Dairy specialists in Wisconsin are finding new ways to measure livestock emissions, and all starts with analyzing cow burps through a unique device.
“The GreenFeed is a big green box that the cows can voluntarily visit through the day, much like they visit the automated milking system, and when they walk up to it, the box recognizes who she is, and if she has permission, it drops a little bit of feed for her. And while she’s waiting there, munching, she’s exuding, burping gas through her nose and mouth, and a pipe in the box pulls it up and runs it through an analyzer to measure four different gasses: methane, hydrogen, CO2, and oxygen,” said Dr. Ryan Pralle, assistant professor of animal, dairy, and veterinary sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.
Pralle says the box can give them useful information like CO2 emissions and methane. The goal is to reduce those emissions and enhance cow productivity.
