, maybe in this case methane, try to reduce runoff, try to reduce loss of pathogens, right?

36:59
All of the things that I are contained within manure, we want to reduce their losses, right?

37:06
And try to keep as much of that in the system.

37:08
It’s impossible to keep everything in, but the, the more and more we go, the better we get at maintaining it.

37:14
Not every manure system has processing or storage right?

37:18
So you don’t necessarily have to have that.

37:19
If you think of an animal and pasture, it’s going right into the land.

37:23
Or maybe if I daily haul, I’m taking it immediately from the barn out to the field every day.

37:29
The other reason I want to mention this is because methane is really important, but sometimes we get trade-offs when we’re trying to mitigate methane and certain practices with other environmental factors, production factors, right?

37:41
So we need to look at methane reduction strategies in the whole picture of how we’re managing everything to ensure that we think about our own systems and what are our priorities in our system that might change.

37:56
If you’re right on, you know, if I have a producer that’s very close to Lake Michigan right, their priorities may be minimizing runoff and then secondarily doing methane reduction.

38:05
So just thinking about that as you look to the system, a while ago we produced this fact sheet that I think has a nice representation that another Aracio, Dr.

38:16
Aguirre Villegas put together.

38:18
And if you can see your eye like that, it just kind of shows reminding yourself that enteric methane is the primary methane released from a lot of the dairy systems.

38:30
That’s very similar for swine system as as well, which are maybe the two primary as well as beef.

38:35
But manure storage is a, is a very high second, right?

38:39
So we, we get a lot of release of methane from storage because just like they were talking about the gut of the animal, the same things are happening, right?

38:48
Those microorganisms are excreted from the animal and then you have them in storage and they’re typically in the storages we have in Wisconsin.

38:57
And in most storages these days are anaerobic, so there’s not much oxygen within there.

39:03
And so those microorganisms, the anaerobic ones are taking over and methane is a byproduct of their natural degradation of the the solids within there.

39:12
There are minor amounts of methane produced in the barn and in the field, but I would say those are very small and generally not in comparison to the the other two.

39:22
One of the other reasons we focus on manure is that the interventions can sometimes be a little easier, maybe more easy, easily adaptable than previously for some of the animal interventions.

39:35
But we’ve been seeing a lot of, as you just heard, accelerations in that area, which may make that statement not so true anymore manure processing.

39:45
So as I mentioned, the emissions are from storage.

39:47
When we’re talking about methane emissions and manure processing, the idea is that we’re changing the manure so that in storage the emissions are less, right?

39:56
So the whole idea is if the storage, if the if the methane is coming from the carbon and the volatile solids within the manure, we’re trying to change those characteristics so that it releases less methane when we’re storing it, right?

40:11
That’s the main goal.

40:12
So we’re using a lot.

40:13
A lot of different processing technologies in order to do that, we can also alter our storages.

40:19
So I would say I’m going to talk a lot today about anaerobic storage.

40:22
But if you can convert and convert to like a more solid storage of manure, that’s a great way to reduce your methane.

40:29
Not all systems can work in that way and there’s other, there’s issues with all kinds of systems.

40:35
But I would say I’m going to talk a lot about manure storages and that there’s also ways to manage these so that you’re reducing some of the emissions.

40:44
The other thing I want to say about manure storage is the reason, one of the main reasons we get so much methane emissions from these is because we’re storing manure for a really long time.

40:53
So it’s not about a day, you know, a really bad day.

40:57
It’s about the fact that you’re storing this manure for months, right?

41:00
And one of the main drivers is temperature.

41:03
So the warmer months of the year, we’re getting more emissions.

41:06
You can think about the microorganisms, as they get warmer, they have more activity.

41:11
And so they’re releasing more methane in those warmer months.

41:14
Wrong way, Becky.

41:16
OK.

41:16
The other thing people ask me about is manure agitation.

41:19
So a lot of times we agitate manure before we put it onto the fields.

41:22
But in agitation we can release a lot of gases.

41:27
And I would say this is a health and safety factor at this at this time.

41:32
But we don’t think of it as a huge release of methane because the time is so short compared to the months of other time.

41:40
It can release more methane, it can release things that are concerning to your health, but it’s more the duration that it’s much shorter.

