Research on Ruminant Methane

 There’s lots of talk about how ruminants, also known as cows, produce methane and that harms the environment according to the EPA. Dr. Mireille Chahine,  Asst. Professor of Dairy Management at U of I says the amount of methane is overblown, but she’s not anti-earth. “I’m an environmentalist, I also think most of the farmers are because they take care of the land.”

 That said, she’s still aware of the problem. “There are several ways to reduce methane from livestock. The first one is through nutrition. The easiest way of reducing methane is improving the quality of forages that we give to the livestock. If you look at what causes methane production, methane is a by-product of the fermentation that occurs in the rumen because there are bacteria in the rumen and we call them the mesergens  and what they can do is will digest the fiber and one of the by-products is methane. So, if we provide the cows with better quality forages we do reduce the amount of methane produced.”

 Dr. Chahine says another method, amongst several being researched in order to get less methane, is to modify the bacteria that are present in the rumen.