Saturday, May 26, 2018

Cow Burps

There's no mention of what the cost difference would be if this new feed were introduced, but here's the science taking place at nearby UC Davis:

Early indications of a UC Davis study show feeding dairy cows seaweed may reduce methane emissions caused by their belching, the university announced Thursday.

UC Davis animal science professor Ermias Kebreab and animal biology PhD candidate Breanna Roque separated 12 Holstein cows into three groups, two of which received different doses of seaweed in their feed and one of which got no seaweed at all.

"The numbers we’re seeing are amazing — well beyond the target that farmers will need to reach," Kebreab said in a media release. "This is a very surprising and promising development."

The two test groups eat seaweed sweetened with molasses for two weeks at a time before returning to a normal diet for a week. Each cow eats a snack from an open-air device that simultaneously measures their breath's methane content. Their milk is also tested for yield, flavor and nutritional content throughout the experiment.
Why worry about this? Burps=methane=global warming.  It's California, you knew global warming had to be in there somewhere.

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