41:47
That’s why we aren’t as concerned about that time.

41:50
And again, manure application only minor amounts at this time you’re getting a lot of, as you can see, depending upon the way that you’re applying it, you’re starting to get more oxygen in that system.

42:00
So after the application.

42:03
Generally, you’re not going to see very as much methane from that particular time.

42:08
I wanted to just give you now every farm is different, but this is 1 modeled farm that we had in Wisconsin.

42:14
And I just want you to understand the like real difference in where the methane you can see in collection and in some minor separation of sand.

42:23
We use a lot of sand here.

42:24
We have storage, we have land application.

42:26
The majority of the methane, which is CH4, that blue bar is in storage, right?

42:32
Where that’s why we’re so focused on the emissions.

42:35
The huge chunk of the percentage of the emissions is from that.

42:39
The other emissions are from N2O, from storage and land application.

42:43
Today we’re just focused on methane.

42:45
So I’m just going to talk about this Big Blue chunk.

42:48
We see a lot of methane emissions with processing being reduced.

42:51
So if you can look at that the like diamond here on the right hand side, we have this manure processing.

42:58
And when we have this diamond, you can see this is like if I had a manure system where it says, well, where I haven’t processed any manure and the diamond is the total from storage and and land application.

43:09
Now if I add a digester, you can see that the emissions of decrease almost by half, right?

43:16
And then if I add a separator, it’s even lower than that.

43:18
Now the reason for that is you can see the blue, that big chunk, which is the CH4 liquid in storage is reduced significantly, right?

43:28
So like I was saying, the idea of the processing is that once the manure hits the storage, it’s been changed enough that the methane reduction, the the methane is reduced in that in anaerobic digestion, we’re forcing the methane to be lost and then collected in the digester, losing a lot of the volatile solids in separate and separation systems.

43:49
We’re forcing a lot of that separation to remove the volatile solids from the aerobic, the anaerobic storage, right.

43:58
So we’re separating solids.

44:00
The solids are going into a separate storage which has more oxygen, where also a lot of the volatile solids that produce the methane, a lot of the carbon is removed from that liquid situation, right?

44:11
I remember I mentioned earlier the, the when you have storage with more oxygen within it that’s not as anaerobic, you get less methane.

44:21
I want you also to understand that every farm is different.

44:24
Every way you manage has different decisions to make.

44:27
You’ll see here we did a survey of the different kind of practices that a lot of farms were doing for small farms, you know, large, you know, up to maybe 1000 animal farm and then, you know, permitted facilities over 1000 animal units.

44:41
And we have this low reference in high, right?

44:44
So what we were doing is we were modeling some of the decisions that we got back in those surveys, right?

44:49
What I want you to understand from this is that the size of the farm doesn’t necessarily mean where your emissions are going to lie per ton of a manure.

45:00
It’s the choices you’re making at that farm, right?

45:04
So sometimes even within each system, you can have a low and a high, depending upon the management practices that you’re choosing, right?

45:12
And in small farms, you’ll see that blue bar is small because in storage, we don’t get a lot of emissions because they’re not using anaerobic storage.

45:23
Now, as I increase in size, sometimes we’re seeing farms use more anaerobic storage.

45:28
So then the emissions go up.

45:30
And then even larger farms are more likely to start in, in integrating processing, which brings their emissions much farther down in that storage component, right?

45:40
So the more you can target practices to reduce the storage emissions, the less overall emissions you’re going to have, right?

45:49
I just want to say we also looked at organic farms, small farms, large farms, all the different practices.

45:55
And you’ll see as you start to integrate farms that have less anaerobic storage, so a lot of these organic farms were smaller farms, you start to see less emissions from those farms in terms of the manure system.

46:10
So that’s important.

46:11
And that I just wanted you to understand that every different type of farm needs to be analyzed and interpreted differently for the practices that might be relevant to there.

46:20
OK.

46:21
So I want to go through a few main manure processing systems that we know have a lot of methane reduction.

46:27
One is digesters, right?

46:28
I’ve mentioned, I’ve mentioned this before, digesters take the manure into a controlled system, right?

46:34
The whole idea with manure pressing and digesters is I’m controlling the circumstances with how the manure is being handled.

46:41
So the manure enters in the digester, the temperature is higher.

