Special diet can cure farm flatulence

[GraemeMonro]

I"m not sure how they measured all this??Wednesday, March 30, 2011 » 01:04pm A change of diet could help flatulent farm animals reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, a study says.Government-funded research aimed at helping farmers cut their contribution to climate change shows how to reduce the amount of methane produced by cows and sheep belching and breaking wind.Researchers at Reading University and the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences found that dairy cows could emit 20 per cent less methane for every litre of milk if fed crushed rapeseed.Increasing the proportion of maize silage in cows" diets from 25 per cent to 75 per cent could reduce methane emission by 6 per cent per litre of milk, while high-sugar grasses could reduce an animal"s methane emissions by 20 per cent for every kilo of weight gain.A diet including a particular variety of oat could cut sheep"s methane emissions by a third, the researchers said.Agriculture Minister Jim Paice said: "It is very exciting that this new research has discovered that by simply changing the way we feed farm animals we have the potential to make a big difference to the environment."Agriculture contributes about 9 per cent of all UK greenhouse gas emissions, Defra said, with half of this coming from sheep, cows and goats.Farming has been shown to account for 41 per cent of the UK"s overall methane emissions.A Defra spokesman added: "In the longer term the benefits gained by changing animals" diets will need to be considered against other environmental impacts as well as how practical or costly they are for the farming industry to implement."

[gbw]

"I"m not sure how they measured all this??"Mr Munro,Sadly these days you do not need to measure. Just make a statement, and its true. If its in print it must be trueGraham

[Des Garvin]

This will mean that the researchers will out perform the animals from their telling us mortals so, can see which ones need removing and that aint the animals. Just another load of hot wind wasted. Cheers Des Garvin

[Mark Horan]

A little reality check here guys,Unless livestock are eating coal and drinking petrol, they are not contributing to fossil greenhouse gasses.Sheep and cattle are ruminants (4 guts) and convert Grass into meat, very efficiently. A horse (1 gut) does a similar thing, but very inefficiently. (That"s why we call them "grass burners".) Kangaroos, also have one gut and are very hard to catch (alive) making them difficult to manage as a farm animal. (and not very good to eat)The methane that comes out of a cows gut (not farted , but burped) is produced when the grass is digested through fermentation as it passes through the various stomachs and is aided by lots of friendly gut bacteria. When the grass is green and soft, there is little methane produced, when the grass has died and dry the gut activity increases to break down the harder feed.when I was at school, I was taught that matter can not be made, it is just there. Somehow, the vegetarians want you to believe that livestock are greenhouse gas factories that "manufacture" greenhouse gasses. The fact is that the "evil carbon" is already there in the grass and is used by the cow to make the cow bigger, effectively "storing" the carbon. The gasses that come out of the cow are only an accelerated emission, as the dead and rotting grass will eventually release the carbon, as microbes digest the matter and release methane and CO2 into the atmosphere.If you were to reduce the "emissions" from a cow, then you reduce its efficiency to convert plant matter into meat. It would take longer to grow to maturity and cost much more per kilo when you wanted to gnaw on a chop bone.The calculations on methane from livestock come from Europe, where they shed their livestock over Winter, intensively feeding hay and grain over the colder months. In Australia, livestock lives outdoors, eats grass and craps on the ground. A completely different set of rules apply, but is inconvenient for our brain dead Government to consider.So Graham, a special diet cant cure Farm Flatulence, the natural carbon cycle will always exist, it will only mean that you have to live on a special diet, as you will only be able to afford less meat. Mark.