46:45
Remember I said more temperature equals more methane emissions.

46:48
So we have higher temperatures.

46:50
We can hold the manure in there for a certain duration.

46:53
And we’re trying to drive a lot of the volatile solids to be lost as methane, right?

46:58
So we’re collecting all that methane and then we’re going to combust it, right?

47:03
And you’ll say what?

47:04
We’re still losing all the methane, but we’re collecting it instead of like allowing it to be lost to the atmosphere.

47:10
And then when we combust that methane, it becomes a CO2 molecule, right?

47:14
CO2 can still lead to warming in the atmosphere, but it’s much less impactful.

47:20
That’s where the big reduction comes in.

47:21
We catch the methane, we convert it every CH4 molecule into a CO2 molecule, which over 100 year horizon is about a 30 times decrease, right?

47:34
So we have a big impact by collecting the methane here, using it in some kind of combustion system in which we then convert it to a CO2 of molecule.

47:44
We’re seeing a lot of increase in digesters over the past few years.

47:50
These I think are really beneficial.

47:51
They have other benefits on the farm like destroying pathogens, helping to like manage some of the way the post after the digester, we tend to have a lot more processing systems following.

48:06
So it helps us manage manure in a lot of other ways.

48:09
But really we’re collecting all that methane as the main target of these systems.

48:14
All right, so why are we seeing more lately?

48:17
You’ll see why I want you to understand about digesters more recently.

48:20
You can use the methane for a whole lot of different circumstances, but lately we see more CNG.

48:26
So that’s we’re taking the methane and putting it into the natural gas pipeline, if you can think of that.

48:33
And then it’s being used and compressed and used as like vehicle fuel and say a truck fleet or something along those lines.

48:42
The reason we’re seeing more of that is because there’s some incentives there that have been made through the through the EPA and through the, and through California and Oregon and some other states that have developed some standards along with that as well.

48:58
I don’t have time to talk about that a lot, but if you have questions, you can certainly reach out to me.

49:02
But that’s what’s driving this.

49:04
You can use bio gas that’s produced that we capture that methane in many different ways, but this is the most common we’re seeing lately.

49:12
So we see a lot of digesters around the US.

49:16
You can see those circles are like the larger the circle, the bigger the digester and we still don’t have nearly as many as some other countries around the world.

49:25
Those are generally driven by a little more incentive to to get the systems which can be costly to put in.

49:32
We’re talking multi $1,000,000 to install a digest in system.

49:37
And so that pay back of some of the use of the gas can help offset the cost for that system.

49:43
You can burn the gas directly, right?

49:44
Remember that’s methane, it’s flammable.

49:46
You can use it to make electricity and generators, or what is becoming most common now is compressing it and then using it for vehicle fuel.

49:56
You can see in this bottom, sometimes being on a natural gas line is difficult.

50:01
So we might truck it to an injection point.

50:03
You can see these pumps over This was, I believe, in Austria.

50:07
They took this picture and they’re actually just selling the methane right at the farm.

50:12
OK, so digesters are great.

50:15
Just a quick summary.

50:16
You capture the methane, convert it to CO2 and combustion.

50:20
That’s a big reduction in the warming potential.

50:23
Now solid liquid separation, this is a different process by which we take manure.

50:28
And at the most simple, we’re just taking the manure and separating it into a liquid and a solid.

50:34
You can think of it as simple as like I’m putting it through a screen and capturing the solids out.

50:39
Now, these liquids now have less volatile solids within them, so they produce less methane when I’m storing, bring them in that big storage, right?

50:48
And then we have the separated solids that when stored separately, have some methane losses, but there’s a lot more air packets in those solids, right?

50:56
So you can have oxygen within there, which doesn’t allow the methanogens to really flourish and produce as much methane, right?

51:04
So we have less losses when we separate those two into two different streams.

51:10
There’s a lot of separators out there that you can use.

51:12
Maybe the most common is a screw press.

51:15
You know we’re talking $100 to $150,000 for something.

51:19
Well, maybe $80 to $150 (000) depending upon the one you pick.

51:22
We also have centrifuges which are they spin and they have a screen.

51:26
So both of these have a screen, a screw press, it’s forced through the you can see the solids coming out and the liquids are separated.

51:33
So that’s the a screen.

51:34
The liquids are forced through the screen and the solids come out in the middle.

51:39
Same for the centrifuge, although that’s done via, you can think of it as spinning really fast and so the liquids are coming out through the screen and the solids are pushed out the middle.

51:50
The centrifuges may remove a little more solid, but you’re talking a much higher price tag, maybe around half a million dollars, 400,000 to 1/2 a million for the equipment.

51:59
We have rotating drums.

52:00
These are all used for different kinds of manures.

52:02
If your manures more dilute, you may want to go through a rotating drum first.

52:06
You can see the inside of the rotating drum there again, it’s a screen.

52:10
You can see that manure moves through, the solids are separated and the liquids are then out to the storage, right?

52:16
So we have less solids than what’s going out to the storage.

52:20
We have things that can roll or press as you can press out liquids.

52:23
And these incline screens can really remove some fine material that may have more available carbon for producing methane, so can be really useful.

52:33
The other thing I want to say is, so a centrifuge might cost a lot.

52:36
You might be able to use that and remove a lot of solids.

52:38
You could also use things in series like so I might go from a larger screen in a screw press and then put the liquids again through a smaller screen.

52:46
Or more commonly, I might go through a screw press and then I might go through an incline screen, so put the liquids again through another separator where I’m removing smaller particles.

52:56
So you might be able to do that with less hassle than maybe a centrifuge, which is known to have a lot of Labor and issues in that regard.

53:05
Now I want you to understand, we’ve been talking about a lot of systems that just make two like, right?

53:09
I put the manure in  and it’s a solid and a liquid that comes out.

53:12
You can add a lot of systems in a row to get really clean with the liquid, right?

53:17
So there are certain systems where you’re going through so many pieces.

53:21
So those separators that I just mentioned.

53:23
And then maybe you’re going through ultra filtration and then reverse osmosis to get all the way to a clean water, right?

53:29
You can discharge that, you can give it to the animals.

53:32
The idea there is then that clean water has no methane losses.

53:37
I do want to say though, that in each of these systems, the byproducts, right, So there’s always some separated component that needs to be stored that does have some methane or other losses.

53:49
So you still have to manage some things, but it’s usually a lot less volume In the systems we’ve been measuring lately, we’re talking maybe 60% of the manure that goes in comes out as clean water.

54:00
So then you’re managing the remaining 40% in different, different things.

54:06
OK, so we model a lot of these.

54:08
We take a ton of measurements of manure out in the field and we model a lot of these.

54:12
And again, so you can see this no processing.

54:15
This is just like conventional manure storage.

54:18
You see the storage of the liquids is this big bar with the orange, right?

54:23
And then you see as you add these different systems in that orange bar gets smaller, right?

54:29
So as I add a digester, it’s smaller If I want to add a, a screw press, a centrifuge and ultra filtration and RO and and then I want to do injection right, you’ll see the bars can get smaller and all of those pieces.

54:42
So sometimes, you know, you see the bargaining smaller as I add the UF and the RO and all maybe these advanced systems, I might not be saving that much more because I’ve already really removed the majority of it.

54:54
And at some of those future ones, they have a liquid by product of storage.

54:59
The other thing I want you to understand is there’s a range of performance in this screw press Here you see that red and black bar that’s like the range we measure out in the in, in the systems we see.

55:10
So there is a little flexibility depending upon how well you operate your system.

55:16
I want to mention one more system that’s really popular particularly on some some of our smaller producers, which is composting.

55:23
If you’re going from a liquid system, liquid storage to composting, huge methane reductions.

55:29
If you’re going from a solid storage to composting, not really any reduction, maybe some increases depending upon how you operate it.

55:37
So really remembering the system you’re going from to the new system is also has an impact on how much methane, right.

55:45
So understanding your own system and what it’s going to do.

55:48
So if you’re going from liquid to composting, that is a reduction there.

55:53
There’s lots of other systems.

55:54
Some new ones are like pyrolysis, where we make biochar.

55:57
So if we take manure and then we separate the solids that we produce biochar, those separated solids still have some losses.

56:04
So if we convert it to biochar, we’re kind of reducing that even farther.

56:09
You can make biochar from other materials as well.

56:12
The benefit of that is that you might be able to put it in compost and that’s been shown to reduce the methane.

56:18
From there, you might put it.

56:20
We’ve tried putting it over a manure storage and so that actually acts as like a barrier to the methane being lost from there.

56:29
So there’s a lot of different methods and then once it gets into the field, it’s really been one of the only things that we really think may have longer term carbon sequestration potential.

56:40
The last thing I want to mention, I know I’m running out of time, is that management practices to reduce methane don’t have to be super expensive, right?

56:48
One of the things we’ve been looking at lately is like calling manure and the hottest temperatures using in season application really can reduce the losses from storage, right?

56:59
We’ve been modeling that.

57:01
We’re working on validating that with some data, but you’re thinking like the manure isn’t sitting there in the hottest temperature.

57:07
So if you can haul manure to the field during the summer and reduce the volume that’s there, that looks like it has really great potential to reduce the amount of methane that we lost.

57:17
That’s a great, that’s a great outcome.

57:20
I think because that also has some benefit of like I’m hauling manure when the plants need it, I’m reducing, you know, potential runoff with multiple applications.

57:31
I’m better able to tailor the precision nutrients.

57:34
So some of these things I really like when they start to have so multiple additional benefits that make it easier for the producers to integrate them because the payback is across multiple systems.

57:46
Again, we have lots of data out there that shows all the different practices and how big or how small the impacts might be.

57:54
We model for different farm types so you can get more closer to what you’re thinking and there’s more and more tools out there to be able to model your specific farm to see what’s happening there.

58:07
I have a lot of fact sheets.

58:09
You can check out this QR code.

58:11
We made a virtual farm with Penn State where you can investigate a few of the things and find the fact sheets there as well.

58:17
I also want to thank doctor Aguirre Villegas because he helps me with all of this large amount of data and and my team.

58:24
I certainly am not the one out there every day taking the measurements.

58:27
And I’m going to hand it over to Alison to to round us out today.

58:33
Thank you so much.

58:35
Thank you everybody for be here.

58:36
Thank you for all these discussion.

58:38
Like we, I think we learn a lot about methane mitigation for different perspective.

58:44
So we are open for questions right now.

58:49
While we waiting for questions, I’m going to talk about the next month webinar.

58:56
So join us next month on August 18 when we welcome Doctor Kate Creutzinger.

59:03
She is an assistant professor at the College of Agriculture and Life Science from the University of Vermont who will be talking about transition cow management in the Midwest and the opportunities to have to reduce the stress during this critical period.

59:20
So if you want to register, please do it.

59:23
You can go to the go.wisc.edu/badgerdairy and you can join us next month.

59:35
Yeah, you can find all of these also QR codes that you can just scan.

59:39
And you can also be part of the dairy website.

59:44
You can join our Badger Dairy Insight and also you can subscribe to be part of the Dairy E newsletter that we have monthly.

59:54
So thank you so much.

59:56
Now we wait for questions.

1:00:02
Let’s just give it some time.

1:00:05
Well, they put some questions so well, they have some questions.

1:00:11
So I have a question for Doctor.

1:00:14
I want to join Doctor Hilario and Daniel.

1:00:19
Thank you.

1:00:22
So I have a question here.

1:00:25
So it’s like we know about like different feed additives, right and that can help and they are at the market.

1:00:35
So what consideration you should the producers keep in mind regarding long term rumen health, palatability, and consistency of dry matter intake?

1:00:51
I can start and Daniel you can follow up from that more than nutritional sides, I think it will depend on hope you guys are not hearing the noise in the background because they have a lot of drilling happening.

1:01:01
No, we cannot hear anything.

1:01:02
No worries, sounds good.

1:01:04
I think it will depend on the nature of the additive or or strategy for mitigating methane.

1:01:11
Like I said, like different strategies can have different impacts and all of them have like positive and negative aspects that we need to consider when implementing.

1:01:20
Some of them are easier to use.

1:01:23
Some of them we don’t know yet about the the prolonged effects of these feed additives will be adaptation or things like that.

1:01:31
So even with 3- NOP, which is one of the most like studied feed additives that directly affect the the methane production like targeting methanogens, we still don’t know much about the long term effects like if there will be adaptation of the microbiome and things like that.

1:01:48
But yes, it’s effective.

1:01:49
I mean, some of them have been like proven to be effective and 3-NOP is one of them.

1:01:54
For example, seaweed is also being proven to be very effective as a feed additive.

1:01:59
But as I mentioned, there might be impacts on for the intake.

1:02:03
If you depend on the level that you put in the diet, it could affect intake.

1:02:07
There’s a concern about iodine in milk.

1:02:09
So it really depends on the strategies as as good.

1:02:12
So these factors you need to consider what’s what’s available.

1:02:15
Like I said for each farm in each region, you might have access to different types of options and that’s something that you want to be aware of sometimes like they said in the nutrition strategies that Daniel was proposing and you change the diets will have like a significant impact on your farm for your condition.

1:02:33
It’ll be easier and cheaper for you to access.

1:02:36
OK.

1:02:37
And I think Daniel can compliment a little bit about this nutritional strategy as well.

1:02:40
Yes.

1:02:42
So the idea of reducing methane, because methane is not only a greenhouse gas, it’s also a energy loss from our diets, right?

1:02:51
So the idea of reducing the methane emissions, but using this carbon to produce more milk, to use it in a productive way, This idea that I like a lot, but some feed additives don’t work like that.

1:03:07
They reduce methane emissions, but we still don’t know what’s happening with everything else and we still have a lack of studies that show the long term effect.

1:03:17
So we do need to study more.

1:03:19
And what the farmers needs to consider is if it’s going to be positive for them, right?

1:03:26
Because so much as Hilario mentioned about the 3-NOP reducement and emissions, but they don’t pay the bills, the farmers cannot make money from that.

1:03:36
So this is also very important that we need to work on to see a way that the farmers can have some positive effects also.

1:03:44
OK.

1:03:45
And we have just one more question for Doctor Rebecca.

1:03:48
So it’s combining in barn mitigation with post excretion manuring, handling and processing.

1:03:55
So help these, all these help dairy farmers or dairy farms maximize their overall sustainability and reduce their total environment footprint.

1:04:08
Can you repeat that first part of that again, I’m sorry.

1:04:10
So it’s like combining the barn mitigation like nutrition and all of these about the animals and the post excretion manure in handling and processing these all of these procedures help dairy farms to maximize their overall sustainability and reduce their total environment footprint.

1:04:30
Yeah, that’s a really important question.

1:04:32
And some of the things that Hilaro and I, some of us have been working on together is like making sure that the the entire system we’re thinking about.

1:04:41
You know, some of the things that we always see in the system is like the more efficient you can be that, you know, like I think Daniel just mentioned, the the more milk I can produce for the same amount of feed and less manure production altogether from that the genetics of a particular cow or something, then I can increase, you know, the product we want while decreasing all of the other components.

1:05:05
So I will say that efficiency through the whole system is the most important.

1:05:09
But yeah, we try to look at through the system and sometimes we might nix something that we think might look good for one part but doesn’t play out in the other systems, right.

1:05:20
So sometimes, you know, previously we would even look at something of like it making sure that if you reduce the cows enteric methane but then have a digester, we want to be sure that then we can capture the methane again.

1:05:34
Because otherwise, that system, if we paired those two pieces, wouldn’t make financial and an environmental sense.

1:05:42
So you’re trying to, over all the legs of sustainability, make sure that you’re putting the pieces together.

1:05:47
That’s why I also want to encourage people to think about their individual systems.

1:05:52
And then as you read the data, ask the questions about how this particular, you know, diet intervention might result in some of the other components.

1:06:02
One of the most interesting things I’ve been talking about with some animal scientists lately, it’s like, OK, so certain animals, you know, if you increase the efficiency of the diet to produce milk, you know, way beyond my scale, I but I do know how much manure that produces at the end, right?

1:06:16
And so lower amounts of manure, again, that efficiency is really important because then I’m going to lose less out to the environment afterwards.

1:06:25
So, yeah, very important to look across the system and as you try to improve the whole that whole circle.

1:06:34
Well, thank you so much everybody.

1:06:36
Again, thank you for being here and give us all this great information.

1:06:40
I will see you next month in the next Dairy Badger Insight session.

1:06:45
Have a great afternoon or day or night depending where you are seeing us and have a great day.

1:06:51
Thank you so much.